Voya Financial is broadening its advisor managed accounts (AMA) platform to allow registered investment advisors to allocate retirement-plan participants' savings to private equity, private credit, and private real estate. The New York-based retirement and benefits provider, which serves more than 18 million customer relationships, announced the expansion Tuesday, pushing alternative assets further into the 401(k) mainstream at a time when federal regulators are reconsidering fiduciary guidelines.
The enhanced capabilities build on the AMA platform Voya launched in 2021, which already enables independent RIAs to pair participant education with professionally managed, personalized portfolios inside employer-sponsored plans. In 2024, the firm opened up an expanded range of non-core investments, giving third-party RIAs the ability to offer options beyond a plan's menu of core investments.
With the latest update, advisors will initially gain access to Voya Investment Management's newly launched V-ALT collective investment trusts, along with two Blue Owl Capital vehicles: OWLCX, an alternative credit CIT, and ORENT, a real estate net lease CIT. Amy Vaillancourt, president of retirement at Voya, said the expanded lineup is designed to give plan sponsors a way to extend private market access without asking participants to navigate it alone. “Professionally managed solutions like advisor managed accounts can help participants navigate more complex investment options with greater confidence,” she said.
Private markets have traditionally been the domain of institutional investors and the wealthy, largely because of long lock-up periods, opaque valuations, and minimum investment sizes that put them out of reach for most defined-contribution plan participants. Voya said it has spent roughly a decade folding private assets into custom asset-allocation portfolios and is now extending that experience across the AMA platform, with plans to add managers and strategies through its existing governance process over time.
The expansion arrives three months after Voya publicly backed a Department of Labor proposal that would rewrite the fiduciary standard governing which investments plan sponsors may designate for participants. The proposal, floated by the Employee Benefits Security Administration in March, would outline how fiduciaries can “objectively, thoroughly, and analytically” evaluate factors such as performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, benchmarks, and complexity when selecting designated investment alternatives. Shortly after, Voya said it welcomed the department’s proposed framework, which is designed to avoid endorsing or excluding any specific asset class. Vaillancourt noted at the time that expanding investment choice “requires strong fiduciary governance, participant education and the involvement of financial professionals.”
Independent research offers some support for that model, at least for managed accounts without private asset exposure. A 2024 study from Morningstar tracked nearly 85,000 participants who opted into its Morningstar Retirement Manager service and found that 65% of participants who were behind on retirement savings increased their deferral rates after enrolling, with a median increase of two percentage points. The same study found that participants who had been building do-it-yourself portfolios saw the largest gains in portfolio efficiency once they moved into professionally managed allocations.
“The analysis conducted so far suggests that participants, on average, who enroll in managed accounts are likely to experience higher returns and save more for retirement, although the likely impact varies based on participant attributes,” the authors wrote. They also emphasized the potential impact of fees, which retirement plan participants would typically expect to pay as they opt into AMA programs. Assuming a fee of 40 basis points, the researchers projected a positive change in wealth for both DIY investors and those using asset-allocation funds, whether or not they were on track to hit their retirement goals. “However, should a participant deviate from the advice that managed accounts provides or unenroll from the service, then the value of managed accounts would be rendered moot,” the report said.
For advisors, the move underscores a broader trend: the integration of alternative assets into retirement plans, a space that has historically been dominated by liquid public securities. As the DOL considers easing restrictions, firms like Voya are positioning themselves to offer a wider array of options, potentially reshaping the 401(k) landscape. The expansion also highlights the growing role of CITs as a vehicle for delivering private-market exposure to retail investors, a shift that could have implications for plan sponsors and participants alike.
