VALIC to Run PGA Supplemental Retirement Plan

News September 22, 2018 at 01:22 AM
Share & Print

Golf course (Photo: Shutterstock) (Photo: Shutterstock)

The PGA of America has picked VALIC to run the PGA of America Golf Retirement Plus Program.

VALIC will take charge of a supplemental retirement plan with about $160 million in assets and 6,500 golf professional participants.

The golf pros have an average of about $25,000 in assets each in their plan accounts.

VALIC is a Houston-based subsidiary of American International Group Inc.

VALIC offers the FutureFIT portal for participants, the SponsorFIT portal for plan sponsors, and a large network of live-human financial advisors.

Rhona Aime, the PGA of America chief financial officer, said in a statement that  her organization likes VALIC's advisor network.

"We look forward to PGA Members working with VALIC's many financial advisors while also utilizing VALIC's robust offering of educational tools," Aime said.

VALIC as a whole has $100 billion in assets and 1.8 million plan participants. That means that, overall, the average VALIC plan participant has about $55,000 in assets invested with a VALIC plan.

The PGA of America Golf Retirement Plus plan has an unusual structure. The golf pros themselves can contribute to the plan, but participants can also build up account value by making purchases from Golf Retirement Plus sponsors, such as golf product makers, OfficeMax and Pepsi-Cola. The sponsors have agreed to put part of the revenue they get from the golf pros into the pros' Retirement Plan Plus accounts.

Plan managers say, in a comment that was on the PGAInsurance.com website in August, that the average participant earned an average of $2,185 in sponsor payments in 2013.

Mercer LLC, a unit of Marsh & McLennan Companies Inc., has been administering the supplemental retirement plan, and using Security Benefit Life Insurance Company to store the plan assets.

Information about the current role of Security Benefit Life was not immediately available.

The PGAInsurance.com website still lists Mercer as the PGA of America insurance benefits administrator.

The program uses Long-Term Care Resources as its supplier of long-term care planning services, Hartford Life as its disability insurance provider, and New York Life as its basic group term life provider,

The program uses Hartford Life to provide a small amount of "in-dues life insurance" for full professionals in the Professional Golfers' Association of America. Those golf pros get some Hartford Life Insurance automatically. The death benefit is $14,000 for insureds under 35, $7,500 for insureds ages 34 to 49, and $5,000 for insureds ages 50 and older.

— Connect with ThinkAdvisor Life/Health on LinkedIn and Twitter.

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Related Stories

Resource Center