Product Watch: E*TRADE tool helps advisers pick managers

E*TRADE Group Inc. in Menlo Park, Calif., has launched E*TRADE Personal Money Management for financial advisers, an online investment resource developed to help them analyze the performance of professional money managers and select the ones most appropriate for clients.

It provides advisers with the tools and information to access, evaluate, select and monitor more than 40 private money managers with a range of more than 70 investment styles. A search capability allows the adviser to choose private money managers for clients, based on a number of targeted criteria – including portfolio characteristics, investment style and risk measurements, as well as tax-effective strategies.

The tools allow advisers to develop customized asset-allocation proposals, including detailed information about the manager’s investment style, capabilities and performance based on customers’ specific investment goals. It lets advisers customize portfolios to include or exclude specific securities or market sectors for their clients.

Both the customer and the adviser can review on a daily basis the holdings and performance of the online account. Advisers are able to consolidate on a single site a wide range of applications, including data collection, analysis, sales tools, trading, custody and account maintenance.

Equitable adds option to variables

The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, a subsidiary of AXA Financial Inc. in New York, will add the EQ/Marsico Focus portfolio to its variable-life and variable-annuity investment options. The new large-cap-growth portfolio will be subadvised by Tom Marsico of Marsico Capital Management LLC, a Denver-based subsidiary of Bank of America Corp.

The portfolio, available through variable-annuity and variable-life products, has been patterned after the Marsico Focus Fund. The EQ/Marsico Focus portfolio is non-diversified in that it invests primarily in growth stocks of large companies. The portfolio follows a concentrated approach in terms of the number of stocks it holds, but it is well diversified across and within sectors and industries. The portfolio will hold between 20 and 30 stocks.

Phoenix package aids family work

The Phoenix Cos. Inc. in Hartford, Conn., is offering “Exploring the Family Dynamics of Wealth,” a program that helps advisers deliver value-added services to wealthy families by addressing their specialized needs.The program is based on Phoenix’s own wealth management model. It offers a guide that trains advisers to hold discussions with entire families about complex, long-term, wealth-related issues.

The “Exploring the Family Dynamics of Wealth” program contains:

* The wealth management model – graphic illustration serves as a planning model for advisers to illustrate the sequence for discovering issues related to family wealth.

* Family meeting implementation guide – helps an adviser establish a new wealth management process with wealthy clients. Includes a step-by-step approach to initiating and conducting family meetings.

* The Phoenix wealth management questionnaire – packaged as a stand-alone piece, it can be used as an interview guide for clients. The questions and answers provided in the guide will give direction when conducting a family meeting, while stimulating healthy discussion among family members and their adviser.

* A family wealth resource guide – provides information on issues surrounding the emotional aspects of wealth and wealth management, including new wealth, new wealth and children, inherited wealth, the family business and philanthropy.

* “Exploring the Family Dynamics of Wealth” – a CD-Rom for advisers to use in presentations.

HSBC Funds hires Bank of New York

The Bank of New York Co. and the HSBC Funds have signed an agreement appointing The Bank of New York as the investment adviser for the HSBC Funds, effective Friday. The HSBC Funds comprise eight portfolios holding approximately $200 million in assets.