About Blue Prairie Group
Blue Prairie Group is a fee-only institutional retirement and investment consulting firm located in Chicago. We provide unbiased and objective financial consulting within three main practice areas: ERISA Retirement, Foundations & Endowments and Wealth Management. Blue Prairie Group passionately advocates low cost investments, full fee transparency, and offers a broad, team-based service model for both institutions and individuals.
Prairie News
BPG Names Ty Parrish as Equity Partner and Senior ERISA Consultant: Blue Prairie Group is pleased to announce the addition of new equity partner and Senior ERISA Consultant, Ty Parrish.
Blue Prairie Group Launches New Plan Health SmartCard™: The central piece of the new BPG Plan Health Report™ is the Plan Health SmartCard™ – a powerful yet easy-to-use benchmarking tool focused on measuring the critical dimensions of a successful plan from both a plan participant and plan sponsor perspective.
Stable Value Database Update: We just updated our stable value database (right side of the page under Search) based on the questionnaire results we received as of December 31st.
Key Findings
1. Performance of the underlying portfolios this quarter for the 1-year period ranged from 1.28 to 3.10 percent. Performance over a 3-year annualized period ranged from 1.31 to 4.30 percent.
2. Market-to-book ratios generally decreased this quarter due to a continuing depressed interest rate environment and a rallying equity market, which drove down the demand, and thus prices, of bonds.
3. Stable value funds offered by the insurance companies, in either a traditional “guaranteed investment contract” (GIC) or a Separate Account GIC structure, had the highest returns as a result of having higher levels of underlying portfolio credit risk, duration, or a combination of both.
Upcoming Events
ERISA Litigation Congress
The Leading Event for Benchmarking Litigation and Defense Strategies for ERISA Claims
September 09-10, 2013 – New York, NY
P&I West Coast Defined Contribution Conference
October 27-29, 2013 – San Francisco, CA
DC BEST PRACTICES WEBINAR SERIES –
Part III: Best Practices for Defined Contribution Plans
In Part III, Matt will focus on best practices that can help participants get the most out of their retirement plan, such as offering on-site financial education, re-enrolling eligible employees, and adding a retirement income product. The series will continue to follow Matt’s upcoming book, DC Best Practices: Solving the Retirement Crisis One Plan at a Time, which will be released later this year.
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