Portfolio

Finances and health insurance are on the minds of Baby Boomers, as 36% of them say they think about their retirement savings nearly every day, according to a recent survey by Pulte Homes.

CollegeChoice 529 Investment Plan, an affiliate of Bank One Corp., has expanded its college savings portfolio to include five new funds and a dollar-cost averaging feature. The plan now includes the Fidelity Advisor Inflation-Protected Bond Fund, the Franklin Mutual Advisors Mutual Shares Fund, the MFS Massachusetts Investors Growth Stock Fund, the Low-Price Stock Fund and the Templeton Foreign Fund. Its seven existing portfolios are invested in One Group mutual funds.

The Cleveland Foundation, the nation's second-largest charitable foundation with $1.5 billion under management, didn't waste any time joining the three-month-old Merrill Lynch Community Charitable Fund.

Trying to create a new niche in the 529 market and garner some of the assets of the hundreds of thousands of charitable organizations around the world, Seligman Advisors has come out with a 529 college savings scholarship account.

SEI Investments has rolled out Product Analysis, a mutual fund diagnostic tool that can help fund companies and their sales partners find new ways to market their funds by using statistical information and benchmarking tools from numerous data sources. This should prove particularly helpful to mutual fund wholesalers, who have had to build more of a relationship and offer in-depth consulting to their clients, according to SEI.

Brinker Capital has launched a series of principal-protected notes that are fixed income vehicles with market participation through an equity index. The first issue of notes will probably have a participation rate between 75% and 85%. As a fixed income vehicle, the fees associated with the product range between 75 and 90 basis points, as opposed to the 115 to 145 basis point range for equity products. The first offering, which has not yet opened, will close sometime in June, and subsequent notes will be offered periodically, probably every 30 to 60 days.

The Stanton Group and LOMA have teamed up to conduct a new survey that tracks compensation of portfolio managers according to fund performance and size. Results are expected to be published in September and are intended to help fund companies pay portfolio managers on a more consistent basis.

When it was adopted by Congress, "catch-up" seemed like a surefire attraction for older workers.

Fear and loathing of lost wages and dramatically depressed stock prices have young investors losing sight of their retirement goals.

Fidelity Investments has appointed William C. Carey president of Fidelity Institutional Retirement Services Co., the nation's largest 401(k) plan provider.