Bankers Trust New York Corp. has launched a family of mutual funds it hopes will appeal to retail investors.
The banking company's 10-portfolio BT Advisor Funds will be sold through national and regional brokerages, as well as by financial planners and mutual fund networks such as Charles Schwab & Co.'s OneSource. The funds were introduced last week.
"Many people don't recognize us as a money manager," said Anne B. McMillen, managing director of Bankers Trust Global Investors. "This is an attempt to get to the individual investor."
Bankers Trust, along with many other banks, is turning to nonbank broker-dealers and other financial intermediaries to sell its funds at a time when direct marketing costs are high and branch sales flat.
"A lot of banks recognize that Schwab and others are growing channels (of distribution) in the marketplace," said Kenneth R. Hoffman, president of the Optima Group, a Fairfield, Conn., consulting firm.
Ms. McMillen said she expects the new funds to grow by "several billion" dollars in the next three years, but she declined to be more specific.
The BT Advisor Funds use Signature Financial Corp.'s hub-and-spoke mutual fund structure. The arrangement lets the funds' assets be pooled with Bankers Trust's BT Investment Funds family, while letting it keep a separate pricing structure.
Bankers Trust already manages more than $6.6 billion of assets in its BT Investment Funds and BT Global Funds - but those funds are primarily available to institutional investors.
The BT Advisor Funds are Bankers Trust's first stab at cracking the broader mutual fund market. The banking company has no retail branch system, and it caters to wealthy clients and corporations with lines of no- load mutual funds.
The company's new fund family is the second to carry a sales fee; BT Global Investors Funds, launched last September, also charge a load. Investors in BT Advisor Funds will pay up-front fees of 3.75% to 4.75% of the assets invested.
