In the plight to stay funded, US pensions hone in on liability driven investing, and T. Rowe Price beefs up their fixed income platform.

Baltimore-based investment management giant, T. Rowe Price, with north of $521 billion in assets under management, expands their fixed income solutions platform, currently at $130 billion assets, dedicated to liability driven investing (LDI) solutions capabilities for U.S. pensions. Peter Austin will head the group, with this initial focus on enhancing the firm’s liability-driven investment (LDI) solutions capabilities for U.S. pension funds.

“The establishment of the fixed income solutions group is part of our evolution to continually enhance our ability to meet clients’ long term investment needs,” said T. Rowe vice chairman Edward Bernard, citing that “demand for customized solutions among institutional investors continues to grow.”

Austin joins T. Rowe Price from BNY Mellon Asset Management, where he was head of BNY Mellon pension services and responsible for delivering asset management and advisory services to institutional clients. Austin also co-founded Vinings Mellon LLC, a nonqualified benefit plans and taxable institutional assets manager.

Among pensions, LDI has become the forefront of risk management, a necessary component of healthy funded ratios. For the newly created group, T. Rowe will focus on LDI and also, customized solutions that will utilize the firm’s “quantitative research, credit research, fixed income portfolio management, and asset allocation teams,” according to Mike Gitlin, director of T. Rowe Price’s fixed income division.

“While the trend toward LDI is a powerful driver behind the desire for customized solutions, our fixed income solutions effort is broader than LDI,” said Gitlin.