SEI's PensionConnect 360(R) Completes Its 1,000th Pension Plan Analysis

OAKS, Pa., March 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SEI (Nasdaq: SEIC) today announced record sales growth in its corporate defined benefit business over a five year period. From the beginning of 2005 through the end of 2009, SEI has added 168 new defined benefit clients and nearly $23 billion in new defined benefit assets under management. The growth of SEI's defined benefit investment outsourcing business has been driven in large part by the continued adoption of its industry leading PensionConnect 360® solution. Through the end of 2009, the solution aided more than 500 unique defined benefit plan sponsors. In February 2010, PensionConnect 360® passed another milestone by completing its 1,000th different pension plan analysis.

Launched in late 2004, PensionConnect 360® is the industry's first integrated pension model that fully synthesizes an organization's long-term pension strategy with its corporate goals. The uniqueness of the solution was further validated in February 2005 when the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) retained SEI to use the solution's financial modeling and associated analysis to show the impact of pension finance on overall corporate finance. In 2009, two different SEI defined benefit clients won industry awards for the changes they made in response to recommendations that came out of the PensionConnect 360® analysis.

"Now more than ever, plan sponsors want to align their pension obligations with their overall corporate finances and PensionConnect 360® is a proven solution that helps accomplish that," said Paul Klauder, Vice President, SEI's Institutional Group. "The strategic advice and analysis that comes from the PensionConnect 360® process has enabled SEI's clients to mitigate some of the risks presented by the recent economic environment."

SEI has continued to enhance PensionConnect 360® with new features including a liability driven investing framework, risk budgeting, and goals based investing and reporting. The comprehensive solution utilizes risk budgeting to help finance executives identify and quantify the sources of risk in their plan, such as equities and interest rate movement. Asset allocation decisions are more strategic by considering those risks, the unique liabilities of each plan, and the plan's specific goals, such as improving funded status, reducing cash contributions, or plan design changes. Metric reports then show how those decisions performed against those goals.  

"PensionConnect 360® is differentiated in the marketplace through integrated, strategic advice that helps our clients meet their pension-related goals while managing against any impact the pension can have on broader financial goals," said Kevin Matthews, Head of Solutions for SEI's Institutional Group. "As pensions continue to increase in complexity, our focus will be to continue to broaden the capabilities of PensionConnect 360® to always meet those needs."

At the core of PensionConnect 360® is SEI's Manager-of-Manager (MoM) investment management program that provides portfolio structure, manager selection, manager evaluation, and replacement. The PensionConnect 360® process then uses a fully-integrated, financial modeling tool that provides organizations a continual, real-time view of the impact of a variety of pension investment decisions and the impact of those decisions on organizational financial goals.  

About SEI's Institutional Group

SEI's Institutional Group delivers integrated healthcare, retirement and nonprofit investment solutions to more than 500 global institutional clients (of which 340 are U.S. based) in six different countries. SEI enables clients to meet financial objectives, reduce business risk, and fulfill their due diligence requirements through implemented fiduciary management strategies for defined benefit plans, defined contribution plans, endowments, foundations and other balance sheet assets. For more information, visit www.seic.com/institutions

About SEI

SEI (Nasdaq: SEIC) is a leading global provider of outsourced asset management, investment processing and investment operations solutions. The company's innovative solutions help corporations, financial institutions, financial advisors, and affluent families create and manage wealth. As of December 31, 2009, through its subsidiaries and partnerships in which the company has a significant interest, SEI administers $392 billion in mutual fund and pooled assets and manages $158 billion in assets. SEI serves clients, conducts or is registered to conduct business and/or operations, from numerous offices worldwide. For more information, visit www.seic.com.

SOURCE SEI