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ETF News

Eaton Vance ETMFs Get Boost By RIA Titan Envestnet

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MarketsMuse blog update is courtesy of BrokerDealer.com and initial reporting by InvestmentNews.com and profiles the deal between RIA titan Envestnet and mutual fund king Eaton Vance, which is now approved to promote its novel, actively-managed ETF product “NextShares.” NextShares are exchange-traded funds that are both actively managed and unlike any other ETF product, does not disclose the underlying components of the respective ETFs. These products now go by the acronym “ETMFs.”

Since its approval, Eaton Vance has had to work hard to convince competitive money managers to license its patent and persuade broker-dealers that it is in their interest to make NextShares available to advisers even though the funds don’t offer the same underlying fees to encourage distributors. Eaton Vance’s NextShares-promoting subsidiary, Navigate Fund Solutions, has had to make that case before it even has a product on the market or a distribution partner.

BrokerDealer.com provides a global directory of regulated securities industry professionals operating in 30 major countries across the free world.

The deal is a big win for Eaton Vance, an actively managed mutual fund company that’s hoping to replace those products with a potentially more tax-efficient vehicle that could lower costs and improve performance for investors. Envestnet is a major gatekeeper in the fast-growing market of independent financial advisers, providing services for over $700 billion in client assets.

In a statement, an Envestnet executive, Jim Patrick, described NextShares as a “groundbreaking fund structure” and said the company sees offering the funds as part of its mission to help advisers deliver “wealth management services in the most cost- and tax-efficient way possible.”

ONLY APPROVED PRODUCT

NextShares was the first and remains the only structure approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission that allows an actively managed open-end fund to trade on exchanges without regularly disclosing its holdings. Portfolio managers resist showing the securities they buy and sell, in part to prevent being taken advantage of by competitors.

– See more at: BrokerDealer.com

ETF News

Eaton Vance Ups ETMF Ante; Payment For Order Flow: Bounties For BrokerDealers

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MarketsMuse ETF update profiles a novel “payment-for-order-flow” approach on the part of ETF issuers who vie to whoo broker-dealers to promote their products to investors. Eaton Vance Corp. said Thursday it may help brokerages foot the bill to make its new type of actively managed exchange-traded products, called NextShares, available to their clients. Below extract is courtesy of Reuters’ Jessica Toonkel reporting

In an unprecedented move, Eaton Vance Corp will offer to help some brokerages pay their technology costs to make the fund company’s new breed of exchange-traded managed funds (ETMFs) available to investors, Tom Faust, Eaton’s chief executive officer, told Reuters this week. ETMFs are a hybrid between actively managed mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.

The Boston-based company also plans to pay brokerage firms a share of the revenues from the sale of the funds, which Faust hopes will be available by year-end.

BrokerDealer.com maintains the world’s largest database of broker-dealers and encompasses brokerdealer firms based in nearly 3 dozen countries

Tom Faust, Eaton Vance
Tom Faust, Eaton Vance

Big-name firms like Fidelity Investments and TD Ameritrade told Reuters they will not sell the funds until they see demand.

Helping to cover technology costs of distributors is new, but so are the Eaton Vance products, which require brokerages to take a new kind of order from investors, experts said.

“This is the first time I have ever heard of a firm offering to pay some brokerage costs for a new product,” said Ben Johnson, an ETF analyst at Morningstar.

He said the cost of gearing up to sell the product has been a sticking point for brokers. However, a number of executives at brokerage firms and industry consultants told Reuters that questions about whether there will be investor demand, and how they will get compensated to sell the new products, are even bigger issues that could keep them from selling the funds even with the Eaton Vance offer on the table.

Faust said figuring out the economic incentives and getting the systems up and running is top of mind for Eaton Vance.

“The biggest challenge we see at this stage of the game is getting broker dealers,” Faust said. “If we are looking to launch before the end of the year, we need the broker dealers to start making systems changes and otherwise preparing themselves to offer this to clients.”

Eight outside fund managers, including Mario J. Gabelli’s GAMCO Investors Inc., have licensed the right to sell NextShares. But large broker-dealers have not yet indicated that they’re taking the steps to offer them to financial advisers.

Investors will need to be informed by broker-dealers of the unique qualities of the funds when they trade, and they will place exchange orders in a way that differs from stocks or ETFs.

For the full article from Reuters, please click here