Margaret "Didi" Weinblatt, lead PM for two USAA funds with nearly $5 billion combined in AUM, is retiring effective July 16. [SEC filing]

Matt Freund, senior vice president of investment portfolio management at USAA, confirmed Weinblatt's plans to retire, and told MFWire that it was not unexpected.

"She has had thirty years of experience in investment management, and after such a long and distinguished career, you just have to wish her well," Freund said.

Weinblatt worked for Neuberger Berman and Countrywide Investments before coming to USAA in 2000, according to her biography on the USAA website.

Weinblatt currently PMs the USAA Income Fund, a Morningstar four-star-rated, $4.1 billion fund, and the three-star, $643 billion USAA Government Securities fund. Freund said that the USAA team will change neither of these funds' investment strategies following Weinblatt's departure.

The management of the USAA Income Fund will be assumed by the team that currently manages the USAA Intermediate Term Bond fund, led by Freund and current USAA vice president and PM Julianne Bass. Freund told MFWire that USAA's top brass decided on this arrangement because the income fund and the intermediate fund have underlying similarities in investment strategy.

Following Weinblatt's retirement, the USAA Government Securities Fund will be PMed by Donna Baggerly, currently a co-PM on the fund. For Baggerly, who has been with USAA since the mid-1990s, this will be a return to a familiar role. She PMed the GNMA Fund, the predecessor of the Government Securities Fund, from 1999 through 2002.

Asked about how Weinblatt plans to spend her retirement, Freund said he hadn't heard of any specific plans. But he noted that Weinblatt, who moved from New York to join USAA in San Antonio, appears to be staying put in Texas.

"She's become far more of a Texan than anybody ever expected," he said. 

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