Upgrades

Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services said December 9 that 25 of its affiliated RIAs are using its WealthCentral platform, the Web-based, integrated wealth management platform that will supersede the RIA custodian’s Advisor Channel trading and reporting system. Scott Dell’Orfano, the Fidelity executive VP who is the acting head of Fidelity Institutional, said that the “massive time and cost savings that WealthCentral offers advisors is particularly timely.” WealthCentral includes the custodian’s standard account servicing and trading offerings, but also integrates through a single sign-on access to four sharply discounted applications: portfolio management software from Advent, financial planning software from NaviPlan, portfolio modeling and rebalancing from Northfield, and CRM software from Oracle. Fidelity hopes to have 1,000 of its 3,500 advisors on the platform by year-end 2009.

Vanguard announced December 11 that it will launch a new mutual fund in the first quarter of 2009 that will be the firm’s first international small-cap index fund. The Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-U.S. Small-Cap Index Fund will use the FTSE Global Small Cap ex-U.S. Index as its target benchmark, and will have three share classes: investor, institutional, and ETF.

United Capital Financial Partners has acquired three investment advisory firms: Maul Capital Management, Integrated Financial Management, and Trevethan Capital Partners. The firms, located in Las Vegas; Northbrook, Illinois; and San Francisco, California, respectively, will bring to United Capital $740 million of new assets under management and revenues in excess of $4.3 million.