With Fidelity Unit's Computer Service, Banks Can Customize Wrap

National Financial Services Corp., has introduced a computer service that helps bank brokerages design their own wrap accounts.

National Financial, the clearing subsidiary of Boston-based mutual fund company Fidelity Investments, will maintain records of customer's balances, send bills electronically, and disseminate reports of fund performances. The firm also rebalances individual customer's portfolios.

The service makes it easier for each of National Financial's 80 bank clients to offer wrap account comprising the bank's own funds plus portfolios from among 400 fund companies, said Robert Middleton, the Fidelity unit's vice president of marketing.

Wrap accounts are portfolios of mutual funds that brokers manage for a fee. They are becoming popular among investors who don't like to pay sales charges to a broker every time they make a mutual fund transaction.

Many mutual fund companies offer such services, but restrict the choices to their own portfolios and do their own wrap account pricing, Mr. Middleton said. Howard Kapiloff

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