Trends show that plan sponsors and their participants are seeking assistance from their plan providers as it relates to the management of retirement plan assets. This trend applies to both the defined contribution and defined benefit space. As an independent expert with extensive resources, Wilshire brings a depth of knowledge and experience to discretionary funds management related to retirement plans. By working closely with retirement plan service providers, we can design custom investment programs to meet the needs of both the individual plan participant and the small to mid-sized defined benefit plan.

Individual Plan Participant

Recognizing the need for retirement plan service providers to offer participant level investment advice, Wilshire Funds Management ("WFM") has developed both discretionary and non-discretionary services to assist the individual in developing and implementing an investment solution to meet their retirement investment horizon, income needs and risk tolerance.

We believe that in order to deliver effective discretionary managed account services an offering must:

• Create a lifetime investment process
  • Ongoing dynamic reallocation
  • Accounts for retirement horizon, accumulation and income objectives
  • Addresses investor's risk tolerance
• Manage investor assets not just to retirement, but through retirement
• Utilize Wilshire's extensive institutional experience and independent oversight
• Offer ease of implementation, understanding and enrollment

To that end, we have developed an investment methodology and program framework providing individualized retirement solutions to retirement plan participants through retirement plan service providers offering:

• Compliance - Meeting all provisions of SunAmerica Advisory Opinion
• Structure - Flexible deployment and implementation options
• Quality - Institutional caliber investment approach and high-touch client service model

Defined Benefit Plans

As a retirement plan service provider, you recognize that small to mid-sized institutions face the same investment issues, outside of scale, as their large plan counterparts. They are challenged with determining how to invest plan assets given the future liabilities of the plan. Not possessing the scale to hire an outside consultant, these investment decisions are often left to the plan trustee to implement. Recognizing the need for support of these plan sponsors, as well as the desire for retirement plan service providers to offer turn-key retirement investment solutions, WFM has leveraged Wilshire's 30+ years of providing asset-liability analysis, manager research and asset allocation development to join forces with retirement plan service providers to create a service for these plans.

Utilizing a flexible, two-track plan questionnaire process, the service blends sponsor inputs regarding their risk tolerance and plan benefit obligations to help the sponsor select an appropriate investment profile.

The questionnaire includes inputs from the plan regarding their:

• Aversion to portfolio volatility
• Duration of liabilities
• Current funding ratio
• Aversion to future contributions
• Current asset allocation
• Average and median age of participants

Leveraging our manager research and portfolio management capabilities, each solution is implemented using available investment options, offering the plan sponsor the assistance they desire and the retirement plan service provider a strong value-added solution to their platform.