Four ETF shops just gained special distribution access through Raymond James.

This morning Bill Van Law, president of Raymond James' RIA-supporting investment advisors division (IAD), unveiled his unit's new no transaction fee ETF platform, complete with 119 ETFs (mostly moderately active ETFs) from four shops: AdvisorShares [profile], DST's ALPS Advisors [profile], First Trust [profile], and GreenHaven [profile]. The statement also includes a line about the St. Petersburg, Florida-based, publicly-traded, super-regional broker-dealer "also exploring offering an NTF-ETF platform to other divisions of the firm in the future.".

"We do intend to roll it out also to the independent contractor advisors as well in the near future," Mike DiGirolamo, managing director of IAD, tells MFWire.

MFWire could not immediately reach AdvisorShares founder and CEO Noah Hamman for comment on the new platform. A spokeswoman for DST was not immediately able to comment for this story.

Watch for more ETF shops to join the platform. DiGirolamo states that the RayJay team is "already in conversations with additional fund companies to augment the platform."

Ivan Howard, managing director of investor relations at GreenHaven, confirms that this is the first NTF platform to include GreenHaven flagship (and only) ETF, the GreenHaven Continuous Commodity Index Fund.

"We were approached by Raymond James," Howard tells MFWire. "We thought it would be a great platform, a win-win for both firms."

Andy Subramanian, senior vice president at First Trust, praises the RayJay NTF ETF platform as "offering advisors a better way to serve their clients."

RayJay's IAD works with more than $10 billion for about 350 advisors at 112 RIAs. 

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