If you want to understand how the LDS Church thinks about money at an institutional level, Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators is one of the windows into that world. DMBA manages retirement benefits, insurance, and healthcare for church employees, plus investments for various church-affiliated entities. It's not the Reserve Fund (that's a separate, much larger entity), but it's a window into how Mormon money gets managed when values and returns have to coexist.

Let me walk through what DMBA is, how it operates, and what retail LDS investors can learn from it.

What DMBA Actually Is

Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators is a nonprofit corporation headquartered in Salt Lake City. It was established in 1970 to provide employee benefits administration for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its affiliates. Over the years, its scope has expanded to cover retirement benefits, medical insurance, life insurance, disability benefits, and related services.

The primary beneficiaries of DMBA services include:
- Church headquarters employees
- Employees of church-affiliated businesses and institutions
- Brigham Young University employees
- Employees of related educational institutions
- Various other church-affiliated workers

DMBA is not a bank, not a broker-dealer, and not a public investment manager. It's a benefits administrator. Its investment activities exist to fund the pension and benefits obligations of its participant groups.

Total assets under management by DMBA are not publicly disclosed in detail, but estimates based on its regulatory filings and industry reporting suggest it manages somewhere between $10-25 billion in pension and benefit assets as of 2026. This is substantial but dwarfed by other church-affiliated investment entities like Ensign Peak Advisors (which manages the famous $100 billion reserve fund).

How DMBA Invests

Because DMBA is a nonprofit administrator rather than a public company or regulated investment manager, it has limited disclosure requirements. Unlike public pension funds (CalPERS, NYSTRS) that publish detailed holdings, DMBA doesn't publish comprehensive portfolio information.

What we do know about DMBA's approach comes from:
- IRS Form 5500 filings for the ERISA-covered plans it administers
- Regulatory filings in states where it has insurance operations
- Occasional media coverage and interviews with DMBA executives
- The general investment philosophy articulated by LDS Church leadership

The publicly available information suggests DMBA follows a relatively conventional institutional investment approach. The asset allocation includes:

Public equities (US and international, both developed and emerging)
Fixed income (government, corporate, possibly some private credit)
Real estate (direct and through funds)
Private equity and alternatives
Cash and short-term instruments

This is broadly similar to the asset allocation you'd see at any corporate pension fund or university endowment. DMBA is not unusual in its overall structure.

Where DMBA differs, and where it becomes interesting from an LDS values investing perspective, is in how it applies screening criteria. The church has never published a formal ethical investment policy for DMBA, but reporting and interviews over the years have indicated that DMBA applies some form of values-based screening. Specifically, the fund is believed to avoid:

Tobacco companies
Alcohol producers and distributors (beer, wine, spirits)
Adult entertainment and pornography-related businesses
Gambling operators
Certain other "sin" categories

The exact thresholds and methodologies are not public. But the general principle is that DMBA applies LDS values to institutional investment management, which is what you'd expect from a church-affiliated benefits administrator.

What This Tells Us About LDS Institutional Investing

DMBA's approach offers several lessons for individual LDS investors.

Lesson 1: Values screening is compatible with diversified institutional management. DMBA manages billions of dollars in pension obligations and has to generate sufficient returns to fund long-term benefits. It does this while applying LDS values screens. The existence of DMBA as a functioning multi-billion dollar benefits administrator is proof that values-based screening doesn't prevent you from running a serious investment program.

Lesson 2: The screens are selective, not absolute. DMBA is not known to exclude broad swaths of the S&P 500. It applies targeted exclusions for specific categories (tobacco, alcohol, gambling, adult content) rather than wholesale exclusions. This reflects a practical approach: screen the obvious violations, include the rest of the market.

Lesson 3: Professional management matters. DMBA has professional investment staff and advisors. It's not a retail investor. The screening is integrated into a broader investment management process that considers risk, return, diversification, liquidity, and other factors. Individual LDS investors building their own portfolios face similar challenges on a smaller scale.

Lesson 4: Transparency is limited. Individual investors sometimes want detailed transparency into how their church-affiliated institutions invest. DMBA provides limited disclosure, which has drawn some criticism over the years. The church's position is that the information isn't required to be public and that providing detailed transparency would create practical and competitive problems.

