Folio Investing and Folio Institutional, which provide online brokerage services to investors, financial advisors, institutions and their clients, say they will be the first organizations to sell Eaton Vance NextShares, which are exchange-traded managed funds.
Folio will offer NextShares on its platforms in conjunction with Navigate Fund Solutions, the developers of NextShares and a subsidiary of Eaton Vance, pending regulatory approvals.
"We are delighted to work with Folio as the first broker-dealer to make NextShares directly available to individual investors and advisors on its platforms," said Navigate President Stephen W. Clarke, in a statement. "We commend Folio for their innovative leadership in bringing this pioneering fund structure to the market."
According to Navigate, NextShares aim to protect the confidentiality of fund trading information and provide buyers and sellers of shares with transparency and control of their trading costs, while saving them 60 to 80 basis points over actively managed equity mutual funds.
In related news Tuesday, ALPS says it has entered into an agreement with Navigate in order to roll out a family of ALPS NextShares. According to ALPS, the new ALPS NextShares funds will be launched through the ALPS ETMF Trust, which it says is a "turnkey solution for investment managers looking to launch new NextShares funds."
"It's clear to us that NextShares can offer certain advantages as vehicles for active investment strategies," said ALPS Holdings CEO Ned Burke, in a statement. "As pioneers in product development, we look forward to working with Navigate to bring this new product initiative to the marketplace."
The timing of NextShares launch depends upon final regulatory approval and market readiness, ALPS adds.
On Aug. 18, Envestnet, a wealth management platform for financial advisors, signed on as the first advisor-platform provider for NextShares. Eaton Vance has filed registration statements for 18 NextShares funds based on Eaton Vance-branded mutual funds. (Envestnet's network includes 41,000-plus advisors and $700 billion in client assets.) Eleven asset managers, including ALPS and Eaton Vance, have said they plan to offer the funds.
