Investing

Target date glide paths are ‘unstable’ at some major plan providers

Ibbotson Associates Inc. looked at 21 major target date fund families and found that a target date fund's asset allocation generally becomes more conservative as employees age.

Target date fund families are known for having a conservative or aggressive glide path, but a new analysis shows that some families have made drastic changes to their glide paths over time.
A new paper from Ibbotson Associates Inc. looked at 21 major target date fund families, including Fidelity Investments, The Vanguard Group Inc. and T. Rowe Price Group Inc. Glide paths, which show how a target date fund’s asset allocation changes over time, generally become more conservative as employees age.
Ibbotson found that some fund families undergo year-over-year changes in glide path construction, rather than adhering to a particular investment philosophy. As a result, the equity allocation for a 65-year-old in 2010 might be different from the equity exposure for one in 2005.
Examining Fidelity, Ibbotson discovered a variety of changes to the glide path between 1996 and 2010. For instance, an employee who was 65 at the end of 2001 would have been invested 30% in equities. In comparison, a participant who was 65 at the end of last year would have had an equity allocation near 50%, according to Ibbotson.
“Because of this dispersion, it’s very difficult to predict how much equity today’s 35-year-old will hold at retirement, and therefore hard to determine if the glide path is appropriate for those investors,” the report noted.
Fidelity did not immediately provide comments on the results.
Meanwhile, Vanguard had a distinct change in 2006, becoming a little more aggressive, according to Ibbotson. A chart shows that a 65-year-old at the end of 2005 would have had an equity allocation of about 30%. Equity exposure was just about similar for 2003 and 2004. In contrast, ever since the 2006 change, the equity allocation has hovered near 50% for 65-year-olds.
Indeed, Vanguard’s 2006 changes gave investors greater equity exposure over a longer period of time and added emerging-markets equities, company spokeswoman Rebecca Katz noted. “The new allocation was still considered moderate or ‘middle of the road’ on the risk spectrum among the marketplace’s many target retirement funds,” she wrote in an e-mail.
Finally, T. Rowe Price overall has been stable, maintaining more than 50% allocation into equities for 65-year-old participants since 2006, according to Ibbotson’s analysis.
“In 2008 and 2009, there was increased interest in adjusting our glide path more conservatively,” said Jerome Clark, portfolio manager of T. Rowe Price’s retirement funds. “We avoid making glide path changes based upon short-term market environments, which is consistent with the message we communicate to our investors to stay the course when markets swing to extremes.”
The study is the first of others to come, said author Tom Idzorek, global chief investment officer of Morningstar Inc.’s investment management division.
“Over time, our fund analysts will be sending out our history of these glide paths for all the providers and getting an explanation behind what caused this glide path instability,” he said. “Was this by design, were they trying to time the market, or were they unaware of these relatively dramatic shifts?”
Mr. Idzorek noted that fund manager turnover could be a possible cause behind the glide path changes, as could additions of other asset classes such as commodities.
“One concern is that it can reflect a lack of true fundamental methodology behind a given glide path,” he said. “Therefore, it’s perhaps more swayed by the individual opinions of current portfolio managers.”