Wall Street & Technology: Blog

Wealth Management Trend: Socially Conscious Investing

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:05:06 -0500

In the midst of this quarter's write-downs, layoffs and earnings disappointments, wealth management clearly remains a bright, profitable star on Wall Street -- in Merrill Lynch, for instance, wealth management was most strongly profitable unit this quarter and financial advisors have been promised they will be spared from the upcoming layoffs. In an interesting trend, more wealth management dollars are moving into socially aware investing. According to the Social Investment Forum, socially responsible investing assets in the U.S surged 18% from 2005 to 2007, outpacing broader managed assets. Although this research focused on institutional investors, retail investors are following the same pattern, at least according to Bill Crager, president of Envestnet. He should know; his firm's platform for financial advisors, which is used by 400 broker/dealers, beta tested a socially aware investment vehicle with a handful of small investment firms and attracted $300 million in six months.

Despite Simplicity, there IS a Place for Retirement Planning Calculators

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 11:19:45 -0500

During the weeks leading up to April 15th, firms often kick up their marketing efforts around IRAs and retirement planning. Thus, it is not surprising that in the past few months, we�ve noticed several firms introduce new tools directly retirement savings: a new Retirement Savings Quiz and Retirement Calculator from Bank of America, Charles Schwab�s new Retirement Savings Calculator and most recently, E*TRADE Financial�s new Retirement QuickPlan.

Mobile Apps Are Gaining Respect, Flexibility

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 11:36:48 -0500

Mobile applications and the people in charge of them are gaining more Street cred, according to Todd Christy, chief technology officer at Pyxis Mobile, a provider of wireless applications for the financial industry that counts Blackstone Group, Deutsche Asset Management and OppenheimerFunds among its customers. "Mobility is becoming a first class citizen in corporate America," he says. "We're seeing more chief wireless officers on Wall Street -- at least a half dozen firms have appointed someone to be a mobility leader." A high-profile case in point is Joseph Ferra, Fidelity's chief wireless officer, but several others have that responsibility if not the title itself, Christy says. This reflects an overall increase in demand for application access on the fly, he says.

The Principal Saves Costs By Printing on Demand

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 12:54:27 -0500

The Principal Financial Group, a provider of retirement and investment services, life and health insurance and banking with $311.1 billion in assets under management, has turned to print on demand software to streamline and reduce costs in generating and printing 401(k) statements and marketing collateral.

Short, Automated Prospectuses To Lower Printing and Postage Costs

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 14:50:52 -0500

Investor communication is in dire need of reform, said Forrester analyst Craig LeClair in a webcast this afternoon on the SEC's proposed short-form prospectus. Most prospectuses are "written by lawyers for other lawyers to digest," he said. "It's an arcane format, it's hard for investors to get what they need out of it." The prospectus for an variable annuity, for example, might be 1,000 pages long and it may not be clear to the investor which product he owns. "The value of the information put in that large book is diminished by its inclusion with non-relevant information," he said.

130/30 Fund Managers Face Stiff Competition, Many Need Infrastructure Upgrades

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 13:48:31 -0500

In the past few weeks, State Street, Legg Mason, TD Asset Management, Bear Stearns and other asset management firms have introduced new 130/30 funds; all told, about 140 of these funds exist today. But Colin Bugler, director of prime brokerage for RBC Capital Markets, says these asset managers will face intense competition and will need to ramp up their technology infrastructure, particularly those who are new to the business of shorting stock. (To short a stock is to borrow shares from a broker and sell them to another buyer, with the obligation to buy the shares back at some point in time and return them to the lender. It's a bet that a stock's value will drop, enabling you to buy it back at a cheaper price, while having already pocketed the profit from the original sale at the higher price.)

What is JPMorgan Doing in Luxembourg?

Thu, 13 Dec 2007 14:55:54 -0500

When we read this morning that JPMorgan is opening a hedge fund services office in Luxembourg, we thought, Luxembourg? Isn't that a postage-stamp sized country with a handful of people living in it? (Lacking confidence in our geographic knowledge, we checked wikipedia and found that indeed, Luxembourg is "a small landlocked country in western Europe, bordered by Belgium, France, and Germany. Luxembourg has a population of under half a million people in an area of approximately 2,586 square kilometres (999 sq mi.)" How can a place with less than a half-million people have so many hedge funds that it needs a new hedge fund administrator? We envisioned an exclusive playground for the super-rich being fawned upon by teams of specialized hedge funds.

