Products October 15, 2015

Retirement Industry Investment Products and Services

Process Unity unveils new integration with Salesforce, while BlackRock adds to its lineup of sustainable investing funds.
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ProcessUnity Announces ProcessUnity for Salesforce

ProcessUnity this week introduced ProcessUnity for Salesforce, an application that simplifies data exchange between ProcessUnity’s risk management suite and offer management solutions and Salesforce.

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Available on the Salesforce AppExchange, ProcessUnity for Salesforce allows organizations to make risk management and compliance data as well as key product and service information available to sales and client service teams in their familiar Salesforce interface.

“Organizations need to equip key stakeholders with relevant risk and offer management information,” explains Lisa Weil, vice president of industry solutions, “but switching between applications just increases complexity. With ProcessUnity for Salesforce, organizations can easily combine risk and product information with prospect and customer data to help account-facing teams achieve their sales and service targets.”

ProcessUnity says the new integration “eliminates the need for programming, allowing system administrators to quickly build bi-directional integrations using a simple field-mapping interface. Data synchronization can be scheduled or performed on an ad-hoc basis.”

For more information on ProcessUnity for Salesforce, visit www.processunity.com.

NEXT: BlackRock Launches Impact Equity Funds 

BlackRock Launches Impact Equity Funds

BlackRock has launched the BlackRock Impact U.S. Equity Fund, a mutual fund that aims to invest in measurable social and environmental outcomes while seeking to generate competitive financial returns. The fund will trade under the ticker BIRAX.

BlackRock says the fund strives to deliver transparent measurement and outcome reporting, allowing investors to better understand how their money is being put to work.

The fund arrives at a time when sustainable and impact investing strategies are attracting a significant amount of interest as well as assets from investors, BlackRock says, both on the individual and institutional sides of the investing markets.

The firm cites research from Global Sustainable Investment Alliance (GSIA), showing sustainable investment assets have expanded 61% between 2012 and 2014. “Within this, impact investing is the fastest growing segment, and the U.S. is the fastest growing area for impact investing, with 33% compound annual growth rate between 2012 and 2014,” BlackRock says. “GSIA defines impact investing as targeted investments aimed at solving social or environmental problems.”

With these trends in mind, the fund aims to deliver “a portfolio of equity securities of companies targeting competitive market returns and aggregate societal impact outcomes, as determined by BlackRock, relative to its benchmark.” The Fund is run by BlackRock’s Scientific Active Equity (SAE) team.

For more information, visit blackrockimpact.com.

NEXT: Schwab Reveals Money Market Fund Changes 

Money Market Fund Changes Announced by Schwab

Charles Schwab Investment Management announced planned changes to its money market fund line-up.

To address new SEC regulations, all Schwab Prime and Municipal Money Market Funds plan to qualify as retail money market funds by October 14, 2016. As such, these funds will continue to seek to maintain a constant net asset value (NAV) of $1.00 per share, and will be subject to potential liquidity fees and redemption gates in times of extreme market volatility.

Additionally, three Schwab Money Market Fund share classes have been renamed to reflect that these funds plan to qualify as retail money market funds by October 14, 2016. The Schwab Value Advantage Money Fund – Institutional Shares becomes the Schwab Value Advantage Money Fund – Premier Shares; Schwab Value Advantage Money Fund – Institutional Prime Shares becomes Schwab Value Advantage Money Fund – Ultra Shares; and Schwab Municipal Money Fund – Institutional Shares becomes Schwab Municipal Money Fund – Premier Shares.

Moving forward, Schwab’s Government Money Funds and the Schwab Money Market Portfolio will be officially designated as government money market funds under the SEC’s new definition of such funds on April 14, 2016, and as a result, they will continue to seek to maintain a constant NAV of $1.00 per share. These funds have no plans to adopt a policy to implement liquidity fees or redemption gates at this time.

The changes were announced in a prospectus filed today and in a letter to clients/shareholders posted on the company’s website.

Data & Research October 15, 2015

Where Affluent Millennial Investors Turn for Advice

The way investors treat their assets is changing, especially among Millennials.
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Investors are starting to shift in the ways they invest, with more turning to so-called robo-advisers, according to Cogent Reports.

Affluent Millennials are the demographic most likely to have an adviser relationship, Julia Johnston-Ketterer, senior director at Cogent Reports/Market Strategies International, said during a webinar on Thursday. When it came to the actual portion of assets they park with an adviser, however, “they have the lowest percentage of assets” compared with other demographics.

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“Millennials are dabblers,” Johnston-Ketterer observed, “with different products that they manage in different ways. They are most likely to be interested in products that grow wealth. It is a complex world with complex relationships.”

More than two-thirds (69%) use some kind of advice, a moderate increase from the previous year’s 66%, and Millennials, at 75%, have the largest percentage of advised investors of any generation. “This generation has intergenerational wealth invested professionally to manage the legacy assets,” Johnston-Ketterer explained.

Overwhelmingly, Millennials prefer a blend of active and passive management, Johnston-Ketterer pointed out, a trend the research firm will continue to track, along with risk-tolerance levels and where advised assets are kept.

Affluent investors, including Millennials, don’t always know and understand the term robo-advice, Johnston-Ketterer said. In its survey, Cogent defines the term as a financial services firm that provides advice based on a computerized model, instead of investors turning to a financial adviser or managing assets on their own.

Brand recognition is another key identifier Cogent is following, and noted that legacy brands—the top three are Vanguard, Fidelity and Schwab—clearly dominate investor choice. With nearly half of investors (49%) interested in “robo” services but unable to name a specific firm, Johnston-Ketterer said, “the market is up for grabs; the door is open.”

Other findings in the survey are:

  • The average net worth of affluent investors stands at just over $900,000;
  • Nearly one-third of affluent investors (31%) are completely self-directed, Cogent found, managing their assets with no professional assistance whatsoever;
  • Just 11% of affluent investors have their assets managed exclusively by an investment professional; and
  • Investors who have some advice relationship were just as anxious and uncertain after the financial downturn as those without a relationship.

More information about Cogent Report’s Investor Brandscape is on Cogent’s website. 

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