JPMorgan Smartretirement® Blend 2065 Fund Class I JSBSX

It’s in the process of losing two of its five managers, but the JPMorgan SmartRetirement Blend target-date series is still led by proven investors using a sound process.

Ove Fladberg became the head of the target-date team in early 2025. Though he joined this team in 2022, he’s a veteran of the firm’s target-risk group, as is comanager Anshul Mohan, who joined the series in 2023. Importantly, Dan Oldroyd, who took the reins of the team in mid-2020 when longtime lead manager Anne Lester retired, remains on board and leads the research agenda. Oldroyd has been a comanager nearly since the SmartRetirement mutual fund series' 2006 launch.

Two other portfolio managers have left or soon will: Siliva Trillo departed in August (her role, focused on the tactical-allocation process, had shrunk), though she remains at the firm, and Jeff Geller, who provided oversight but wasn’t involved on a day-to-day basis, is slated to retire in early 2026. That said, the three remaining managers are well-regarded and have long-tenured veteran colleagues to rely on for retirement research, tactical-allocation calls, and manager selection. The group includes chief retirement strategist Michael Conrath, who has been at the firm since 2011. The standout multi-asset solutions group numbers more than 100.

The team’s retirement research process uses a bevy of participant data from Chase Bank, as well as the Employee Benefit Research Institute, to help formulate its glide path. That led to the development of its SmartSpending program, woven into this series in 2021-22 to help investors fund discretionary spending throughout retirement. The program is geared for the investor to sell off shares annually. Since November 2024, each fund in the series has merged into the Income portfolio several years after the target date—but participants can still get targeted annual spend-down advice through the firm’s online tools.

Tactical-allocation calls were once a positive here, but they generally detracted value from 2018 through mid-2024. At times, the series has been too conservative, missing out on equity rallies such as the one in 2023. But it was also overweight stocks coming into 2022, when stocks declined. The team did add value in 2020's up-and-down market. But the team’s recent decisions to extend the time horizon of its calls and limit both the size and scope of its moves are prudent. Tactical calls have had a neutral impact since mid-2024.

This target-date series invests in a number of vehicles that track Morningstar indexes.

A disciplined, research-heavy approach to this series’ glide path and strategic asset allocation continues to earn a Process rating of Above Average.

The 2021-22 incorporation of SmartSpending into the glide path marked the most significant adjustment to this series since its 2006 inception, and while that element is now less of a focus, the team has a history of thoughtful, smaller changes. Such adjustments are rooted in the pioneering participant research the team has conducted. The team's partnerships with outside parties, such as Chase retail bank, have spurred insights into participant behavior, including its finding that retirees' spending is most volatile during the early years and tapers off later on. The target-date franchise adapted its postretirement allocations to account for this insight in 2021-22, aiming to fund investors' withdrawals until age 100. The portfolios now merge into the Income portfolio a few years after hitting their target dates, but investors can still get spend-down guidance through the firm’s online tools.

The team previously had a long history of making savvy tactical-allocation calls, but they generally detracted value from 2018 through mid-2024. At times, the series has missed out on equity rebounds by being too conservative, as in the first half of 2023. But it was also overweight stocks coming into 2022, which hurt in the early stages of the bear market. The team did add value in 2020’s up-and-down market, but it’s for the best that it has recently limited its tactical calls to broad asset classes and made smaller shifts. Indeed, the tactical piece’s impact has been roughly neutral since mid-2024.

This series' makeup stands out without being extreme. In 2021, manager Dan Oldroyd found that suppressed wage growth and increased spending rates had depressed retirement savings, which led him to boost strategic equity exposure by 3 percentage points to 94% of assets for young investors. The glide path’s landing point also rose by 7.5 percentage points to 40% in stocks, modestly flattening the glide path overall. The series trimmed equities by 2 percentage points in 2024 for investors in the portfolios dated 2035 or later because of findings that investors don’t need to take quite as much risk to reach their goals. But the series is still generally overweight equities compared with its typical peer from inception until 10 years before retirement by as much as 8 percentage points. However, at retirement, it is underweight stocks by 2 percentage points to reduce risk. Because the weighting then stays at 40%, the series is once again a bit heavier in equity by five years after retirement.

The team seeks to add additional value through careful manager selection and a tactical-allocation process. With close to USD 100 billion in assets, the target-date franchise isn't as nimble as it once was, which could limit the team’s ability to implement its tactical views. That said, the team has lately focused almost entirely on asset-class shifts, eschewing sector-based and regional tilts that can require more capacity.

The team uses roughly 16 underlying strategies in this series, including two emerging-market equity strategies and two high-yield bond portfolios, because the team wants to smooth returns in volatile areas. Most of this series’ holdings are passive, including an S&P 500 index tracker that comprises an average of 38% of assets.

