Investment Product and Service Launches

Franklin Templeton Announces New All-Inclusive Fee Structure

Franklin Templeton has made eight municipal and taxable bond ladder separately managed account (SMA) strategies available at UBS Global Wealth Management, as part of a new “all-inclusive” fee structure.

The eight strategies will be available to UBS clients with no additional investment management fee and can be accessed through UBS Global Wealth Management’s SMA and unified managed account (UMA) programs that includes the ACCESS, Strategic Wealth Portfolio (SWP) and Advisor Allocation Program (AAP) platforms.

“Inclusion in the platform is a significant step in our SMA growth plan as we will be among the first asset managers to participate with fixed-income products on the platform,” says Brian Silverman, senior vice president, head of SMAs, Franklin Templeton. “We anticipate strong demand by UBS financial advisers and clients looking for low-cost, laddered solutions. Franklin Templeton‘s investment strength in both municipal and taxable fixed income, along with the UBS all-inclusive fee structure, is a compelling value proposition which should help attract clients to the offering.” 

The SMAs are managed by portfolio managers within Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, led by Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Sonal Desai, with $148 billion in assets under management. Franklin Templeton’s municipal bond team is led by Ben Barber, director of municipal bonds for Franklin Templeton Fixed Income overseeing $66 billion in municipal bond strategies, specifically.

SMArtX Adds Investment Strategies from Fidelity, Northern Trust and Vanguard  

SMArtX Advisory Solutions has expanded its roster of available investment strategies with the addition of Fidelity Institutional Asset Management, Northern Trust Investments and the Vanguard Group. Collectively, SMArtX is adding more than 60 investment strategies across a broad range of asset classes, available immediately.

SMArtX’s technology provides for automated trading functionality to reduce the performance dispersion between model portfolios and client accounts. SMArtX states that access to traditional, alternative and direct indexing strategies in a managed account structure can enable a full range of investment products and an array of third-party investment strategies all in one account.  

The firm also licenses its proprietary managed accounts technology to help firms replace legacy technology and power several investment platforms for registered investment advisers (RIAs), broker/dealers (B/Ds) and asset managers. More information about SMArtX Advisory Solutions can be found at www.smartxadvisory.com.