Salomon Smith Barney's AssetOne program is starting to look more like a mutual fund supermarket.
Originally designed as a fee-based account for moderately active traders, AssetOne as of Monday allows clients to invest their entire accounts in mutual funds. Previously, they could invest only 30% of their account assets in mutual funds.
Salomon, a unit of New York-based Citigroup Inc., also increased the number of no-load and fee-waived mutual funds it makes available, to more than 1,500, from 600, and it cut the annual fee on mutual fund assets to 1%.
The change was prompted by customer demand, said Pamela Parker, director of the AssetOne program.
The AssetOne program lets clients invest in equities and mutual funds with a certain number of free trades for an annual fee ranging from 0.4% to 1.5% of asset value. The fee includes advice from financial consultants and access to financial planning tools.
The program is bringing in more than $500 million of assets a week, according to Salomon, and the average account size is more than $300,000. At the end of March, AssetOne accounts held more than $12 billion of assets, Ms. Parker said.
