Investment Products and Services Launches

Hartford Funds has announced the listing of its fourth actively managed fixed income and 11th overall exchange-traded fund (ETF), Hartford Municipal Opportunities ETF.

Sub-advised by Wellington Management Company LLP (Wellington Management), this actively managed ETF is designed to provide financial advisers and their clients with an investing strategy that seeks tax-exempt income by investing in opportunities in investment grade and high-yield municipal bonds.

“Investors are very tax-aware and, as interest rates go up, advisers are seeking fixed income strategies with the potential for greater after-tax returns and income,” says Vernon Meyer, chief investment officer of Hartford Funds. “HMOP offers a diversified option for this challenge in a more tax-efficient ETF, while tapping into Wellington’s deep knowledge of managing municipal funds backed by credit research expertise.”

HMOP offers an actively managed municipal bond strategy that invests in investment grade and non-investment grade municipal securities across states, sectors, and different parts of the yield curve. The strategy seeks to deliver current income generally exempt from federal income taxes and long-term total return. HMOP has an expense ratio of 0.35%.

Wellington Management’s Brad W. Libby, managing director and fixed income portfolio manager/credit analyst, and Timothy D. Haney, CFA, senior managing director and fixed income portfolio manager, will serve as the portfolio managers of the Hartford Municipal Opportunities ETF.

Wilmington Trust Releases Margin Management Solution with AcadiaSoft Services


Wilmington Trust has recently engaged AcadiaSoft to launch a new “Margin Management” service for clients.

Wilmington Trust’s Margin Management is designed to assist clients in satisfying their margin and collateral obligations arising from derivatives, repurchase agreements, TBAs (forward mortgage-backed securities), and other bilateral agreements. Margin Management enables Wilmington Trust to support all aspects of the margin and collateral process with limited client involvement, as a fully outsourced solution.

“We approached AcadiaSoft because their suite of products provided an integrated solution for our new Margin Management service,” says Scott Linden, Wilmington Trust’s managing director for Collateral Management. “AcadiaSoft’s ProtoColl and MarginSphere services enable our team of custody administration specialists to manage the growing client demand for margin and collateral solutions.”

According to Wilmington Trust, the key benefits of Wilmington Trust’s Margin Management service are that it:

• Uses a trusted service provider and custodian to manage all aspects of the margin and collateral process;
• Greatly reduces the need for the client’s operational and technology resources in the collateral process; and
• Provides the client with volume insensitivity as their trading demands and/or market volatility increase.

Wilmington Trust’s Margin Management service will be available to its clients in early 2018. The Wilmington Trust appointment is part of AcadiaSoft’s wider success with ProtoColl and marks the eighth such appointment in the last 12 months.

AcadiaSoft acquired ProtoColl in November 2016 and has since integrated the end-to-end collateral and margin management service into the AcadiaSoft Hub. ProtoColl automatically calculates excess and deficient margin requirements for each active agreement, in addition to generating all necessary margin calls and associated notifications.