Top Portfolio Products: Goldman Offers Income Builder Fund

New products introduced over the last week include a new income builder fund from Goldman Sachs and Morningstar-made asset allocation models offered by Sammons Retirement Solutions.

In addition, Russell Investments announced that it will close all its U.S. passively managed ETFs.

Here are the latest developments of interest to advisors:

1) Goldman Sachs Asset Management Offers Income Builder Fund

Goldman Sachs Asset Management announced Wednesday the renaming and repositioning of the Goldman Sachs Balanced Fund as the Goldman Sachs Income Builder Fund (A shares: GSBFX), with a new investment objective of providing income and capital appreciation. GSBFX seeks to meet this objective by investing in higher-yielding bonds and higher-dividend-paying stocks. It employs a baseline allocation of 50% to fixed-income securities and 50% to equity securities, with 15% flexibility toward either asset class. It will now pay dividend and interest income monthly, and its new benchmarks are the Russell 1000 Value and the BofA Merrill Lynch U.S. High Yield BB-B Rated Constrained Index.

The fixed-income portion continues to be managed by the fixed income team; the equity portion has transitioned from the quantitative investment strategies team to the fundamental equity team, which employs an active, bottom-up stock selection process. Class A and class C shares both have $1,000 minimum initial investments; it also offers institutional, class R and class IR shares.

2) Russell to Close ETFs as Assets Lag

Russell Investments said Aug. 17 that it will close all of its U.S. passively managed exchange-traded funds. The announcement came as the Seattle-based company reported just over $300 million in assets under management in the combined 25 funds.

The company said the action will occur on or before Oct. 24.