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April 23, 2018 at 10:51 AM
BNY Mellon’s Pershing launched a new solution to help firms and plan advisors achieve greater consistency and efficiency in how they service retirement plans.
The Retirement Plan Oversight Tool underscores Pershing’s continued focus on bolstering its retirement plan offerings.
“The future of the DOL Rule may be in limbo, but firms had been looking to improve oversight of ERISA plans well before the DOL tried to expand the definition of fiduciary,” said Robert Cirrotti, managing director and head of retirement and investment solutions at BNY Mellon’s Pershing, in a statement. “Our oversight tool creates greater transparency for firms to manage where and when they act in a fiduciary capacity, leading to improved business controls and governance practices.”
The Retirement Plan Oversight Tool, implemented as part of Pershing’s existing Retirement Plan Network, is an integrated compliance and oversight tool that allows home offices to create up to four sets of best practices and protocols for their plan advisors to follow when servicing retirement business.
Once a firm establishes a set of requirements, plan advisors utilize the tool to guide how they service their individual retirement plan business and document their adherence to their firm’s requirements. An easy-to-understand dashboard can be viewed in real-time by both plan advisors and home office employees for seamless management of retirement plan business.
“We built this tool based on comprehensive feedback from our clients, retirement plan advisors and the industry at large,” Cirrotti said in a statement. “The goal was to develop a solution that helps create consistency in how retirement plans are serviced and enhances the compliance experience for both plan advisors and executives.”
Harvest Announces Launch of Practice Management Hub
Harvest launched its Practice Management Hub for financial advisors.
With nearly 70,000 financial advisors active on its platform, Harvest is launching this new portal based on user feedback and client demand.
The Harvest Practice Management Hub is a gated microsite for financial professionals that will house valuable, relevant content on building a financial advisory practice sourced from the top asset managers in the world.
Harvest designed the Hub to be a place where financial advisors can access practice management thought leadership in a compliant and user-friendly environment.
Vestwell Partners With Namely To Provide Digital Retirement Platform With Payroll Integration
Digital retirement platform Vestwell is partnering with Namely, a leading HR platform for mid-sized companies, to provide an all-in-one retirement experience for plan sponsors and their employees.
Vestwell’s retirement offering will now integrate into Namely’s platform. Through single sign on, users will gain access to key benefits and retirement information, all in one place. More importantly, the new offering provides payroll integration, thus removing the significant administrative burden from plan sponsors of providing ongoing payroll information and updated election deferrals.
Namely clients interested in Vestwell’s services for their retirement offering will benefit from a simplified payroll integration, fast and easy onboarding, transparent pricing, and streamlined administration.
J.P. Morgan Collaborates with BlackRock to Launch New ESG Suite of Indices
J.P. Morgan announced a new suite of global fixed income indices that integrates environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors in a composite benchmark and overweights green bonds.
The idea for J.P. Morgan ESG (JESG) was conceived in collaboration with BlackRock to address growing demand from bond investors looking for a benchmark that targets emerging market issuers with strong ESG practices.
The suite of indices is independently managed by J.P. Morgan and will cater to investors looking to gradually incorporate ESG and responsible investing in their overall fixed income investment strategies by anchoring its methodology around the bank’s widely used flagship indices such as the EMBI, GBI-EM and the CEMBI.
The initial JESG index is available for the EMBI Global Diversified, GBI-EM Global Diversified and CEMBI Broad Diversified.
The JESG index scores for over 170 countries and 650+ issuers are calculated daily, using data from Sustainalytics, RepRisk, and Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) as inputs. Ethical screening is also applied for the following controversial sectors: Thermal Coal, Tobacco, Weapons and any violator of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) principles.
Hartford Funds Adds New Actively Managed Fixed Income ETF
Hartford Funds broadened its exchange-traded fund lineup with the launch of the Hartford Schroders Tax-Aware Bond ETF (HTAB).
This expands Hartford Funds’ roster to five actively managed fixed income ETFs and seven multifactor ETFs.
HTAB, which is sub-advised by Schroder Investment Management North America Inc., seeks total return on an after-tax basis by investing in a diversified portfolio of taxable and tax-exempt fixed income debt instruments of varying maturities.
