Money Management Executive Latest News

BOSTON -- Mutual fund companies must stay on top of their compliance programs, particularly because Congress is likely to pass new financial regulations, executives warn.

Putnam Investments has launched a content-rich Roth IRA Conversion Resource Center aimed at financial advisors.

Cash hurts.

ShareBuilder 401(k), which serves small businesses with a lineup primarily of exchange-traded funds, is offering pricing discounts for plans as they reach savings milestones of $1 million, $2 million and $5 million. For those businesses with plan assets of $5 million or more, the company doesn’t charge any administration fee and reduces asset management fees to less than 50 basis points.

AllianceBernstein has pledged up to $500,000 to aid victims of the earthquake in Haiti.

ProFunds has launched two exchange-traded funds that will leverage U.S. Treasuries, the ProShares Ultra 20+ Year Treasury and ProShares Ultra 7-10 Year Treasury funds.

Sixty-five percent of 160 socially responsible mutual funds from members of the Social Investment Forum outperformed their benchmarks in 2009, most by significant margins, the forum said.

The leading mutual fund brand in the nation is Vanguard and the leading distributor is Charles Schwab, 4,000 affluent and high-net-worth investors told Cogent Research in a recent survey. In both categories, Fidelity, which had previously held first place since Cogent started the research in 2006, was knocked to second.

The Depository Trust and Clearing Corp. has enhanced its mutual fund services to include 529 college savings plan information in a streamlined manner for broker/dealers and other financial distributors. New functionality has been added to the transactional hub Fund/SERVE and to network account reconciliation.

Long-term equity, bond and hybrid funds reaped $14.35 billion in the week ended Jan. 13, bringing the 44-week sales streak total to $441 billion, the Investment Company Institute said.