Newsroom Announcing Target Date Plus from Capital Group/American Funds, Powered by Morningstar Investment Management LLC

Next Evolution Target Date Service Meets Individual Retirement Needs


LOS ANGELES/CHICAGO — April 4, 2022 — Capital Group, home of the American Funds, and the Workplace Solutions group within Morningstar Investment Management LLC, a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc., have announced a new target date service, Target Date Plus, with personalized allocation advice tailored to a retirement saver’s specific needs and objectives. The service, which employers can use as a qualified default investment alternative, blends the American Funds Target Date Retirement Series® with Morningstar Investment Management’s experience delivering online investment advice through its user interfaces and vast network of integrated recordkeepers.


“Capital Group is excited for our highly rated1 target date series to be leveraged to create a more personalized target date service for investors saving for retirement. Target Date Plus will enable retirement plans to deliver the personalized asset allocation that participants, plan sponsors and advisors are increasingly seeking, and importantly with administrative ease,” said Brendan Mahoney, Head of Institutional Retirement Strategic Growth, Capital Group. “With this service, we expect our target date series, which thoughtfully balances both building and preserving wealth, to expand its stewardship beyond the nearly eight million2 participants we serve today.”


Target Date Plus underscores Capital Group’s efforts to provide more flexibility in how it distributes its investment services and is a natural evolution of the firm’s target date series. The service offers additional personalization by incorporating an individual’s age, salary, assets, savings rate, and company match rate. Morningstar Investment Management analyzes this information and provides the investor with a customized asset allocation and investment portfolio. Morningstar Investment Management can also inform the individual if and when they may benefit from allocating part of their savings to a guaranteed income3 annuity.


“There is growing demand from retirement savers for investment strategies that better reflect their goals and aspirations. Using our strong network of data integrations with recordkeepers, user experiences, and advice engines, we can power a new generation of personalized advice services that we believe can position retirement savers for better outcomes,” said Brock Johnson, president of Global Retirement and Workplace Solutions at Morningstar Investment Management.


Through its data network and integrations, Morningstar Investment Management obtains the necessary data points from recordkeepers to furnish and build out a personalized asset allocation and fund-level portfolio for each investor. That network also enables the service to return the investment recommendation to the recordkeeper to process and implement. Morningstar Investment Management has designed a user interface for the service based on its learnings from serving 1.7 million managed accounts users to enable investors to interact with the service and modify the required data points. preferences.

About Morningstar Investment Management LLC's Workplace Solutions group


Our parent company, Morningstar, Inc., was founded on the simple idea that when people have good investment information, they can make better choices that help them achieve their financial goals. In the Workplace Solutions group at Morningstar Investment Management LLC, a subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. and a registered investment adviser, our advocacy for the individual investor extends to the workplace retirement market where the responsibility for investing and saving now rests with employees. Our products and services—which range from a managed accounts service to target-date products to custom models and fiduciary services—are not only designed to help people save for the retirement they want, but to help them make their money last once they get there.


About Morningstar, Inc.


Morningstar, Inc. is a leading provider of independent investment research in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. The Company offers an extensive line of products and services for individual investors, financial advisors, asset managers and owners, retirement plan providers and sponsors, and institutional investors in the debt and private capital markets. Morningstar provides data and research insights on a wide range of investment offerings, including managed investment products, publicly listed companies, private capital markets, debt securities, and real-time global market data. Morningstar also offers investment management services through its investment advisory subsidiaries, with approximately $265 billion in assets under advisement and management as of Dec. 31, 2021. The Company has operations in 29 countries. For more information, visit www.morningstar.com/company. Follow Morningstar on Twitter @MorningstarInc.

About Capital Group


Capital Group, home of American Funds, has been singularly focused on delivering superior results for long-term investors using high-conviction portfolios, rigorous research and individual accountability since 1931.


As of December 31, 2021, Capital Group manages more than $2.7 trillion in equity and fixed income assets for millions of individuals and institutional investors around the world. Capital Group manages equity assets through three investment groups. These groups make investment and proxy voting decisions independently. Fixed income investment professionals provide fixed income research and investment management across the Capital organization; however, for securities with equity characteristics, they act solely on behalf of one of the three equity investment groups.

For more information, visit capitalgroup.com

1 Source: Morningstar, Inc. as of January 25, 2022. Morningstar Analyst RatingTM of Gold is given to the low-cost share classes of the American Funds Target Date Retirement Series (F-2, F-3, R-5 and R-6).
2 Based on Capital Group’s internal analysis as of December 31, 2021.
3 Guarantees are based on the claims-paying ability of the issuing insurance company.

