Schwab-custody RIAs access Russell’s fee-based mutual-fund products. Russell Investment Group's new whoesale push just got a boost. Registered investment advisors (RIAs) who custody assets with  Schwab Institutional now have access to the Russell Asset Management Program (RAMP), Russell’s mutual-fund asset-allocation product. The point, says Russell, is to help Schwab’s custodial clients improve service to “a larger and increasingly diverse” end-client base.

But, by going direct to the custodian, Russell is also saving itself some shoe leather. Last winter it hired a clutch of new regional directors specifically to help peddle its multi-manager mutual funds, separately managed accounts (SMAs), mutual fund wraps and wealth management tools to independent advisors. The company said its aim was to expand its “network of relationships with additional partners who wish to improve the financial security of their clients.” But RIAs can be harder to sell to than big-brokerage and institutional clients because they're more geographically dispersed and because, in some cases at least, they require more product support.

“Russell and Schwab are delivering a quality, end-to-end investment product,” which includes “a comprehensive brokerage platform, business planning and development support, and manager research and selection complemented by a full range of asset allocation and portfolio management tools,” according to Greg Stark, who heads Russell’s U.S. Investor Services group. RAMP, he adds, was designed to help fee-based advisors meet “the sometimes conflicting challenges of managing business growth and dedicating time and resources to the one-on-one management of client portfolios.”

Tacoma, Wash.-based Russell says RAMP brings an institutional-quality approach to multi-manager investment to individual investors, “packaged in strategically diversified portfolios that can be tailored for a client's risk profile.” Each of RAMP’s three investment strategies – Model Strategies, Tax-Managed Model Strategies and Select Model Strategies – comes with a choice of five Russell mutual-fund portfolios and a selection of non-proprietary managers “objectively and rigorously researched and selected by Russell for specific style assignments within the strategy,” according to a Russell press release. RIAs can also customize the portfolios. The Select Model approach comes with “complete operational support, automated rebalancing, comprehensive quarterly reporting, fee processing and management reporting.”

San Francisco-based Schwab Institutional provides custodial, operational and trading support to about 5,000 RIAs. With assets of over $350 billion, it accounts for about a third of Charles Schwab & Co.’s overall custodial business. In 2004 Schwab Institutional took in about half of Schwab’s $50.3 billion in net new money.

Russell Investment Group, part of Frank Russell Company (a subsidiary of the Milwaukee, Wisc.-based Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company), managed more than $133 billion in advisory assets at the end of March. –FWR

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