LDI Resilience, PRT Readiness & Governance Frameworks
Investment committee design, LDI resilience testing and portfolio governance architecture across pension, endowment and DB/DC platforms — including PRT Asset Readiness & Placement for DB plans nearing a pension risk transfer.
Corporate DB funding ratios are at multi-decade highs, and pension risk transfer activity is accelerating accordingly. That creates two distinct governance needs: resilience in how the plan's liability-driven investment strategy holds up under stress, and — for plans approaching a transaction — a clear-eyed plan for what happens to the assets a buyout leaves behind.
KeenanMatthews works across both: governance architecture for pension and DB/DC platforms broadly, and a dedicated PRT asset readiness practice for plans in active de-risking mode.
Governance & Advisory Scope
- Investment committee design — governance architecture built for pension, endowment and DB/DC oversight.
- LDI resilience testing — stress-testing liability-driven investment strategy against rate, credit and liquidity scenarios.
- Total portfolio governance architecture — full governance framework spanning asset allocation, manager oversight and reporting.
Preparing the Residual Portfolio for PRT
A pension risk transfer buyout typically transfers public fixed income assets in-kind to the insurer — leaving the residual plan portfolio suddenly overweight illiquid private assets, often by 7–15 points or more overnight. Left unaddressed, this overweight can persist for years, straining portfolio guidelines and complicating the CIO's glide path.
- Portfolio Readiness Assessment — quantify the expected illiquid overweight ahead of a transaction and prioritize positions by saleability.
- Divestment & Restructuring Strategy — structure the rebalancing path, including packaging holdings to the Asset-in-Kind (AIK) standard insurers will actually accept.
- Buyer Identification & Introduction — source counterparties across PE secondaries specialists and insurance general accounts.
Advising directly on this practice:
Former Global Head, Client Portfolio Advisory, PGIM · Strategic asset allocation across DB, DC, insurance, endowment and sovereign wealth funds · Decades of institutional client advisory at scale — including the asset-in-kind research his own prior work helped define.
Former Executive Director, Global Insurance Solutions, Morgan Stanley · Former Co-Head, Interest Rates Structuring EMEA — the mechanics of packaging assets to the AIK standard insurers will actually take.
Former CFO, GE Canada · Former Chair, GE Canada Pension Trust — personally led a $2B pension plan from underfunded to fully funded and de-risked, from the sponsor's own seat.
This work is typically triggered by a live catalyst, not a routine review — most often PRT structuring ahead of a buyout decision, but also asset unwinds where a residual book needs a clean divestment path, and M&A diligence where the transaction itself surfaces the asset question.
Pension CIOs & DB Plan Sponsors
Corporate DB plan CIOs and sponsors managing LDI strategy day-to-day, and those actively evaluating or approaching a pension risk transfer transaction who need an independent partner on the asset side of the decision — not just the liability side.