For over 20 years, Ryan Labs has provided customized fixed income solutions and market enhanced strategies.

PHILOSOPHY

Ryan Labs offers actively managed investment grade fixed income separate accounts to institutional investors. Our strategies incorporate Liability Driven Investing (LDI) strategies and enhanced market strategies versus traditional fixed income benchmarks. Our investment philosophy is to neutralize interest rate risk and add value through sector rotation and issue selection. We apply our disciplined investment process versus market indexes or LDI strategies versus custom liability indexes.

The fundamental concept of Ryan Labs investment philosophy is to strive to meet client objectives with the least amount of total risk and total costs. The firm believes that these objectives are best achieved through the use of structured portfolios with active issue selection and passive interest rate prediction strategy. Ryan Labs does not take active interest rate positions. Ryan Labs believes that interest rates are difficult (if not impossible) to predict, therefore, need to be neutralized.

The initial step in Ryan Labs process involves the selection of the benchmark that is considered the most appropriate for the client. The selected benchmark determines the term structure of the portfolio and also serves as a performance measurement yardstick. At this early phase, Ryan Labs performs an asset/liability diagnostics to facilitate the client's decision process.

Clients have the flexibility to choose either an LDI strategy versus a custom liability benchmark or a market benchmark (i.e., Barclay's Aggregate, Barclay's G/C, etc.). Custom liability indexes are created in an attempt to replicate clients' liability characteristics or funding requirements. To create a customized benchmark, Ryan Labs typically uses either a PPA, FAS 158, Treasury, or a blended yield curve to map the projected future value of cash flows. Ryan Labs has the ability to map the projected future cash flow using any yield curve that is appropriate.

The benefit of our approach is the potential for lower risk and higher return. Lower risk is achieved through maintaining the same duration with the same or higher credit quality. Higher return is achieved through out-yielding the index, choosing better sectors and bonds, and capturing the positive roll of the yield curve.