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Bond specialist expands managed account platform

FWR Staff

5 December 2008

GMS Group turns to FundQuest for products, technology and support services. Livingston, N.J.-based tax-exempt municipal-bond specialist GMS Group is rolling out a new separately managed account (SMA) platform for its high-net-worth clients with support from third-party investment platform and wealth-management technology provider FundQuest.

SMAs are professionally managed portfolios made up of individual securities.

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"Both our advisors and high net worth clients will benefit from the depth and breadth of our new platform's investment products and the quality of FundQuest's research and support services," says GMS Group's COO Tim Donohue. "We can expand our relationships with our existing fixed-income clients and compete with any firm for managed equity accounts."

Through its new platform GMS will provide its high-net-worth clients with mutual-fund models, SMAs, unified managed accounts (UMAs), FundQuest's ActivePassive portfolios blending actively managed accounts with passively managed investments like ETFs and index mutual funds, and universal-life products.

UMAs are single-account investment products that typically feature combinations of manager-model SMAs, mutual funds and ETFs. FundQuest provides overlay-management support for UMAs. Overlay management is the process of aligning trading activity, managing cash flow and enhancing the overall tax efficiency of investment portfolios.

FundQuest's U.S. national accounts head Maryanne Morrow says GMS' new SMA platform gives the firm opportunities to "supplement their fixed-income expertise with a new array" of open-architecture investment products while their advisors gain efficiencies through FundQuest's web-based portfolio diagnostics tools.

Boston-based FundQuest, a subsidiary of Paris-based BNP Paribas since mid 2005, works with more than 130 financial institutions. With U.S. and European operations put together, it has $64 billion in assets under management and administration. -FWR

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