Target Portfolios are a Nice Feature

Rating: 
5
Average: 5 (1 vote)

Security Benefit provides an interesting subaccount option with the Variflex variable annuity.

"Target Portfolios" is a portfolio management approach that appears to be enabled by technology from Morningstar.

The approach seems to be similar to what is used by target date funds.

The approach provides 12 different investment strategies that are based on 3 categories of risk tolerance: conservative, moderate and aggressive.

The 3 risk tolerance categories are then segmented by the time horizon of the contract owner.  There are 4 time horizon categories: 0-3 years, 4-10 years, 11-20 years and over 20 years.

An automatic asset reallocation service is used to continually rebalance the portfolio.

The most conservative portfolio is the shortest time horizon (0-3 years) combined with a conservative risk tolerance, while the most aggressive is the longest time horizon coupled with an aggressive risk tolerance profile.

While the Security Benefit fund offerings tend to be weighted heavily towards Guggenheim (understandably) offerings, the Morningstar target portfolio technology is a nice feature for people who are not interested in constructing and managing a portfolio.

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