As more burgeoning fund shops seek help to enter '40 Act Country, Gemini Fund Services is aggressively bolstering its distribution operations to help these newcomers sell their funds.

Chief executive Andrew Rogers sat down with MFWire to talk about Gemini, which provides a wide variety of services to fund firms, including fund administration, accounting, and transfer agency. It also operates series trusts and an ETF trust. The company provides services to over 270 funds and 100 fund sponsors. It helps firms launch between 50 and 60 new funds each year.

To meet the booming demand for immigration into mutual fund country, Rogers' company is working to launch an internal sales division, is aggressively ramping up its key account services and plans to launch at least one more series trust for mutual funds, and possibly another ETF trust.

Currently, Gemini has a four-person key accounts team focused on introducing more managers to fund platforms.

"We have hundreds of relationships when it comes to the platforms," Rogers said.

Gemini is aggressively ramping up their efforts, including "speed dating" events in which managers are introduced to platform gatekeepers. The last such event was in mid-April.

Meanwhile, the company is also working to launch an internal sales desk, which currently has four people, in a beta test with one fund client.

Rogers said that the sales desk will serve as a call center to help RIAs when they have questions about client's funds. The desk will take incoming calls, do mail and email campaigns as well as assist in other marketing efforts.

He stressed that Gemini won't serve as a wholesaler to its fund clients because that would lead to conflicts of interest with all of its clients, but it will do all it can to serve as an internal resource. The plan is to roll out the service to the rest of Gemini's clients at the end of this year.

"We really want to assist our clients in the development of distribution strategies," he said.

In the meantime, Gemini also plans to launch another series trust, and possibly another Variable trust, to meet growing demand from burgeoning firms. 

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