Fund Portal Launches to Diminished Expectations

November 27, 2001, 1:00 a.m. EST 1 Min Read

AdvisorCentral, a company jointly run by Fidelity, Putnam, Franklin Templeton and PFPC, today launched a fund Web portal service, but participation in the service has failed to meet initial expectations.

The portal, AdvisorCentral.Com, provides investment advisers access to mutual fund account information, transaction capabilities, processing and customer service. The portal, built on PFPCs proprietary IMPRESSNet system, will compete with DSTs Vision service, which provides similar features.

Currently, there are nearly 50 different mutual fund companies on the portal, including the three sponsors, Pioneer Funds, and Eaton Vance. When the initiative was first announced in January however, Kenneth Rathgeber, COO of Fidelity Institutional, said that there would be about 100 fund families on the portal at launch time. Still, the current firms represented by AdvisorCentral account for about 40% of total assets sold through intermediaries, according to the announcement.

Mutual fund firms pay a fee to be a member of the portal, but the service is free to advisers. While the portal is not a marketing tool, it does give firms increased exposure to the adviser distribution channel, said Joseph Grause, Advisor Centrals newly named CEO. "Our goal is to be an industry standard product," he said.

Previously, Grause was president of American General Asset Management, a mutual fund group with $1.8 billion in assets under management. Before joining American General, Grause co-founded Cypress Holding Co. He has also served with Fidelity Investments and First Data Corp.