While it will soon have two fewer managers than it did in mid-2025, the well-resourced team behind this series still earns an Above Average People rating.

Ove Fladberg became the head of the target-date team in early 2025. Though he joined this team in 2022, he’s a veteran of the firm’s target-risk group, as is comanager Anshul Mohan, who joined the series in 2023. Importantly, Dan Oldroyd, who took the reins of the team in mid-2020 when longtime lead manager Anne Lester retired, remains on board and leads the research agenda. Oldroyd has been a comanager roughly since the mutual fund series' 2006 launch.

Two other portfolio managers have left or soon will: Siliva Trillo and Jeff Geller. Trillo departed in August 2025 (her role, focused on the tactical-allocation process, had shrunk), though she remains at the firm. Geller, who provided oversight but wasn’t involved on a day-to-day basis, is slated to retire in early 2026. That said, the three remaining managers are well-regarded and have long-tenured veteran colleagues to rely on for retirement research, tactical-allocation calls, and manager selection, including chief retirement strategist Michael Conrath.

J.P. Morgan's standout multi-asset solutions group numbers more than 100. The team can choose from more than 100 strategies. Fairly strong funds fill the resulting lineup: As of October 2025, 11 of the 14 holdings earned higher-conviction Morningstar Medalist Ratings.

J.P. Morgan continues to build a track record of strong stewardship, supporting a Parent rating upgrade to High from Above Average.

With more than USD 4 trillion in assets under management (including USD 1.3 trillion in money market funds) and a broad reach, J.P. Morgan is among the largest active asset managers in the US, Europe, and Asia. Although some multi-asset offerings have struggled over the past five years, prompting new leadership to make changes to investment teams, its equity and fixed-income teams boast long-tenured portfolio managers who practice repeatable investment processes that have generally produced strong long-term results. Most of its funds are core building blocks with long lifetimes, though its lineup around the world also includes more-specialized options: Two options-based equity-income exchange-traded funds, launched in 2020 and 2022, are now among the firm’s largest. J.P. Morgan has been an early mover in offering active ETFs, having converted 12 of its open-end mutual funds to the structure and launching others. It isn’t always at the forefront of emerging trends. While it has filed registration statements with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an interval fund and an ETF investing in private markets, it hasn’t yet introduced such an option for all investors, whether on its own or in partnership with another asset manager, unlike some of its closest competitors.

To support the firm’s diverse investment offerings, J.P. Morgan has invested heavily in both portfolio management tools and its client organization. Over the past 10 years, the firm has developed robust proprietary technology with advanced analytics and broad buy-in from investment analysts, portfolio traders, and portfolio managers, all of whom have easy access to the platform. The firm also stands apart for its demonstrated commitment to clients. In the early 2000s, J.P. Morgan began pivoting its engagement with financial advisors to adopt a more consultative approach, supported by its sought-after Guide to the Markets research series that focuses on investor education, not product pitches. This perspective can help clients stay the course, supporting positive investor outcomes.

Incentives reinforce alignment with fundholders. Beginning more than 10 years ago, investment team compensation is tied to three-, five-, and 10-year performance, and portfolio managers must invest at least half of their deferred compensation in J.P. Morgan strategies. Many firms encourage portfolio managers to invest alongside fundholders, but J.P. Morgan goes a step further in requiring client-facing individuals to invest substantial portions of their incentive compensation in the funds.

Although some funds still face high cost hurdles, more than half of share classes charge competitive fees relative to peers.

This series’ overall record is pretty good.

Since this target-date series’ 2012 launch, six of the nine portfolios available then beat both their average Morningstar Category peer and category index on both total and risk-adjusted returns (the latter measured by Sharpe ratio) through October 2025. The portfolios edged out their average peers over the past 10 years and outperformed 75% of peers over the trailing five-year periods.

Returns were weaker from 2018-23, before rebounding, largely because the team's tactical-allocation calls detracted from performance. Tactical calls are difficult to get right consistently, and even the sharpest allocators suffer bouts of underperformance. J.P. Morgan's tactical signals did add value in the up-and-down market of 2020.

The series’ three-year returns surpass peers and category indexes, on average. In that period, tactical calls were again off but to a much smaller degree as the team made more modest shifts and largely limited the scope of those moves to stocks versus bonds decisions. And those missteps were outweighed by strong performance from the underlying holdings. One-year returns largely beat typical peers, but trailed benchmarks.

JPMorgan SmartRetirement® Blend 2065 I's Prospectus Adjusted Expense Ratio is 0.42% per year. It places it in the second-cheapest quintile of the Morningstar US Fund Target-Date 2065+ Category, where the median fee is 0.59% per year. This cost positioning translates into a Medalist Rating Price Score of 0.99, which reflects its relative price positioning within the category. The Price Score ranges from -2.50 (most expensive) to +2.50 (cheapest), with higher scores indicating better cost competitiveness.