The sales and marketing director of Comerica Inc.'s wealth and institutional management division says the unified managed account platform the division began using the same month he was hired is off to a fast start.
Michael Wilson, hired in April as a senior vice president and director of national sales and marketing for the division, said the UMA platform outsourced from SunGard is collecting "significant" assets.
"I think that the open architecture and financial planning that this platform affords us will really drive incremental sales and enable us to bring more solutions to our customers," said Mr. Wilson, who managed private banking, personal trust, brokerage, and portfolio management at Wells Fargo Private Bank in Colorado before joining Comerica.
SunGard, a provider of software and investment platforms, has signed up 51 banks for unified managed accounts in the past few months and expects to add about 200 more in the next three years.
"The last few years, well, really the last few months, UMAs have started to take off," said Mike Winkel, the president of SunGard Advisor Technologies. "We are starting to see trust banks and wire houses adopt" the accounts, and they are "helping us to gain more and more penetration with banks."
Unified managed accounts let advisers assemble multiple products, including managed accounts, mutual funds, and exchange-traded funds, on a single platform. Unified managed accounts caught fire last year as demand grew among banks for an advice-based, open architecture model.
Only 10% of the banks Dover Financial Research surveyed from August to October said they were offering unified managed accounts, but 60% said they were developing a platform or planned to develop one within 12 months.
Assets held in unified managed accounts increased 36.8% industrywide in the first half of 2006, to $26 billion, according to Dover's research.
SunGard, of Wayne, Pa., is in a crowded market. Dover says third-party providers such as Placemark Investments Inc., Parametric, LFG Inc.'s Lockwood Advisors Inc., and Brinker Capital Inc. are creating unified managed account platforms that are outsourced to financial services companies, including banks.
Mr. Wilson said unified managed accounts are "the platform of the future that will allow us to acquire additional assets from our customers. I think this is the direction that the industry is going."
Analysts said Comerica's open architecture unified managed account platform is in stark contrast to its approach of a year ago, when it marketed its own products offered by its investment management subsidiary, Munder Capital Management of Birmingham, Mich.
In January, Comerica divested Munder in a management-led buyout. Munder was managing $27.1 billion of assets at the time of the sale.
Analysts said regulatory scrutiny and the high cost of compliance have driven Comerica and many other financial services companies away from proprietary products.
Comerica never pushed Munder's products at customers, but now that it is no longer manufacturing its own proprietary products it can pursue an open architecture strategy, Mr. Wilson said.
"Prior to selling Munder, Comerica was in development with SunGard for 18 months," he said. "We have been gravitating toward being a true open architecture shop for some time."
Analysts said more banks are preparing to use nonproprietary products on an open architecture platform. Fifty-seven percent of bank wealth management executives surveyed in August by SEI Investments, an asset manager in Oaks, Pa., said their banks offered a mix of proprietary and nonproprietary investment products. Just 8% said their banks sold only proprietary products.
Comerica's wealth and institutional management division serves the needs of affluent clients and includes private banking, investment management and trust, Comerica Securities, Comerica Insurance, institutional trust and retirement services, and Wilson Kemp & Associates Inc., its financial planning unit.
Its assets under management were up 2.4%, to $141.4 billion, for the year on April 30.
Comerica, which until recently was based in Detroit, plans to focus on adding clients in markets such as Florida, Texas, and California, Mr. Wilson said.
"By moving the corporate headquarters to Dallas, the organization has really made the commitment to these high-growth areas," Mr. Wilson said. "I think we have the resources to really reach these customers."
Mr. Wilson said he wants to work to "change the culture" at Comerica to "propel the organization to focus on an open architecture, well-integrated sales platform and process."
