First Data Investor Services Group is on a roll.
Last week the Boston-based mutual fund distributor and marketer closed an acquisition and introduced a product that one of the largest Wall Street firms has agreed to use.
Jack P. Kutner, president of First Data Investor Services, said his company completed its June agreement to buy Fund Associates. The company provides shareholder accounting and services mutual wrap accounts and no- transaction-fee fund marts.
"We are looking at new products for ways to grease the skids in different distribution channels," Mr. Kutner said.
Toward that end, First Data now offers Internet access to its mutual fund clients' shareholders, Mr. Kutner said. Customers can access their accounts and buy and sell shares over the Internet.
Sit Mutual Funds, a Minneapolis-based no-load complex with 11 funds, is the first to offer this Internet capability through First Data. Another fund company has signed on for the service, Mr. Kutner said.
First Data also announced an on-line product designed to distribute fund marketing material only after it has been approved by compliance officers. Smith Barney Inc. is the first firm to agree to use the system.
The unnamed product "will bring the compliance approval process into the technology age" and will allow only approved materials to get into Smith Barney's branches and brokers' hands, Mr. Kutner said.
