Citicorp enters the wrap race
Citicorp Investments is to launch its first wrap account, appointing BT Portfolio Services as the back office administrator.
Citicorp Investments is to launch its first wrap account, appointing BT Portfolio Services as the back office administrator.
Under the arrangement, BT Portfolio Services will provide wrap account admini-stration and custodial services for the CitiChoice product, making it one of 17 services rebadged from BT for other financial services distributors.
Citicorp national product and distribution marketing manager Tony Zulli says the reason for the creation of the new wrap product was driven from Citicorp's cus-tomer base.
"There was a demand for wider choices in investment vehicles and we looked at this as a way to provide a wider level of choice. The real difficulty was the vehicle to use and it was deemed better to go with BT in this regard," Zulli says.
"We had some investments involved in proprietary funds managed by us and a number of others but this is the first discretionary portfolio available from Citi-corp."
The structure of the wrap product will include a discretionary portfolio with super-annuation and non-superannuation investments and an allocated pension stream, with each of these feeding into a wholesale pooled trust for investment purposes.
Citicorp has also kept van Eyk Research to screen and select the wholesale invest-ment managers with the selected managers offering a range of style including growth, value and indexed.
The wrap product will be distributed through Citicorp's own distribution network via Platinum Financial Services, Citibank outlets and in the future through third party financial planners.
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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