DMBA vs Ensign Peak Advisors

It's worth distinguishing DMBA from Ensign Peak Advisors (EPA), which is the much larger LDS Church investment entity. EPA became famous in 2019 when a whistleblower complaint revealed that it managed approximately $100 billion in investment assets on behalf of the church. EPA's filings became public through a mix of SEC 13F disclosures, media investigation, and legal proceedings.

EPA is a separate entity with a separate purpose. It manages the church's long-term reserve funds and endowment-like assets, not employee benefits. Its portfolio is largely public equities held through passive index exposure and some active managers, with substantial holdings in many major US companies.

DMBA, in contrast, manages employee benefit obligations. The two entities are both church-affiliated but serve different functions. DMBA is more like a corporate pension administrator, EPA is more like a sovereign wealth fund.

For individual LDS investors, the existence of both entities is informative. The church runs professional institutional investment operations at multiple levels, applies values-based screening to some degree, and generates returns that fund church activities and employee benefits over decades.

What Retail Investors Should Take From This

If you're an LDS investor building your own portfolio, the institutional example provides some guidance.

Apply targeted screens. Don't try to reinvent the entire market. Screen out the clearly problematic categories (alcohol, tobacco, gambling, adult content, coffee, tea) and accept the rest of the investable universe. This is what DMBA appears to do, and it's a practical approach for individuals.

Use professional management where you can. If you can use a managed account or a faith-aligned investment advisor, that's generally better than trying to actively manage a screened portfolio yourself. Direct indexing platforms (Schwab Personalized Indexing, Fidelity similar products) let you apply screens to broad index exposure in an automated way.

Don't expect a pure LDS-only fund universe. There are relatively few LDS-specific investment products. The closest are generally Christian values funds (Inspire Funds, Timothy Plan) that share some but not all LDS screening criteria. For most LDS retail investors, the practical approach is to use mainstream products with custom screening rather than to seek LDS-specific funds.

Balance screening with diversification. The most important lesson from institutional investing is that diversification matters. Applying too many screens can concentrate your portfolio in ways that increase risk. Applying too few can leave you holding investments that conflict with your values. The balance point is usually: screen for the top 5-10 categories that matter most to you, accept the rest.

Beneficial Financial Group

Related to DMBA is Beneficial Financial Group, an LDS-affiliated insurance company that has been around since 1905. Beneficial offers life insurance, annuities, and related products primarily to LDS members. It's a smaller operation than DMBA and is mostly relevant for individual members shopping for insurance rather than for stock investors.

Beneficial's investment approach is similar to other insurance companies: a mix of fixed income and some equity, managed to cover policy obligations. The LDS affiliation mostly shows up in community marketing rather than in any unique investment methodology.

For LDS investors, Beneficial is a choice when shopping for life insurance, not an investment vehicle for public equity exposure.

Deseret First Credit Union and Other LDS-Affiliated Finance

Rounding out the picture, there are a few other LDS-affiliated financial institutions worth mentioning:

Deseret First Credit Union: Credit union serving LDS members and others. Traditional retail banking services. Not an investment entity.

Deseret Mutual: Sometimes confused with DMBA; this is the parent or related entity involved in the broader Deseret family of church-affiliated businesses.

Zions Bank: Now Zions Bancorporation (ZION), publicly traded. Historically associated with the LDS Church through its founders, but has been a fully independent public company for decades. Not currently church-controlled.

Deseret News, Deseret Book, KSL: Church-owned media and publishing. Not investment-related, but worth mentioning as part of the broader Deseret corporate umbrella.

For individual investors, these entities mostly don't affect portfolio construction. Zions Bancorp is the only publicly traded name in the list, and it's evaluated like any other regional bank stock under LDS screens (permitted under the mainstream corporate-veil logic).

Bottom Line

Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators is a useful example of how LDS institutional investing works in practice. It applies values-based screening within a conventional institutional management framework. It runs a multi-billion dollar operation that funds employee benefits while respecting LDS teachings about ethical investment categories.

For individual investors, the main takeaways are:
1. Values screening is practical and doesn't prevent serious investment management
2. Target specific categories rather than trying to screen the whole universe
3. Use professional tools (direct indexing, managed accounts) when possible
4. Balance values with diversification and return requirements

The church's institutional investment operations aren't a secret conspiracy or a perfect model; they're ordinary institutional management with some values-based exclusions overlaid on conventional approaches. That's essentially the template individual LDS investors should follow in their own portfolios: be normal, be thoughtful, screen what matters, diversify the rest.

Deseret Mutual Benefit Administrators: How Mormon Money Is Managed