Managed Account Programs

Your ScotiaMcLeod account can hold a wide variety of investment options.  Managed Account Programs are becoming increasingly popular, as they generally remove the temptation for investors and advisors to try and time the market.  This long term, helps with returns.

Often, a limitation with Managed Account (also known as Fee Based) Programs are high investment minimums.  ScotiaMcLeod offers several high end managed account program options .  They essentially offer the main benefits of mutual funds, namely diversification and professional management, but without low investment amounts.  They all are custom tailored to your needs.

Several mutual fund companies now offer diversified and well packaged programs, that offer similar features:

• CI features their Portfolio Series which offers a blend of their retail funds, well diversified and monitored by William M. Mercer Limited. Mercers is one of Canada's leading investment consulting and actuarial firms.
• AGF has their Harmony Program which is a custom tailored portfolio program.
• The Russell Lifepoints program is available in your existing ScotiaMcLeod account with a $5,000 lump sum minimum, and for as little as $100 per month in group PAC plans.  With a competitive management fee, its higher level of reporting and diversification make it worthy of an examination.
• The Franklin Templeton Quotential program is the fastest growing managed account program in Canada, likely because it offers the most benefits with the lowest fees among its competitors.

We would be pleased to review if a Managed Account Program makes sense for you, and which of the above would be most appropriate.  Please contact us.

*Note, in many cases, a portfolio of mutual funds, combined with stripped bonds will offer a more cost effective and diversified plan than many Managed Account Programs.  While that arrangement may still be called a "transactional account" it is really actually fee based in nature.  Transactional accounts are ones where the broker contacts individuals to buy/sell stocks and bonds on a regular basis and is paid a commission every time there is a transaction. Clients of Carl Spiess know from how we run their accounts, as buy and hold advisors, we are not really transactionally motivated.  As far as we are concerned, every mutual fund that is purchased and held for the long term, is a fee based program. The manager invests and monitors the portfolio, and gets paid a fee as a percentage of assets. If the assets grow, the fee grows, just like in managed account programs.