Qualified Default Investment Alternative

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Qualified Default Investment Alternative

An investment vehicle a fund manager may use for retirement plan contributions in the absence of direction from the plan participant. A qualified default investment alternative must be diversified, may not directly consist of securities in the company for which the plan participant works, and may not penalize the participant for early withdrawal. Qualified default investment alternatives were defined in the Pension Protection Act of 2006 as part of a broader effort to ease automatic enrollment in retirement plans.

References in periodicals archive ?

The report notes that nearly three-quarters of retirement plans with QDIAs choose TDFs for that purpose.

3 Ways to Improve Retirement Plan Returns

The Department's overarching focus when developing the QDIA regulation, including the types of investment alternatives that could be QDIAs, was on the long-term accumulation of retirement savings as a way to ensure adequate retirement income," according to the letter.

DOL Tries to Clarify QDIA Regs on Annuities in TDFs

By far, the most popular QDIAs are life cycle funds, known as target date funds.

Automatic enrollment retirement plans

Introduced in 2006 with the Pension Protection Act (PPA), QDIAs provide automatic portfolio rebalancing as the investor ages.

Riding The Investing Wave Without Fear

The Department of Labor (DoL) then followed the PPA's lead by, among other things, clarifying the "safe harbors" that plan sponsors would enjoy in the choice of default investment vehicles, the so-called QDIAs (Qualified Default Investment Alternatives).

The New Hybrid DC Plans in Corporate America

These prescribed QDIAs relieve fiduciaries of liability as long as certain requirements are met.

Keep the heavy hand off target-date funds

Target-date fund usage has increased through a number of avenues: participants actively choosing the funds; the funds' designation as one of three eligible 'qualified default investment alternatives,' or QDIAs, under the Pension Protection Act of 2006; and the growth of automatic enrolment plans, which frequently designate target-date funds as the default investment for participants as they are put in the plan.

Rapid growth of target-date funds indicator of their importance in retirement savings, Vanguard says

404c-5 (2) implementing the PPA 2006 provisions providing relief to plan fiduciaries who invest the assets of participants who do not provide investment direction in participant-directed plans (such as automatically enrolled workers) in "qualified default investment alternatives" or QDIAs.

363. Does the inclusion of indemnification and limitation of liability language in a service provider contract violate ERISA's fiduciary provisions?

The list of QDIAs includes balanced funds and managed accounts as well as target-date funds, but target-date funds have become by far the most popular employee default, experts say.

Target-date troubles: as stocks dive, fund companies are revisiting 401(k) target-date strategies and plan sponsors are fretting about possible lawsuits

While our industry is quick to agree on the positive effect the QDIA provisions will have on both plan sponsors and participants, the question of which of the 3 QDIAs will be most widely used--managed accounts, target date funds, or balanced funds--is still open for debate.

The potential of managed accounts: as one QDIA, they have appeal for small businesses

The most popular QDIAs currently are target date funds, balanced accounts and managed accounts, which have all replaced the old stable value stalwarts, as a result of regulations.