LDI stands for Liability-Driven Investment. It is an investment strategy that focuses on matching the current and future liabilities of an investor, be it an individual or an institution, with the cash flows generated by the investment portfolio. The goal of LDI is to ensure that the investor has the income-generating assets needed to satisfy its financial obligations, such as payouts to plan participants and customers making claims. LDI is designed for situations where future liabilities can be predicted with some degree of accuracy, such as the stream of withdrawals from a retirement portfolio that a retiree will make to pay living expenses from the date of retirement to the date of death. LDI differs from a benchmark-driven strategy, which is based on achieving better returns than an external index such as the S&P 500 or a combination of indices that invest in the same types of asset classes. LDI is a popular product sold by asset managers such as BlackRock, Legal & General, and Schroders to pension funds, using derivatives to help them "match" assets and liabilities so there is no risk of shortfall in money to pay pensioners.