Investments are not FDIC-insured, nor are they deposits of or guaranteed by a bank or any other entity, so they may lose value.


Investors should carefully consider investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other important information is contained in the fund prospectuses and summary prospectuses which can be obtained from a financial professional, Capital or your relationship manager, and should be read carefully before investing.

Although the target date portfolios are managed for investors on a projected retirement date time frame, the allocation strategy does not guarantee that investors' retirement goals will be met. Investment professionals manage the portfolio, moving it from a more growth-oriented strategy to a more income-oriented focus as the target date gets closer. The target date is the year that corresponds roughly to the year in which an investor is assumed to retire and begin taking withdrawals. Investment professionals continue to manage each portfolio for approximately 30 years after it reaches its target date.


The Morningstar Analyst RatingTM is not a credit or risk rating. It is a subjective evaluation performed by Morningstar’s manager research group, which consists of various Morningstar, Inc. subsidiaries (“Manager Research Group”). In the United States, that subsidiary is Morningstar Research Services LLC, which is registered with and governed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The Manager Research Group evaluates funds based on five key pillars, which are process, performance, people, parent, and price. The Manager Research Group uses this five-pillar evaluation to determine how they believe funds are likely to perform relative to a benchmark over the long term on a risk adjusted basis. They consider quantitative and qualitative factors in their research. For actively managed strategies, people and process each receive a 45% weighting in their analysis, while parent receives a 10% weighting. For passive strategies, process receives an 80% weighting, while people and parent each receive a 10% weighting. For both active and passive strategies, performance has no explicit weight as it is incorporated into the analysis of people and process; price at the share-class level (where applicable) is directly subtracted from an expected gross alpha estimate derived from the analysis of the other pillars. The impact of the weighted pillar scores for people, process and parent on the final Analyst Rating is further modified by a measure of the dispersion of historical alphas among relevant peers. For certain peer groups where standard benchmarking is not applicable, primarily peer groups of funds using alternative investment strategies, the modification by alpha dispersion is not used.


The Analyst Rating scale is Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, and Negative. For active funds, a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze reflects the Manager Research Group’s expectation that an active fund will be able to deliver positive alpha net of fees relative to the standard benchmark index assigned to the Morningstar category. The level of the rating relates to the level of expected positive net alpha relative to Morningstar category peers for active funds. For passive funds, a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze reflects the Manager Research Group’s expectation that a fund will be able to deliver a higher alpha net of fees than the lesser of the relevant Morningstar category median or 0. The level of the rating relates to the level of expected net alpha relative to Morningstar category peers for passive funds. For certain peer groups where standard benchmarking is not applicable, primarily peer groups of funds using alternative investment strategies, a Morningstar Analyst Rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze reflects the Manager Research Group’s expectation that a fund will deliver a weighted pillar score above a predetermined threshold within its peer group. Analyst Ratings ultimately reflect the Manager Research Group’s overall assessment, are overseen by an Analyst Rating Committee, and are continuously monitored and reevaluated at least every 14 months.


For more detailed information about Morningstar’s Analyst Rating, including its methodology, please go to https://shareholders.morningstar.com/investor-relations/governance/Compliance--Disclosure/default.aspx.


The Morningstar Analyst Rating (i) should not be used as the sole basis in evaluating a fund, (ii) involves unknown risks and uncertainties which may cause the Manager Research Group’s expectations not to occur or to differ significantly from what they expected, and (iii) should not be considered an offer or solicitation to buy or sell the fund.


© 2022 Morningstar, Inc. All rights reserved. The information contained herein: (1) is proprietary to Morningstar and/or its content providers; (2) may not be copied or distributed; and (3) is not warranted to be accurate, complete or timely. Neither Morningstar nor its content providers are responsible for any damages or losses arising from this information. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.


All Capital Group trademarks referenced are registered trademarks owned by The Capital Group Companies, Inc. or an affiliated company. All other company and product names mentioned are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.


This content, developed by Capital Group, home of American Funds, should not be used as a primary basis for investment decisions and is not intended to serve as impartial investment or fiduciary advice.


Statements attributed to an individual represent the opinions of that individual as of the date published and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Capital Group or its affiliates. This information is intended to highlight issues and should not be considered advice, an endorsement or a recommendation.


Capital Client Group, Inc.