The November issue of Crane Data's flagship Money Fund Intelligence contains the articles: "FDIC-Insured Brokerage Sweeps Draining MMFs," "Quiet Giant of Cash: Q&A w/Northern Trust," and "MM Portal Makeover: Union Bank's MoneyPort." MFI also summarizes the month's news in money funds, with briefs on assets, yields, regulations, filings, and more, and contains a wealth of performance statistics and rankings on over 1,300 money market mutual funds.
We've written about it briefly several times over the past couple of weeks on www.cranedata.com, but FDIC-insured brokerage sweeps, or "bankerage," fills our lead article in MFI this month. The issue says, "While investors are no-doubt moving assets out of money funds and into bond funds and stocks, we believe that what's really driving the outflows is the shift into 'bankerage,' or FDIC-insured brokerage sweep account programs by a number of large brokerages.... Recently, Schwab, TD Ameritrade, and BlackRock have all commented on the trend. We noticed several very large drops in brokerage retail money funds this month, so the trend shows no signs of slowing just yet. Retail money funds have been hemorrhaging cash all year."
Our latest MFI monthly money fund "profile" interviews members of Northern Trust's Money Market Fund team, including Steve Everett, Director of Balance Sheet, Assets, and Insurance, Peter Yi, Director of Money Markets, and Investment Strategist David Rothon. Northern manages over $70 billion in money funds, and the company ranks even higher among cash and short-duration managers when bank trust and securities lending pools are counted in the totals.
Finally, we announce the re-launch of Union Bank MoneyPort, Union Bank's entrant into the online money market fund trading portal custody business. We hear from banking industry veteran Marianne Bamonte about the new $6.3 billion platform, as well as about the bank's focus on the custody and liquidity marketplace. Look for more later today!
