Amid growing demand for unified managed accounts, BNY Mellon | Pershing-affiliated RIA Lockwood Advisors has expanded its unified managed account offering, while lowering its minimum asset requirement and yearly program fee.
Lockwood’s new Flexible UMA, launched Monday, aims to help advisors manage a diversified, multi-asset portfolio in a single account — which the firm says should reduce paperwork while facilitating customized solutions for varying investor needs.
Lockwood introduced its first UMA in 2005, according to Joel Hempel, COO of Lockwood Advisors. There are some key differences between the new offering and what it’s offered earlier, he said.
One main difference is that the new offering gives advisors flexibility, allowing them to “tweak the asset allocation,” he said. The program now includes a broader list of investment options, such as exchange-traded funds, model separately managed account strategies, fixed income products, mutual funds, third-party strategist models and proprietary Lockwood models.
Another key difference is the program’s availability to a much wider group of investors now, Hempel explained. While the minimum account size for a UMA was typically $250,000 before, the new offering’s minimum account size is now $50,000; it comes with an annual program fee that starts at 30 basis points (plus asset manager fees) vs. the earlier fee that were 75 basis points (including asset manager fees) and up.
So, why now? For one thing, “as you look across the industry, as you look across what we, Pershing, are doing, broadly speaking, there is this drive — this continuous evolution of holistic wealth management — and it is stitching together different sorts of technology [and] putting together various what were historically product silos,” he said.