529 Dash Podcast 1: ABLE Market Data Update

By Paul Curley, CFA | paul.curley@strategic-i.com | February 12, 2019

On February 10, 2019, this short podcast on the ABLE industry was created live during a presentation and includes a market data update on the volume of assets and number of accounts as of 4Q 2018 with benchmark comparisons.

Listen to the Podcast Here:
1) SoundCloud: Link
2) Podbean: Link

Read the Transcript Here:
“Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this important initiative.

Strategic Insight collects market data on the ABLE industry on a quarterly basis, and we collected data on 44 out of 44 (active) plans as of the fourth quarter of 2018. We completed the data collection on February 1st, 2019.

As of the end of the year, there were 34,707 accounts investing approximately $171.7 million in assets.

What does this mean?
– On a quarterly basis, that this was a 19.2% asset growth and 16.8% account growth. This compared well to the S&P 500 decreasing 13.5% and, as another benchmark, 529 savings plan decreasing 6.9% in assets.
– On an annual basis, 138% asset growth which is great and basically 100% account growth over the course of a year, which obviously compares well to S&P 500 decreasing 4.4% and 529 savings plan assets decreasing 1.9%.

So this is where we are today, and this was the basis for the revised memo.

With that, back to you.”

See Photo of the Event Here:
Photo Source: NAST