MutualFundWire.com: An Online Broker Opens its Doors To Third Party Funds

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Tuesday, July 21, 2009

An Online Broker Opens its Doors To Third Party Funds

Online broker ING Direct's ShareBuilder has expanded its menu of fund options to include third-party funds. ShareBuilder now offers funds from seven other firms: Vanguard, Fidelity, Pimco, T.Rowe, Dodge & Cox, American Century and Dreyfus.

The new funds will join 20 ING funds already offered by ShareBuilder. All told, ShareBuilder is offering a totalof 250 funds.

The third-party additions are part of an initiative at ING to provide online brokerage customers with industry leading funds that offer investors what are seen as simple and affordable ways to invest their money, company officials said.

ING representative Steve O'Halloran told The MFWire that the changes reflect the results of a 2008 survey of ShareBuilder's customer base. Findings showed that customers wanted access to a focused, narrow offering of mutual funds. Thus, the universe of mutual funds to be included on the platform was narrowed based on relative costs and ratings, and many of the new offerings are no-load funds.

Company Press Release

WILMINGTON, Del.--With the objective of simplifying mutual fund investing for customers, ING DIRECT’s ShareBuilder is enhancing its existing product offering. Today, ShareBuilder announced the addition of eight prominent mutual fund families – Vanguard, Fidelity, Pimco, T. Rowe Price, Dodge & Cox, American Century Investments, Dreyfus, and ING. ShareBuilder focused on a short list of 250 total funds from these highly regarded fund families to streamline options for investors.

"Our goal is to take the guesswork out of selecting a mutual fund, which is why we’ve streamlined our offerings to a pre-screened set of high value fund families," said Dan Greenshields, President of ShareBuilder. "We're giving our customers access to industry-leading, professionally managed, no load funds with a proven track record for delivering low-cost investments."

Mutual funds have been the number one product enhancement requested by the ShareBuilder customer base and continue to be a top search term at sharebuilder.com. A survey of the ShareBuilder customer base revealed that the average investor would prefer to select mutual funds from a short list of funds, as opposed to having access to the universe of all funds. These study results confirmed ShareBuilder’s belief that a streamlined offering from leading fund families will make it easier for customers to meet their individual investing and portfolio diversification needs.