State of Connecticut Retirement Plans & Trust Funds

BFM utilizes fixed-income strategies that are actively managed, model or index based. Actively managed fixed-income mandates generally employ an active investment style that emphasizes rotation among different types of debt on a relative value basis, specific security selection, quantitative analysis of each security and the portfolio as a whole and intensive credit analysis and review. They utilize a risk-controlled, systematic process for portfolio construction and alpha generation. Alpha sources may include security selection, duration and yield curve positioning, industry rotation, asset allocation, and currency positioning. BFM's equity platform includes a broad range of products that vary according to investment style (active, scientific and passive management), market-cap (small-, mid-, small/mid-, large- and all-cap), and geography (global, international and regional). The product range may also include sector funds, long-only and long-short portfolios, as well as products that combine different strategies to create balanced and asset allocation portfolios. For cash management portfolios, the investment process emphasizes safety and liquidity over yield. Their alternative mandates focus on sourcing and managing high-alpha investments with lower correlation to public markets and developing a holistic approach to address client needs in alternatives investing.

Bridgewater structures portfolios in a manner designed to produce consistent and uncorrelated returns. They believe that building portfolios based on risk allocations is more effective than using capital allocations; and those investors should consider their strategic asset allocation (beta) separate from tactical moves (alpha). The firm also believes investors can improve their portfolios’ overall results by separately creating a well-diversified beta portfolio that is balanced against environmental biases and calibrated to one's targeted returns, and a well-diversified alpha portfolio that reduces systematic biases (and also calibrated to one's targeted returns). Bridgewater applies this approach to investing across the portfolios it manages. The firm offers an active management strategy (Pure Alpha), a constrained active management strategy that invests in a subset of the markets in which Pure Alpha invests (Pure Alpha Major Markets), an asset allocation strategy (All Weather), and an investment strategy which applies its best understanding of how to combine All Weather with tailored active market views (Optimal Portfolio).

Voya IM applies their proprietary research and analytics, global resources, portfolio diagnostics and risk management to the development of investment products and solutions in pursuit of clients’ objectives. The firm seeks to bring technical and analytical expertise in developing rigorous and superior solutions for their clients and funds that are seeking more quantitative or model-driven solutions. The firm offers a variety of investment advisory and management services for equity, fixed income, balanced, private placements, and multi-asset class strategies. Their equity disciplines are organized as a series of discrete competencies managed by specialist teams and supported by centralized quantitative and sector-specific fundamental research. They employ a disciplined fixed income investment process with built-in macro-theme analysis that seeks to capture market changes and identify unrecognized value opportunities ahead of consensus. The Multi-Asset Strategies & Solutions (MASS) team of Voya IM manages multi-asset portfolios from target date retirement funds and total plan discretionary asset management programs, to complex portfolios designed to improve the correlation of assets to liabilities in a variety of strategies to match plan sponsors’ circumstances and constraints.