Investment Management Newsflashes: Morningstar Develops Suitable 529 Tool, and more

Morningstar Develops Suitable 529 Tool

Morningstar recently released Suitability Manager, a Web-based 529 tool, in response to the new Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board (MSRB) interpretation that became effective on Monday, Aug. 7. The new MSRB rule requires brokers, dealers and municipal securities dealers to disclose the state tax benefits that would not be available to the investor as a result of investing in an out-of-state 529 plan. Morningstar's new tool, the 529 Suitability Manager, enables advisors to present these and other disclosures to investors in straightforward, easy-to-read reports.

Morningstar's 529 Suitability Manager creates disclosure reports that are populated by a Web-based interface. The advisor enters relevant information about the investor into the Web-based tool, and then prints straightforward summary charts and reports to help choose the most suitable 529 plan for the investor.

According to research from Investment Company Institute and College Savings Plan Network, the number of 529 plan accounts increased to about 8.6 million in the first quarter of 2006. The average 529 savings plan account size was about $11,500 in March 2006.

529 Suitability Manager is a tool within the Morningstar Advisor Suitability Manager solution, which also provides other investment suitability analyses. 529 Suitability Manager can be co-branded and licensed by institutions for their advisors.

Morningstar provides data on approximately 145,000 investment offerings, including stocks, mutual funds, and similar vehicles. More information on MSRB 529 plan disclosure rules is available here.

RMB Asset Management Implements LatentZero

RMB Asset Management , a division of one of South Africa's largest JSE-listed financial services groups FirstRand, has successfully implemented LatentZero Capstone to manage its assets of more than $15 billon. Capstone is LatentZero's front-office suite for buy-side institutions and its implementation was led by LatentZero's South African partner, Peresys.

RMB Asset Management chose the Capstone suite for their multi-asset class investments, including its equities, fixed income and derivatives businesses. Capstone Minerva, a next generation OMS and trading system, enables RMB Asset Management to manage workflows, receive market data feeds and place orders with counterparties, all in real time. Capstone Tesseract, LatentZero's modeling and decision support tool, allows asset managers to optimize the performance of their portfolios and maximize returns.

Stephen Jones, Head of IT at RMB Asset Management said, "The Capstone product suite provides significant additional strategic and tactical investment management process capabilities to RMB Asset Management front and middle-office staff. The streamlined trading cycle improves RMB Asset Management's tactical trading process with the additional benefits of reduced risks. RMB Asset Management is committed to implementing solutions that will further enhance the service offering we provide to our clients. With the additional deployed functionality, we can consider further innovative solutions that allow us to excel in our industry segment. While trading product suites are typically complex, LatentZero provides an architecturally coherent solution that simplifies support."

Morgan Stanley Makes Private Wealth Management Hire

Morgan Stanley Private Wealth Management recently announced the appointment of Ernesto A. de la Fe, an executive with extensive wealth management experience in the region, as Managing Director and Head of Latin America. Concurrent with this new position, which is effective September 5, a Private Wealth Management Office will be opened in Miami, FL, where Mr. de la Fe resides, to serve high net worth Latin American clients and institutions.

Donald J. Herrema, Head of Private Wealth Management, Americas, who announced the appointment, said: "Ernesto is a seasoned executive with deep knowledge of and extensive experience in the Latin American markets. He is the ideal person to lead our expansion in this market and to open a new office in Miami to serve the many Latin American clients who can benefit from Morgan Stanley's considerable array of products and services for high net worth individuals, families and institutions." Mr. de la Fe was most recently at Lehman Brothers, where he was Managing Director, Investment Management Division, and head of business development for Latin America.