The people that brought the world Covestor.com, a portfolio-sharing service for do-it-yourself investors and for those wishing to track them, have launched the Covestor Investment Management multimanaged account, or CVIM MMA for short.
It is, according to Covestor Investment Management Ltd. of New York and London, “an account that allows you to automatically invest alongside individual and professional investors, who manage their own money in their own accounts.”
In other words, you subscribe to a model on the platform that fits your criteria at which point your account automatically replicates the model.
“There are a lot of moving parts behind the platform — anything that looks smooth and simple on the front end means it is complex at the back end,” said Perry Blacher, co-founder and president of
Covestor.
The company claims it is the world's first retail multimanaged account, meaning that it allows retail investors access to the same type of active money-management models that used to be reserved for those folks who could afford to work with big wealth management firms in the past.
“We're an open platform for anyone, whether an individual investor or registered investment adviser,” Mr. Blacher said.
It is a new category of investment product that provides investors access to expert managers in a similar fashion to a hedge fund, yet with the transparency and security of a managed account, he said.
“Because we have tens of thousands of active users on Covestor.com we have been recruiting successful investors from there and we license their real-time trading data and using this data we create a model of each — some are professionals and some are individuals,” Mr. Blacher said.
The minimum deposit to open an multimanaged account is $10,000. Fees are only charged when users subscribe to models. Opening an account requires signing an investment advisory agreement with Covestor Investment Management and setting up a managed account through TD Ameritrade Institutional of Jersey City, N.J. or Interactive Brokers Group Inc. of Greenwich, Conn.
For more information visit
Covestor Investment Management.
CFDD launches online tool to match advisers with plan sponsors
In order to help match qualified advisers with the plan sponsors in need of their fiduciary expertise, the Center for Due Diligence is launching a web-hosted plan sponsor request-for-proposal tool.
Called the ERISA Advisor Evaluation, or EAE, it will be unveiled at the CFDD's Oct. 5-7 conference for advisers in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The Employee Retirement Investment Security Act tool contains standardized questions that can be edited and modified by the plan sponsor.
Advisers will also have the ability to pre-populate, save and retrieve the standardized questions.
After advisers respond to a particular request for proposal, their answers and qualifications can then be sorted and searched by the plan sponsor for the best fit.
Headquartered in Western Springs, Ill., the CFDD is an independent-research organization serving retirement plan advisers and providers. The firm is marketing the tool to plan sponsors in order to drive business to qualified advisers it maintains in its database.
Among the qualifications an adviser must meet to be included in the database: they must be an RIA registered with the SEC; have a minimum of five years' retirement plan advisory experience; service at least 10 retirement plans over $3 million; have at least $50 million in retirement plan assets under supervision; have experience with a minimum of three different record keepers; 50% of their total business mix must come from retirement plans; and they must hold at least one retirement plan and/or fiduciary designation.
"The EAE tool is specifically designed to increase efficiency, educate, insulate and help plan sponsors meet their fiduciary duties to monitor and evaluate advisors," Phil Chiricotti, CFDD president,said in a statement.
For more information visit the
CFDD online.
