Investment platform provider aims managed funds at aging boomers. Third-party investment-platform provider Brinker Capital has hired John Ring to lead its efforts around retirement-plan services. Brinker says his first order of business “will be to develop an offshoot of Brinker Capital's ‘Destinations’ managed mutual-fund program and make [it] available to financial advisors” who cater to participant-directed retirement plan clients.

“Financial advisors have been asking over the last few years for more ways in which they can make better and wider use of the Destinations program,” says Brinker president John Coyne. “It will be John's responsibility to ensure that Brinker Capital can satisfy this demand and, in so doing, allow us to continue building on the ‘Destinations’ program success story.”

Brinker says that assets in its "Destinations" mutual-fund program more than tripled in 2004. “Many factors have gone into Destinations' rise over the past few years, even in the face of often extremely difficult market circumstances,” says Coyne. “But it seems clear that the real story is our disciplined investment process and our proven investment performance.”

Many investment-product manufacturers and distributors are increasing their efforts to capture the assets of well-to-do clients as they save for retirement and retain those assets through their clients’ post-retirement years. Some say the payoff for that strategy could be considerable, as growing numbers of well-off retirees settle in for longer retirements than ever before through the next 30 years or so.

In 1995 there were about 34.2 million Americans in the 65-or-higher age bracket, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA). That came to about 12.5% of the population in the U.S. By 2035 the SSA reckons that number will have jumped to 72 million, or 20.6% of the population. In addition, increasing affluence, higher levels of personal fitness and improving medical care means that some are retiring earlier and living longer after they retire. In 1955 the average retirement age was 68 and the average life expectancy was 72. Fifty years later the average retirement age has become 62, while life expectancy has jumped to 80.

Ring – who previously headed up retirement services at Delaware Investments and Fidelity Investments – says he expects to have a retirement-oriented version of Brinker’s “Destinations” on the market within “the next few months.”

According to its latest filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission , Brinker has about $4.4 billion assets under management – $852 million in 4,193 discretionary accounts and $3.5 billion in 4,009 non-discretionary accounts. –FWR

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