- LDI Team Chair and Multi-Asset Strategist
United States, Institutional
Change
The views expressed are those of the authors at the time of writing. Other teams may hold different views and make different investment decisions. The value of your investment may become worth more or less than at the time of original investment. While any third-party data used is considered reliable, its accuracy is not guaranteed. For professional, institutional, or accredited investors only.
With recent improvements in funded ratios, many corporate defined benefit (DB) plan sponsors have been thinking about their derisking plans, including whether to increase their liability hedge ratios. At the same time, liquidity issues are top of mind, thanks to the 2022 UK pension crisis, elevated benefit payments as liabilities mature, and capital calls from plans’ private investments. So, the timing seems right for a fresh look at setting and managing liability hedge ratio targets, including liquidity considerations and the implementation tool kit.
In this paper, we offer:
- A framework for setting the liability hedge ratio — We think the focus should be on balancing the benefits against the liquidity risks and implementation costs.
- Portfolio construction insights — We believe physical long-duration assets should generally be prioritized over synthetic exposure, but we also see a role for synthetics to supplement the hedge ratio, provided the plan is positioned to manage liquidity risk. We also think there’s a role for liquid, liability-aware diversifiers in the return-seeking portfolio.
- Best practices in completion mandates — We consider the range of duration-hedging instruments and discuss trade-offs between physical and synthetic exposure, including cost and liquidity.
Increasing the hedge ratio: A case study
The primary goal of increasing the liability hedge ratio is to help reduce projected funded-ratio volatility, a benefit that is generally well understood. But setting a higher hedge ratio may also help narrow the range of volatility outcomes, which can vary depending on equity/bond correlations. In other words, raising the hedge ratio could make funded-ratio volatility a bit more forecastable.
So why not fully hedge the liability, especially given that interest-rate risk is unrewarded? For many plans, particularly those that hold meaningful capital in return-seeking assets or that have a longer liability duration, doing so would entail significant reliance on interest-rate derivatives, which are not costless and introduce liquidity risk that must be carefully managed. That said, we think interest-rate derivatives can be very useful …
To read more, please click the download link below.
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Why more corporate plans should pass on pension risk transfers
LDI Team Chair Amy Trainor explains why she believes a pension risk transfer may, in many cases, not be the best choice for fully funded plans from a cost/benefit standpoint.
5
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Extra credit for corporate plans: Advanced topics in LDI implementation
To help corporate DB plans refine their liability-hedging strategies, members of our LDI Team take a deep dive on 3 key liability risks and offer ideas to help improve the design of hedging portfolios.
25
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9
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The evolution of derisking: Assessing new and time-tested liability-hedging ideas
As defined benefit plans contemplate the best path to their eventual “end state,” members of our LDI team update their liability-hedging research with a blend of traditional benchmark ideas and new opportunities to capitalize on changing market conditions and a broader investment universe.
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22
min
Whitepaper
2026-06-30
Time to derisk? Funded status up, but potential volatility ahead
LDI Team Chair Amy Trainor explains why US corporate DB plans may have a rare and limited opportunity to derisk and offers suggested action steps.
3
min
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How are pension plans adjusting their ROA assumptions? And how do those assumptions line up with our long-term capital market assumptions? Find out in this annual update.
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Liability-hedging diversifiers: What’s on your pension’s playlist?
Corporate pensions moving closer to their end state may benefit from more diversified liability-hedging allocations. To help, LDI Team Chair Amy Trainor offers a liability-hedging diversifiers “playlist” — a set of asset classes and strategies that may harmonize well with a variety of objectives, from downside mitigation to long-term outperformance versus long corporate bonds.
Whitepaper
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