Hot Off the Presses

Plan Sponsor & Participant Tools

A Wachovia Retirement Services video allows participants in Wachovia-administered plans to learn about the key behaviors that drive retirement savings success.

Principal released My Principal Edge Milestones, an interactive online tool that demonstrates to employees how to best utilize their employer-sponsored benefit package by analyzing financial needs and giving employees a road map to help meet their goals.

ING released 403(b) documents for 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations designed to help nonprofit sponsors meet Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requirements that 403(b) plans have a formal document in place by January 1. Through using an ING 403(b) plan document, sponsors will get automatic updates of future regulatory changes.

Lincoln National Corp. unveiled a suite of services designed to help 403(b) sponsors comply with IRS regulations. Lincoln’s 403(b)e SURE offering also is aimed at helping sponsors simplify their plan administration. The service includes access to representatives specializing in disciplines such as law, compliance, and account management.

MassMutual’s Retirement Services Division unveiled ExpressEnroll, a Web site feature giving participants easy sign-up for their 401(k) plan. The tool, accessible from MassMutual’s participant Web site, provides preset contribution rates and asset allocations that employees can modify later.

Newkirk now includes an investment change notice to its participant communications offering. The change notice allows users to identify investments that are being added to, or removed from, a plan’s investment offerings and to identify funds that have been “frozen’ and are no longer accepting participant contributions. Users also can specify the date and time when each change will go into effect.

Paychex, Inc., added auto-enrollment as an optional plan feature for its 401(k) offering. Paychex manages the enrollment process by notifying the plan sponsor when newly hired employees become eligible to participate and auto-enrolling employees.

Adviser Tools

The newly renamed PortfolioServices by Schwab Performance Technologies (SPT) enables independent advisers to outsource back-office functions. Advisers can run the software in-house with support from Schwab or outsource a component of their back office, Schwab said.

First Tennessee Bank, a subsidiary of First Horizon National Corporation, in partnership with FundQuest Incorporated, a provider of managed account services, launched three new products on its managed account platform. The Horizon Account platform now offers index-enhanced mutual fund portfolios, unified managed accounts (UMAs), and exchange-traded funds (ETFs).

Union Bank of California’s brokerage subsidiary, UnionBanc Investment Services, introduced an assessment tool, Retirement Income Evaluation. Combined with a personal consultation with a financial adviser, the evaluation provides individuals with an overview of their retirement readiness and includes scenarios that show how their savings might fare in different market conditions.

Advisor Products Inc. launched a Web site to manage communications between financial advisers and their clients. API’s Personal Client Portal platform gives clients a place on the Web to manage their financial affairs.

Business Logic Corporation launched a tool to calculate retirement income from target-date funds. YourOutcome.com provides projections based on the target-date fund methodology of reducing risk as an investor gets closer to retirement.

State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) launched SPDR University, a Web site offering proprietary research and educational materials about exchange-traded products (ETPs), markets, portfolio strategies, and practice management for financial intermediaries. The site (www.spdru.com) provides financial advisers, registered investment advisers (RIAs), and wealth managers with the opportunity to earn continuing education (CE) credits to meet requirements for both Certified Financial Planner (CFP) and Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA) accreditation.

Pershing LLC added 10 solution providers to its ValueAlliance program for broker/dealers and RIAs. Through this addition, Pershing, a subsidiary of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation, extended its practice management tools, which include business consulting, practice management, marketing, compliance, and technology solutions.

Broker/dealer United Planners Financial Services of America launched a managed account platform available to their investment adviser qualified representatives. The platform employs FundQuest’s technology, back-office services, and investment research team. The platform includes eight products: four mutual fund portfolios, FundQuest’s new ActivePassive Portfolios, separate accounts, unified managed accounts, and an Adviser Choice product that includes fee-based variable annuity and universal life options.

Schwab Institutional announced enhancements to its package for start-up RIAs. The Schwab Business Start-up Solutions package includes back-office support, marketing tools, and start-up financing for the growing number of advisers leaving established firms to become RIAs.

SunGard released a new version of the StreamCore Compliance Dashboard, a vendor-neutral compliance application to help broker/dealers meet transparency and supervision requirements during clearing and settling. The system aggregates information from multiple transaction processing systems and presents centralized workflows and views of information in real time. It also includes an audit trail showing that the firm has supervised its outsourcing provider properly.

Nationwide formally launched the Nationwide Income Planning Desk to serve as a consultant for advisers on income solutions for their clients. Consultants staffing the desk can: provide strategies to address the financial challenges and risks clients face in retirement; offer case design assistance and customized illustrations; and serve as a consultant for advisers during client point-of-sale meetings.

Pershing affiliate iNautix released a document management solution to aid the paperless offices of introducing broker/dealers, investment professionals, and RIAs.

Claymore Securities Inc. introduced The Index Allocator, a Web-based tool designed to assist investors and their financial advisers in evaluating and comparing asset allocation strategies. The tool enables investors to create custom hypothetical allocations using a variety of broad market, equity, and fixed-income indexes as well as narrow indexes focused on specific industries or niche markets.

Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services and National Financial launched HybridOne to meet the needs of firms and advisers that conduct both commission- and fee-based business. The system will give broker/dealers, RIA firms, and individual brokers and advisers in the hybrid space access to the investment products, technology, and practice management support and service to manage their clients’ commission- and fee-based accounts.

Investment Benchmarking

Standard & Poor’s launched the S&P Asia Property 40 Index, which will provide liquid exposure to the leading publicly listed companies in the Asian property and real estate markets. The index is composed of the 40 leading listed Asian property companies that meet size, liquidity, and local listing requirements, with no single market having more than 15 stocks in the index or representing more than 40% of the index.

Standard & Poor’s launched two indexes aimed at providing investors with benchmark and investable exposure to the commodities and natural resources sectors. The S&P Global Natural Resources Index is designed to provide diversified, highly liquid, and investable exposure across the primary commodity sectors of energy, agribusiness, and metals and mining. The index offers focused coverage of the 60 largest companies across these six clusters, and is designed primarily for structured product providers and ETPs.

FTSE Group, a global index company, launched the FTSE Environmental Opportunities All-Share Index. The index is made up of more than 450 constituents covering alternative energy, water, and waste management companies.

Mutual Funds

Charles Schwab introduced the Schwab Indexed Retirement Trust Funds to the Charles Schwab Trust Company offering of target-date collective trust funds for retirement plans. The funds are tied to target retirement dates in five-year increments from 2010 to 2050.

Charles Schwab Investment Management, Inc., further expanded its relationship with Mondrian Investment Partners Limited to offer two new funds to the Laudus Mondrian lineup. The Laudus Mondrian International Equity Fund (ticker: LIEQX) will invest primarily in large-capitalization equity securities of developed international companies. The Laudus Mondrian Global Equity Fund (ticker: LGEQX) will invest primarily in securities of both U.S. and non-U.S. issuers.

Federated Investors, Inc., launched the Federated International Strategic Value Fund, which seeks to invest in the securities of undervalued companies that pay above-average dividends to meet investor needs for income and long-term capital appreciation.

Fidelity Investments launched a new international equity fund—Fidelity Emerging Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) Fund—with retail and adviser share classes. Fidelity EMEA Fund seeks capital appreciation and normally invests at least 80% of its assets in securities of emerging Europe, Middle East, and Africa issuers and other investments that are tied economically to the EMEA region. The fund compares its performance with the MSCI Emerging Markets Europe, Middle East, and Africa (MSCI EMEA) Index.

Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) launched the Absolute Return Tracker (ART) Fund. The fund (ticker: GARTX) seeks to achieve results that approximate the return of the Goldman Sachs ART Index, which reflects the returns of a basket of long and short investable market factors determined by an algorithm to track patterns of returns of hedge funds as a broad asset class. GSAM created the mutual fund to give U.S. individual investors access to the returns of the index.

A new relationship between Lincoln Financial Group and State Street Global Advisors (SSgA) will include the management of eight investment portfolios available as subaccounts within Lincoln’s variable annuity, variable life insurance, COLI, 403(b), and 401(k) products. The investment strategies include four rules-based portfolios and four capital-weighted index portfolios.

Janus Capital Group Inc. launched the Janus Adviser International Forty Fund (ticker: JFFAX), a concentrated portfolio that seeks long-term growth of capital by investing directly in 30 to 50 companies across developed and emerging markets. The fund’s benchmark is the Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) All Country World ex-U.S. Index.

ETFs

WisdomTree Investments, Inc., and The Dreyfus Corporation, one of BNY Mellon’s investment boutiques, have collaborated to launch several ETFs with foreign currency exposure, with WisdomTree as the fund sponsor. Mellon Capital Management, also an investment boutique within BNY Mellon, is acting as the subadviser for the currency ETFs, while BNY Mellon will provide the fund accounting, fund administration, global custody, and transfer agency services.

Invesco PowerShares Capital Management LLC listed three new ETFs on the NASDAQ Stock Market: the PowerShares NASDAQ-100 BuyWrite Portfolio (ticker: PQBW), PowerShares NASDAQ Internet Portfolio (ticker: PNQI), and PowerShares MENA Frontier Countries Portfolio (ticker: PMNA).

ProShares rolled out two ETFs for investors who want short exposure to the oil and financial sectors: Short Oil & Gas ProShares (ticker: DDG) and Short Financials ProShares (ticker: SEF).

First Trust Advisors L.P. unveiled the First Trust ISE Global Wind Energy Index Fund. The new ETF will seek investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield (before the fund’s fees and expenses) of the ISE Global Wind Energy Index.

Northern Trust launched an ETF to track the ISEQ 20 Index of the Irish Stock Exchange. NETS ISEQ 20 Index Fund (ticker: IQE), will be traded on the NYSE Arca and will enable American investors to invest in an ETF tracking the 20 Irish securities comprising the index.

The Dow Jones Luxury Index and the Dow Jones STOXX 600 Index were licensed to BNP Paribas to serve as the basis for two exchange-traded funds. Both the EasyETF DJ Luxury and EasyETF STOXX 600 are available at Euronext.