How To ‘Toe-Dip’ Into Impact Investing
Impact Assets, a nonprofit financial services firm, is trying to bring more investors keen on sustainable investing into the deep impact-investing fold. The firm has lowered its administrative fees to 0.40% and decreased the investment minimums on private debt and equity options to $10,000, it said in a recent release.
The firm has also added two private debt funds to its suite. They include investment funds for ecoforestry (which maintains and restores forests) and small business lending to underserved borrowers.
The firm hopes its efforts will lead to greater engagement with investors and advisors, not only those interested in financial returns, but those interested in social and environmental returns as well.
RetireUp Expands Offering With ‘Pro’ Version
RetireUp, a retirement planning software for financial advisors, has expanded its product offering by launching RetireUp Pro. The new product features risk assessment tools, an income stability ratio tool, account aggregation and a few other solutions that help advisors map out their clients’ defined income. This latest platform is an end-to-end retirement-planning tool, according to the company.
With RetireUp Pro, advisors are also able to on-board clients, archive paperwork (in a compliant way), construct retirement plans in 30 minutes and display insurance products on the platform.
Financial Independence Group, a finance and insurance marketing organization that supplies products and services to financial professionals, has announced a partnership with RetireUp to use the proprietary RetireUp Pro platform.
Unit Investment Trust Research And Ratings Platform
UIT Investing, a registered investment advisor, has created a unit investment trust (UIT) research platform.
The new platform offers finance professionals research reports on unit investment trusts for a monthly fee. It’s designed for financial advisors, investment advisors, research analysts and portfolio managers—as well as individual investors, who get full access to a library of detailed, comprehensive research reports on UIT strategies. The platform offers access to a trust’s investment objective, the assets it carries and its security selection strategy.
Each report, offered to clients for a monthly subscription fee, will feature an individual 1- to 5-star rating for a UIT’s performance, risk and expense, measuring these factors over three years, five years and 10 years (if applicable).
Advisor Engine’s New Client Portal
Advisor Engine, the fintech company for financial advisors that offers them account aggregation, goals-based financial planning, paperless client on-boarding, document sharing, investment analytics and performance reporting, has announced its ability to integrate with TD Ameritrade Institutional’s Veo One platform for advisors. Advisor Engine has also unveiled its upgraded client portal.
The platform now provides convenient configuration of the client portal so advisors can customize it. It’s accessible from any device and able to be frequently updated, making it convenient to clients.
“Our new tools foster consistent and scalable engagement, leading to better information sharing and more proactive relationship management,” said Rich Cancro, the founder and CEO of Advisor Engine.
Vanguard’s First Actively Managed U.S. ETFs
Vanguard has extended its low-cost active fund suite with six factor-based ETFs and one factor-based mutual fund for advisors and institutional investors.
There will be five single-factor ETFs based on volatility, liquidity, value, momentum and quality to acquire a risk or return objective. The estimated expense ratio for these five ETFs is 0.13%. The sixth ETF and the mutual fund will follow multiple factors and have an estimated expense ratio of 0.18%.
The Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group, which manages more than $39 billion internationally, will manage the new funds.
To help educate investors about factor-based funds, Vanguard launched an information web page that covers product information, factor fund basics and factor applications. The URL is https://advisors.vanguard.com/web/cf/factor/basics.
Great-West Financial Launches Index-Linked Annuity
Great-West Financial has launched its first indexed-linked variable annuity, Capital Choice, for investors who want to grow their principal in a sheltered investment vehicle.
The firm plans to release a fee-based and a commission-based Capital Choice product, two different versions that will cater to either broker-dealers or registered investment advisors.
Index-linked variable annuities are insurance plans that use market gains to achieve capped growth but also use pre-established protection methods to shelter against a market decline.
Capital Choice is a tax-deferred annuity that incorporates multiple protection options for advisors to create a strategy that suits their clients’ risk tolerance. The protection options include multi-floor (stop-loss) options, buffers or a combination of the floor and buffer options, says Great-West. The buffers allow Great-West to absorb a portion of negative index performance before Great-West puts a negative strategy credit on the account. Advisors can alter the strategy on the contract’s anniversary.
Advisors can choose one or more index-linked options.