Dennis McGonigle: So on the Institutional Investor side, I’ll give you a quick comment and then turn it over to Jay Cipriano to speak to that business segment. And then on the Investment Advisor segment, I’ll let Paul comment on that. The Institutional Investors segment, as Ryan spoke, it’s still in that — the corporate DB space, it’s plant closures or annuitizations that occur and then also, we’re being more aggressive in the market with retention. We know everybody in the industry across the board, there’s no hide from it, is under fee pressure. The competitive landscape is arguably led by fees versus with many competitors, and that kind of sets the table. And Jay and his team and with Paul — Paul hasn’t gone anywhere, so the institutional business is still on his left shoulder, help with Jay, it’s been trying to keep our clients addressing their economic requirements, but at the same time making smart, long-term relationship decisions.
I don’t know, Jay, you want to — since it’s early days, you want to…
Paul Klauder: Sure. Thank you, Dennis. Well, it’s certainly not a new phenomenon that the primary objective of these pension plan sponsors is ultimately to obtain full funding. What is relatively new, the past few years, you’ve had a historic bull market and now you have a run on rising rate environment, which means there’s a greater opportunity for plans to annuitize. We believe around 30% of firms in the industry right now are exploring a risk transfer strategy. So that’s removing the liability and risk from the pension via either the purchase of a group annuity or offering a lump sum window. We’re aware of these market realities, and some of the recent organizational changes that we’ve made are going to better position us to aggressively compete in OCIO growth markets going forward.
The OCIO market, in general, is growing, and we’ve seen more and more large plans exploring like the virtues of outsourcing Chief Investment Officer. So SEI standing as a market leader in that space, our seamless integration of technology, operational and investment expertise, I think, are going to enable us to win moving forward.
Crispin Love: I appreciate all the color there. And then there’s definitely been plenty of volatility recently, especially with rates and fixed income. Can you just talk a little bit about how that’s impacted you in the Institutional Investors segment or any others? At times like this, does it drive the end clients and potential clients to be more inwardly focused, which can dampen activity over the near term or elongate discussions or taking it actually spur new conversations with current clients and new potential ones?
Dennis McGonigle: You mean in the context of the calculation of their future liability streams and their funded status?
Crispin Love: Yes. Yes, exactly.
Dennis McGonigle: Jay, do you want to…?
Jay Cipriano: Yes. I think part of that goes into the fact that many of them are exploring the opportunity now in that rising rate environment to purchase group annuity or offer a lump sum. I think overall, though, when you look at this marketplace, I think this is a market that really creates specialization. So whether it’s health care, higher education, corporate DB union plans, I think our prospects really demand domain expertise and our advice and service around this. So any time there’s a change like that happened in the marketplace, I believe it does open the opportunity for us to sit down and have those advice conversations about how the market realities are affecting their goals and objectives and the allocation that we’ve put out there. We see those opportunities not only as the ability to strengthen our relationship, but also to potentially move them into other products that are better for them and better for us long term.
