Just when you thought that every distribution strategy has been tried, executives somewhere hit upon another scheme. This time the creativity originated at KeyBank, where executives hit upon the idea of making the bank's Victory Funds available through it Champion Mortgage division.

Customers of Champion Mortgage will be able to purchase shares of the mutual funds without front-end or back-end sales charges and without 12b-1 fees or redemption fees. They will initially have a choice from among four funds, three lifestyle funds (LifeChoice Conservative Investor, LifeChoice Moderate Investor, Victory LifeChoice Growth Investor) and a fixed income fund (Prime Obligations).

The funds will be sold through representatives of Champion Mortgage who are dual employees of Champion Mortgage and McDonald Investments, a subsidiary of KeyCorp.

Key's Victory Funds had a strong value bent which left them struggling to gather assets during the growth market that ended in 2000. The bank also struggled with its defined contribution products which had been a large source of assets for the funds.

The interesting question raised by the strategy will be whether Champion's clients will be ones who are seeking mutual funds in the current economy and whether Champion's branding as an easier lender ("when others say no, we say yes") will gel with the idea of investing in customers' minds.  

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