- CIT Solutions
-
A Superior Collective Investment Trust Onboarding Experience.
-
- Perspectives
- About
- Reach out
A Superior Collective Investment Trust Onboarding Experience.
A Superior Collective Investment Trust Onboarding Experience.
The Conversations Your Sponsor Clients Aren’t Having, But Should Be
Target date funds now hold more than $4 trillion and capture roughly two of every three new dollars flowing into 401(k) plans.1 Yet for many committees, the last meaningful TDF conversation happened years ago. The market has moved. Most sponsors haven’t.
That gap is your opening.
The TDF landscape is being reshaped by four major developments: personalization beyond birth year, lifetime income integration, blended active/passive strategies, and private markets access. Each one is changing what a prudent selection process requires and creating new opportunities for advisors who are prepared to lead the conversation.
Most sponsor committees haven’t connected these developments to their own plan yet. That’s why we created the Target Date Fund Innovation: Your Sponsor Conversation Guide.
The guide gives you data-grounded talking points for each of these four trends, written to work directly in a plan review or committee meeting. It’s designed to help you reframe TDF conversations from a routine fee check to a strategic discussion about participant outcomes and fiduciary responsibility. Each talking point leads with something true about the sponsor’s workforce or a documented participant need, anchors to the ERISA standard, and positions your role as evaluator rather than product advocate. Advisors who can navigate this landscape will find themselves in a very different kind of conversation with their clients.
Nearly all of these innovations are arriving through collective investment trusts. CITs surpassed mutual funds as the leading TDF vehicle in 2024 and now represent 53% of target date assets.2 As TDF strategies grow more sophisticated, incorporating customization, embedded income, and private market exposure, the CIT structure has been the enabling mechanism at scale. Understanding the CIT landscape has become inseparable from understanding the TDF landscape, and it’s the terrain Great Gray helps plans navigate every day.
The full context, including data, ERISA considerations, and a framework for evaluating each innovation category, is in our white paper: Download 2026 and Beyond: Innovation in Target Date Funds
Sources:
Great Gray Trust Company, LLC Collective Investment Funds (“Great Gray Funds”) are bank collective investment funds; they are not mutual funds. Great Gray Trust Company, LLC serves as the Trustee of the Great Gray Funds and maintains ultimate fiduciary authority over the management of, and investments made in, the Great Gray Funds. Great Gray Funds and their units are exempt from registration under the Investment Company Act of 1940 and the Securities Act of 1933, respectively.
Investments in the Great Gray Funds are not bank deposits or obligations of and are not insured or guaranteed by Great Gray Trust Company, LLC, any bank, the FDIC, the Federal Reserve, or any other governmental agency. The Great Gray Funds are commingled investment vehicles, and as such, the values of the underlying investments will rise and fall according to market activity; it is possible to lose money by investing in the Great Gray Funds.
Participation in Collective Investment Trust Funds is limited primarily to qualified retirement plans and certain state or local government plans and is not available to IRAs, health and welfare plans and, in certain cases, Keogh (H.R. 10) plans. Collective Investment Trust Funds may be suitable investments for plan fiduciaries seeking to construct a well-diversified retirement savings program. Investors should consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of any pooled investment fund carefully before investing. The Additional Fund Information and Principal Risk Definitions (PRD) contains this and other information about a Collective Investment Trust Fund and is available at www.greatgray.com/cit-fund-info/principal-risk-definitions/ or ask for a free copy by contacting Great Gray Trust Company, LLC at (866) 427-6885.
Great Gray® and Great Gray Trust Company are service marks used in connection with various fiduciary and non-fiduciary services offered by Great Gray Trust Company, LLC.