Product Watch: Pershing offers access to Merrill Lynch funds

Pershing LLC of Jersey City, N.J., has agreed to make available to its 850 broker-dealers and their 4.7 million clients access to Merrill Lynch Investment Managers LLP’s group of mutual funds.

Pershing will make the funds available through its FundCenter fund supermarket, as well as through its no-transaction-fee program, FundVest Institutional.

Almost 70 open-end Merrill funds will be available through the program.

Fidelity enhances WealthAccess

Fidelity Investments’ registered investment adviser group has enhanced WealthAccess, the high-net-worth platform for its 1,600 advisers nationwide.

The platform now offers Fidelity’s Separate Account Network, an open-architecture program that enables advisers to create customized separately managed accounts. With more than 100 institutional money managers that offer over 250 separate-account solutions, the platform may be appropriate for advisers who want to conduct their own manager due diligence.

The platform also includes web-based analysis tools for advisers to conduct due diligence when developing separately managed accounts for their customers, direct connection for money managers’ straight-through trade processing to Fidelity’s Capital Markets trading platform, and simplified client communications tools.

In addition, WealthAccess now features an alternative-investment custody service that offers select advisers the capability to place with Fidelity shares or units of certain third-party-managed alternative investments, as well as more-traditional investments.

Investors Capital’s reps get Wells link

Investors Capital Holdings Ltd. in Lynnfield, Mass., says its broker-dealer unit, Investors Capital Corp., will offer the 1,000 independent broker-dealers in its network access to Wells Fargo Funds Management LLC’s mutual funds.

Investors Capital’s brokers will be able to work directly with Wells Fargo’s sales directors and account managers at any point in the sales cycle. Brokers will also be given online access privileges to monitor performance on all Wells Fargo Funds.

Barra tool based on daily valuation

Barra Inc. of Berkeley, Calif., has introduced Barra Enterprise Performance, which it describes as the first product to make investment performance analysis based on daily data practical for even the largest investment companies.

Barra Enterprise Performance analyzes investment performance for multi-asset-class portfolios along user-defined dimensions (asset buckets) and at the security level. This complements Barra’s existing Aegis Performance Analyst product, which attributes equity performance to Barra’s risk factors.

The enormous data requirement of daily valuation dramatically slows the reporting cycle. With Barra Enterprise Performance, investment managers can significantly accelerate and facilitate data processing and report generation, the company says.