Core Plus Roundtable Coverage

Shaking Up the Core

Plan sponsors, it’s time to pull your fixed income out of the bond bucket

Faced with record-low interest rates and yields, plan sponsors want so much more from their bonds than they used to. Not only are they looking to bonds to help them manage risk, they’re also demanding solid risk-adjusted returns, as equities continue to disappoint. It’s a tall order but, ccording to experts at the 2013 Core Plus Roundtable, today’s fixed-income managers are up to the challenge and able to deliver the goods through a host of new tools, from high-yield bonds, to emerging markets debt, to core-plus strategies that give managers a bit more room to run. It’s all good news for plan sponsors looking to de-risk, but it also means they need to look beyond the bond bucket and rethink how their fixed income fits within the entire portfolio.