The number of advisory-class and institutional-class mutual funds available through FundVest jumped by 45 percent this year. More additions are on the way. Watch for changes in the new FundVest 200 list, too.

Sandy Bolton, managing director of financial solutions at Pershing, tells MFWire that Pershing has "made a concerted effort to aggressively pursue the fund firms about having these shares on the platform," over the past three months.

FundVest is a no transaction fee (NTF) platform for the RIAs and broker-dealers Pershing supports, and the platform and recently crossed the $100-billion mark. Pershing has added 435 advisory and institutional class funds to the platform this year, boosting the total number of such funds available to 1,385, from 24 different mutual fund families. The latest additions include funds from 361 Capital, Baron, Deutsche, Forward, the Hartford, Pacific Life, Pear Tree and Prudential.

"We expect this to continue over the next six months," Bolton says. "We don't expect that we'll be able to get all of them [the fund families], but we do expect that we'll be able to get most of them."

Because FundVest is NTF fundsters pay a bit more to be on the platform, but Bolton says that the "flows have really paid off" for many of the funds on FundVest so far.

Meanwhile, watch for analysts at Pershing parent BNY Mellon and Lockwood Advisors to tweak the new FundVest 200 list soon.

"We're in the process right now of sending out due diligence questionnaires to fund companies to amend the list for the fourth quarter," Bolton says, predicting that tweaks will be made next month and unveiled in December. 

Stay ahead of the news ... Sign up for our email alerts now
CLICK HERE