New models-based offering provides more choices for customized allocations. Smith Barney has added and new and more flexible unified managed account (UMA) program to its fee-based "Select" platform.

"Select UMA provides Smith Barney's Financial Advisors with the ability to deliver personalized investment planning, professional asset management and in-depth research on a wide array of investment products, all contained in a single, tax-managed account," says James Tracy, director of Smith Barney's Investment Advisory Services group.

UMAs are single-account combinations of separately managed accounts, mutual funds and ETFs.

Constant tweaking

The new "Select UMA" has those things with a twist in the form of access to pooled-fund alternatives. The whole thing comes in a format that gives advisors opportunities to make strategic and tactical asset allocations for taxable and tax-exempt investors "across a spectrum of asset classes, investment styles and risk levels," according to a Smith Barney press release.

Smith Barney paved the way for the Select UMA last year when it added a tactical ETF option to its Select Portfolios multiple-discipline account (MDA) program. MDAs are similar to UMAs -- in fact at some firms the difference is a mere matter of semantics. More or less strictly defined though, they combine complementary equity investment styles in a single account.

In-house overlay

"Our goal is to continually create programs and services that enhance the investment process for both clients and Financial Advisors, and increase Smith Barney's dominance in the managed account arena," says Tracy.

The Select UMA also has an overlay feature "to automatically correct for sizable asset allocation shifts and provides optional tax-management services via tax-loss harvesting and other tax liability management techniques."

The overlay manager for the Select UMA was to be Legg Mason's overlay manager Private Portfolio Group -- but then Citigroup, Smith Barney's corporate parent, bought that group, so Smith Barney is calling it an "in-house" function.

Smith Barney's Select MDA features overlay management by Wellesley, Mass.-and Dallas-based Placemark Investments.

Smith Barney has more than 13,000 advisors; about 11,000 use products and services provided, like the new UMA, by its Consulting Group. -FWR

Purchase reproduction rights to this article.