Money Management Executive Latest News

The Hartford Financial Services Group has reopened its Hartford Focus fund to new investors, the firm announced yesterday. Following its initial launch, the fund has been closed since May 24 after raising $124 million in 18 days.

Mutual of America Capital Management Corp. has dropped Fred Alger Management as a sub-advisor to its All America Institutional fund, according to a document filed yesterday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Citing an unexpected number of small, dormant accounts among its investors, TIAA-CREF announced today that it will substantially increase the minimum investments consumers put forward when they open regular mutual fund accounts.

Steve Prostano, formerly the president and COO of Chase Asset Management and Hambrecht & Quist Funds Management, has joined FleetBoston Financial as a managing director of its private clients group.

AMIDEX Mutual Funds, a small investment manager in New York, announced the launch of AMIDEX Cancer Innovations & Healthcare Mutual Fund, the first mutual fund that is "targeted at cancer."

The selection of a service provider for a 401(k) plan is a daunting task. There are about 5,700 companies that offer some level of 401(k) plan services. Of these, about 500 are national vendors, and of these, about 200 are main players with name recognition.

Over the past several years, brand development in the mutual fund industry has taken a back seat to product proliferation. Driven by the bull market, fund companies developed products at an unprecedented pace in an effort to offer a diverse product line that appealed to all types of investors.

But now many funds are struggling to differentiate themselves from their competitors because they can no longer market their products on performance. Moreover, shareholders' investable assets are diminishing as rapidly as fund returns. Without the ability to cater strong performance to a client base flush with assets, traditional branding strategies like the ones used by consumer goods manufacturers are more likely to be adopted by fund companies, he said.

The problem is that most fund companies don't understand the concept of brand marketing, said Jim Dettore, CEO of the Brand Institute. Fund companies want to offer a diverse product line that can provide every type of product for every type of investor, he said. As a result, many fund groups have "lost their core competency. They are too many things to too many people."

Vanguard provides a good example of how one fund company has developed a successful brand, Srere said. When John Bogle founded Vanguard, he did so out of a passion to do one thing: provide investors with a cheaper, more efficient way of investing. Bogle's conviction and passion for creating a low-cost investment option has driven Vanguard's brand identity as the industry's low-cost leader, Srere said.