Portfolio

SEI Investments has launched SEIBusinessBuilder.com to assist planners with marketing and client relationship issues.

In an effort to gain access to the education savings market, investment management companies are increasingly looking to partner with existing state-sponsored "529" college savings plans (See MFMN, 9/3/01). But standards don't yet exist for 529 partnerships, so the nature of the arrangements among these companies is different with each one.

For years, people have gathered in quiet, suburban living rooms to pick stocks and discuss matters impacting markets. They are known as investment clubs, and the communities of investors sometimes manage sound returns based on the notion that many heads are better than one.

BOSTON - Exchange-traded funds are approaching their capacity, and the development of new types of exchange-traded products is going to be necessary to sustain growth, according to industry executives who spoke here earlier this month at the Performance Institute's 2001 Summit: Beyond Mutual Funds (assets have grown at an enormous rate over the past few years. Total ETF assets were less than $10 billion in 1997, but have passed the $80 billion mark this year).

The Department of Labor last week endorsed a proposal in the House of Representatives that would allow 401(k) investors to receive advice from employer-sponsored financial planners, giving the initiative renewed momentum and prompting its proponents to assert that the House will pass it by year end.

The American Stock Exchange has created a new business unit to pursue new opportunities for exchange-traded funds and capitalize off of ETF product development, the company announced last week.

As fall approaches, Thomas Clough, the president of New York Life Benefit Services, is excitedly readying a team of marketers to walk into office buildings and talk to workers of all ages and all incomes about their 401(k) plans.

The mutual fund industry has historically showed its resilience to competitive products and predictions of its demise have always proven false. So it is not likely that several products that have gained recent attention from investors and the financial media will spell the end of the fund industry, said industry executives speaking at the Morningstar Investment Conference last week.

In the burgeoning business of socially responsible investing, companies sometimes employ the help of a board of advisors in choosing stocks. The boards are often made up of experts with commanding resumes. They include professors, politicians and philanthropists.

NEW YORK - With poor investment management, the mutual fund industry has opened the door for alternative products like Web folios, separately-managed accounts, and exchange-traded funds, according to John Bogle, the founder and former chairman of the Vanguard Group of Malvern, Pa. However, with a return to sound management based on the fundamental principles of investing, mutual funds should be able to fend off these challengers, he said. Bogle spoke here last week at a forum on use of the Internet in financial services sponsored by Forrester Research of Cambridge, Mass.