Rob Seminara on How Apollo Is Supporting Europe’s Most Strategic Priorities

For decades, conventional wisdom has held that private markets are too illiquid, risky and inflexible for defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. But many of these objections no longer hold water especially those focused on liquidity. Thanks to recent innovations in structure, strategy and oversight, the tools to manage liquidity within DC plans have evolved dramatically.

America is facing a widely recognized retirement crisis. Although retirement solutions providers have made important—and consistent—strides towards mitigating risks for retirees (from portfolio diversification to investment biases to longevity risk), key concerns remain.

As the US retirement landscape continues to evolve, the ongoing shift from defined benefit (DB) pensions to defined contribution (DC) plans continues to expose the critical gap in both retirement savings and strategy. The traditional portfolios powering today’s DC plans—typically centered around publicly traded equities and bonds—are showing signs of strain, especially in a world defined by heightened market volatility, concentration, compressed returns and growing longevity risk.