Investment Product and Service Launches

Art by Jackson Epstein

Russell Investments Releases Personalized Managed Accounts

Russell Investments has launched its personalized managed accounts (PMA), which can be customized with the goal of helping advisers and their clients improve tax efficiency and maximize after-tax wealth.

The firm’s new PMA solution features six tax-managed separately managed accounts (SMA) that leverage technology to help achieve growth and optimal after-tax outcomes. These solutions include three actively managed equity SMAs, two direct-indexed SMAs and a core equity SMA, which combines both active and lower-cost direct indexing.

“We’ve been helping investors maximize after-tax wealth for more than 30 years and with PMA we’re taking tax management to the next level of customization,” says Brad Jung, head of North America adviser and intermediary solutions at Russell Investments. “By leveraging the award-winning VestmarkONE technology platform, our tax-managed overlay service powerfully combines our complete range of investment capabilities for year-round tax-smart management aimed at maximizing an investor’s after-tax outcome.”

The tax-managed PMA solutions feature a team of portfolio managers, quantitative research analysts and service teams, including some newly hired investment professionals; centralized trading and implementation; as well as automated year-round tax management capabilities, including tax-loss harvesting, wash sale minimization, tax-smart turnover and holding-period management.

“Our PMA engine serves wealth management firms and their advisers with the institutional-caliber solutions that have made Russell Investments a global leader in outsourced investment management,” Jung adds. “We targeted tax management for our PMA launch in part because research indicates the tax drag on a typical U.S. equity mutual fund and ETF [exchange-traded fund] was big enough to impair any investor’s ability to generate the after-tax wealth they desire.”

The six PMA solutions are the tax-managed core equity SMA; tax-managed large cap SMA; tax-managed small/mid cap SMA; tax-managed international SMA; tax-managed (direct-indexed) DI large cap SMA; and the tax-managed DI all cap SMA.

Russell Investments announced in August that the firm had partnered with Vestmark to leverage its technological expertise. This collaboration extends to Russell Investments’ transition management program to help advisers transition portfolios in a tax-efficient manner while tracking their underlying investment strategies.

Broadridge and Third Economy Launch ESG Advisory Service

To better help companies and investors enhance their environmental, social and governance (ESG) programs, Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. and Third Economy have launched an ESG advisory service.

The new service is said to help corporate issuers and asset managers improve sustainability strategies while effectively positioning their ESG programs with stakeholders.

“Companies are making corporate responsibility initiatives part of their business strategy as more retail and institutional investors raise ESG concerns and seek the long-term performance advantages and benefits of ESG-focused businesses,” says Dorothy Flynn, president of corporate issuer solutions at Broadridge. “Investors and other stakeholders are increasingly looking at ESG disclosures as a fundamental expectation, driving the need for additional connectivity between companies, investors and other stakeholders.”

Broadridge and Third Economy hope the new ESG advisory service will enable clients to move from strategy through execution to communication by: benchmarking ESG efforts to peers and industry best practices to identify areas for improvement; aligning ESG capabilities with frameworks and standards such as the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB), Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD); creating a road map for companies’ ESG journeys, including policy and program development, metrics for measuring performance over time, and ESG goals and corresponding goal results disclosures; enhancing an ESG program through all aspects of shareholder communications, including ESG and sustainability reports, proxy statements, and annual reports, and delivering them on the channels that investors and other stakeholders prefer and expect; calculating carbon footprints and setting long-term environmental impact reduction goals; and helping asset managers align corporate ESG strategies with product development.

SimCorp Partners with Colmore on New Data Service

SimCorp has announced a new partnership with Colmore to deliver data services for private markets asset management.

The complete service is now available within SimCorp’s Alternative Investments Manager offer, empowering the buy side with consolidated private and public markets asset workflows and data management, in one core multi-asset class investment management platform. The partnership integrates Colmore’s INSIGHT (data management) and FAIR (fee) services within SimCorp’s Alternatives Investments Manager offer.

Delivered in real-time, the service provides investors with portfolio monitoring and analytics to inform on exactly where their positions and holdings are. Colmore’s integrated data management service for private markets adds further value to SimCorp clients already using SimCorp DataCare and delivers the buy-side market a complete public and private markets data management service. 

SimCorp will also integrate Colmore’s FAIR service, which tackles the complexity of tracking private equity management and incentive fees, with a systematic validation service.

“We’re pleased to introduce Colmore as an innovative and reliable partner in our fast-growing open ecosystem. Colmore’s vision for delivering a complete service aligns with our own consolidated front-to-back approach and reinforces the partnership further,” says Hugues Chabanis, vice president, innovation, at SimCorp. “When we launched the Alternatives Investments Manager offer three years ago, our vision has always been that multi-asset portfolios, including private markets assets, should be consolidated into a core front-to-back investment management platform and not run in siloes. We are confident that Colmore’s private markets services will complement the capabilities of our Alternatives Investments Manager, market-leading IBOR (Investment Book of Record) and DataCare offer, providing SimCorp clients a consolidated offering that ultimately meets their private market needs and delivers on their overall business outcomes.”