A mutual fund shop in Texas is shifting away from subadvisors to more in-house management. Watch for staff expansions.

"We're getting good traction in our fund distribution," Tom Stringfellow, president of Frost Investment Advisors [profile], tells MFWire. "We'll be looking to expand that in the future, hopefully in the next 12 months."

"We have added to our fixed income staff. We've added to our equity staff," over the last nine months," Stringfellow adds. "We're probably going to expand our sales staff. We'll be adding to our marketing staff.

Stringfellow says that the Frost team focuses their distribution efforts on relationship building, particularly with advisors who aren't "just looking for a tactical trade, they're making an asset allocation decision."

"We view that as an opportunity to tell them our story," Stringfellow says.

On the product side, Frost has recently shut down three mutual funds: buy/write (covered call) strategy fund, an international fund, and a natural resources fund. While the natural resources fund was run in-house at Frost, Thornburg had subadvised the international fund, and a partnership that has now split up ran the buy/write strategy.

"We're focusing on our internally managed strategies," Stringfellow says. "We'd rather focus our research efforts on core strategies that we have internal management strength in."

The Frost Investment Advisors team of 60 manages about $11 billion in AUM, including $3.5 billion across 12 mutual funds. They still work with one subadvisor, Stringfellow says, but "everything else is internally-managed in San Antonio." 

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