CheckFree Corporation (Nasdaq: CKFR) today announced that Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., one of the top investment firms in the U.S., has released eight mutual fund wrap portfolios via CheckFree APL.
A CheckFree customer since 1992, Schwab has expanded its deployment of CheckFree APL as a result of the robust architecture and proven flexibility and scalability of the platform. CheckFree APL will power portfolio management and monitoring services for Schwab Managed Portfolios.
According to Cerulli Associates, mutual fund advisory assets have grown 153 percent from 2002 to 2006. Assets under management in mutual fund advisory products grew from $130 to $319.5 billion in that time period.
By launching Schwab Managed Portfolios on CheckFree APL, Schwab can leverage the extensive CheckFree APL functionality to design, monitor and adjust diversified portfolios of mutual funds in response to market changes and deliver the service to customers at a net cost of 50 bps, one third the program fee of similar offerings. The integration of CheckFree APL enables Schwab money managers to create sophisticated trading strategies in an automated and scalable manner, providing clients with a comprehensive investment lifecycle to support individual expansion to the next generation of investment services.
Launched in July, 2006, Schwab Managed Portfolios (www.schwab.com/smp) includes four taxable and four non-taxable wrap products with ready-made investment strategies ranging from moderately conservative to aggressive. Ongoing advisory services are also provided to deliver consistent guidance and tailored services to clients. CheckFree APL provides the scalability and flexibility to enable Schwab financial consultants to rapidly add accounts to the enterprise-wide platform.
"The success of Schwab Managed Portfolios highlights a natural progression in the use of the CheckFree platform to support the future of investment services, from separately managed accounts to unified managed households and beyond," said Michael Gianoni, executive vice president and general manager at CheckFree Investment Services. "CheckFree APL has enabled Schwab to introduce an enterprise-wide servivice that delivers additional choices to clients without the need for additional support personnel."
CheckFree APL delivers an innovative, advanced Separately Managed Accounts platform that provides remote processing services to sponsor firms, money managers and financial advisors for the automation of investment management, trading, portfolio performance and investor reporting. CheckFree's platform enables approximately 100 of the top Wall Street sponsor firms and 150 separate account managers to interface with each other, and operate in a straight-through processing environment. Institutional money managers also use CheckFree APL to enter and maintain account data, manage trades and measure portfolio performance.