Schwab Corporate Services introduced a service Tuesday that lets third-party administrators serve commission-based retirement advisers on the same integrated trading and services platform as their fee-based adviser and plan sponsor clients.
Schwab Retirement Advisor Services is intended to let third-party administrators include both commissionable and noncommissionable mutual funds in a plan so that retirement advisers can tailor their fee-collection and payment methods.
The service "is designed to help TPAs grow their businesses with retirement advisers, who control the majority of assets in the small to midsize 401(k) market," Mark Coffrini, a vice president at Schwab Corporate Services, said in a press release. "Our offering allows TPAs to streamline their operations by providing the option to consolidate all their business - commission-based as well as fee-only - on a single trading platform."
Schwab Retirement Advisor Services is part of the Schwab Corporate Services group. This subsidiary of Charles Schwab Corp., the San Francisco brokerage company, had record performance in 2004, bringing in $7.7 billion of net new assets and attracting 28 third-party administrators to its network.
Participating fund families include AIM Investments, American Funds, Davis Funds, Eaton Vance, Evergreen Investments, Federated Investors, Franklin Templeton Investments, Gartmore Funds, Goldman Sachs, ING Funds, Janus, Lord Abbett, MFS, Pimco Advisors, Oppenheimer, and Van Kampen Investments.