Fully Equipped NYC Offices to Be Offered to Startup Hedge Funds

Tue, 27 Nov 2007 09:54:08 -0500

For startup hedge funds and existing hedge funds that would like to have an office in New York City, Eze Castle Integration announced today it's going to start offering "managed suites" at 529 Fifth Avenue and 44th Street (near Grand Central Station) early next year. The company will provide office space, computers loaded with basic office software, market data feeds, Blackberry services, a telecom infrastructure, conference rooms, a receptionist, a 24x7 help desk, a shared data center, disaster recovery via data replication to Eze Castle's Boston data center and even trial-level versions of software from Capital IQ, MarketStream and others.

Mutual Fund Shouts Out to Its Peeps in Generations X and Y

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:35:25 -0500

James C. Perkins is a chameleon. For video segments he's produced for YouTube, Perkins, the founder, CEO and portfolio manager of Thrasher Funds, dons white sunglasses and delivers news tidbits in a hip-hop-and-MTV-influenced staccato style. For an interview with an editor at a conservative trade magazine, he speaks soberly and articulately, using longer words, lengthy and grammatically correct sentences and quickly bringing up a past job as equity analyst at Morgan Stanley.

EzeCastle Follows Its Hedge Fund Clients Across the Pond

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:20:18 -0500

In a sign of the rapid globalization of hedge funds, EzeCastle Integration, a provider of outsourced IT services and consulting for more than 450 hedge funds, announced today that it has set up a London operation. "Many of our clients are looking for one provider who can provide consistent service, policies and procedures in all the territories they're located, so they can easily do business across geographies," says Bob Guilbert, managing director. "It's natural for companies that are international to want to consolidate their IT best practices under one roof."

NorthStar Helps Firms Pump Out Proposals to Wealthy Clients

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 17:01:40 -0500

Good but busy times lie ahead for the wealth management industry � it should grow 30% annually over the next few years according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report � and the increasing workload is driving wealth and asset managers to streamline their tasks. One time-consuming and difficult chore is preparing investment proposals, says Bob Skea, chief operating officer of Northstar. "The primary reason it's hard is that the work is manual � they're using PowerPoint, they have to find all the client's fundamental information, they have to collect risk profile data, they need to combine all that with an asset allocation modeling tool, which is often in a different system," he says. "Information about different products � fixed income, SMAs, mutual funds and so forth � all come from different sources." And once all the right information is gathered and a proposal is drafted, it may be noncompliant, because there's no record of how the proposal was generated and where the information came from.

New Online Investing Site Covestor Presents A Threat to Fund Managers

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 15:44:09 -0500

A new competitor called Covestor has quietly rolled onto Wall Street and is hoping to dine on the lunches of mutual fund and hedge fund managers. "We want to de-institutionalize money management and funds management," says Perry Blacher, director of marketing and co-founder of Covestor. "We're taking on the guys in the big corner offices with wood paneling who rely on people's laziness," he says.

SWIFT Still Struggling to Attract Fund Managers

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:03:50 -0500

Despite having almost half of its business come from the securities industry, SWIFT is still having a difficult time getting fund managers to join the network, SWIFT CEO Lazaro Campos told Wall Street & Technology in an exclusive interview at SWIFT's annual conference in Boston. In order to attract fund managers, Campos says SWIFT will focus on ease of use and a better fee structure.

Mobile: The Next Financial Services Frontier?

Thu, 31 May 2007 10:01:30 -0500

A senior wireless executive at a large Boston-based brokerage told me today -- and backed up his argument with some serious stats -- that mobile technology will be the next area that financial services firms try to dominate in order to capture and retain users.

Laserfiche Pushes Its Paperless Vision on Investment Advisors

Tue, 03 Apr 2007 11:52:37 -0500

Registered investment advisors, the 10,000 small firms that now manage over $1.7 trillion in assets, talk a lot about the paperless office at conferences and such, but apparently are slow to adopt it. �RIAs are small businesses where the owner ends up acting as CTO and making all the technology decisions,� says Timothy Welsh, president of Nexus Strategy, a technology consulting firm to RIAs. �Many use the Advent portfolio management system and a CRM program like Goldmine. Managing paper is one of their last technology frontiers -- only one in ten registered investment advisors has implemented document management software. What�s missing is not the desire to go paperless, because everyone wants to become more efficient, but the process for how to get there.