The Kansas State Treasurer's Office said it renewed its contract with American Century Proprietary Holdings Inc. to manage one of the state's section 529 college savings platforms, which now will feature more investment options and lower fees.
The program management fee for the Learning Quest platform has been reduced from 0.39% to 0.2%, the office said last week. The platform also will include new multimanager funds from Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., OppenheimerFunds Inc., Principal Financial Group, and Riversource Investments.
The office said it was following industrywide trends in making the changes.
The original Learning Quest contract, awarded to American Century when the program was launched six years ago, was scheduled to expire Dec. 31. The office said the new contract would expire June 30, 2012.
Learning Quest has more than 93,000 account owners and $1.5 billion of assets under management, according to the Treasurer's Office.
In addition to Learning Quest, the office administers the Schwab 529 College Savings Plan, which is also managed by American Century. Last week the office also announced that the program management fee for the Schwab 529 plan will be reduced to 0.2%.
