Under the leadership of Rich Linton, new head of the firm’s Advisor 401(k) business, Fidelity’s platform additions include mutual fund giants Franklin Templeton, Aberdeen, Calamos and MFS.
Fidelity has added over 550 mutual funds from nine new fund families this year. Its advisors now have access to more than 2,000 funds from over 40 firms, including 1,100 institutional class shares. Fidelity has seen a growing demand for institutional class offerings, especially among larger plans.
“We want to continue to allow our advisor retirement business to grow in the marketplace,” Linton said in an interview. “We have seen over the last few years that the trend in the 401(k) record-keeping space has been open architecture. And we want to add as much choice and flexibility to our advisors as possible.”
Fidelity’s advisor retirement platform has grown its plans by 15% over the last three years, and 16.5% in terms of participants, Linton says. The additions made to the platform’s investment options were done based on demand from Fidelity’s advisors. Linton expects to add some additional fund families to the platform in 2010, but not at the clip that it did this year. The additions made in 2009 represent a 25% increase year-over-year from 2008 for Fidelity.
