Are Your Clients Earning the Best Rates on Their Cash?
Financial Advisor IQ
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Investors have continued to flock to money market funds amid heightened attention to the often-lower rates clients get for parked money in brokerage cash sweep programs.
Money market funds reached $7 trillion in assets in November, Ignites, a sister publication of FA-IQ reported last month, citing figures from Crane Data.
One driver for heightened interest in money market funds is growing attention to the favorable rates they tend to pay clients compared to brokerage firms' default cash sweep accounts, which tend to feature lower interest payouts.
Read more from Ignites' Brian Ponte here.
Brokerages including Morgan Stanley, Ameriprise, Schwab and UBS have been sued in recent months over sweeping client cash into low-yielding products. Several, including Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo and LPL, have also disclosed regulatory probes related to their cash-sweep programs.
Some firms, including Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo and UBS, have made moves to increase the sweep rates they offer through advisor-led accounts.
Nevertheless, cash sweep programs don't appear to be going anywhere. Fidelity plans to move all the non-retirement core position cash sweep assets it handles for registered investment advisors to its proprietary cash management program next year, Ignites' Sabrina Kharrazi reported last week. Read more here.
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