China has more than protests on its place these days; it’s also ratcheted up its standards on requirements for ESG disclosure, according to linkedin.com.

The country’s banking and insurance regulators sent its most powerful signal to date that supporting the green economy also should be on the plates of banks insurers. New guidelines were introduced by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission making it incumbent upon on banking insurance entities to set forth strategies, processes and capacity to abet the transition to a sustainable future.

Typically, these measures change the duties of investors to blend ESG factors into investment decisions and stewardship and keep in mind beneficiary or client sustainability preferences. What’s more, they must report to their beneficiaries or clients.  

Since the growth of China’s ESG market works in conjunction with the development of the country’s green finance market, when it comes to ESG policy, it’s a no no to talk it over if the evolution of the country’s green finance policies aren’t kept in mind, according to sixthone.com.

Any luck, model portfolios aren’t especially attention adverse. It would help since they, along with technology upgrades and direct indexing increasingly are the cat’s meow among a growing battalion of advisor practices, a recent report found, reported pegasus-one.org.

And, hey, when it comes to model portfolios, take time to peruse the instructions. That’s because, the portfolios, when used the right way, can do a good job freeing up the time of advisory firms, allowing them to dig in more on other responsibilities, according to the findings of “The Cerulli Edge ― US Advisor Edition.”

Model portfolios should give advisors more time to devote to other advanced and financial planning capabilities, Cerulli said.

Among larger advisory firms, model portfolios probably will be adopted for small client accounts with assets on the lower end of the spectrum. That way, the report said, advisors will be able to focus on clients generating nose bleed level numbers. 

A strong catalyst for model portfolio adoption will emerge from the industry’s gradual segue in the direction of a financial planning oriented service, the report stated, according to napa-net.org.

Holly Framsted, ETF director at Capital Group, home of the American Funds, thinks that advisors and tax professionals shouldn’t overlook the role that actively managed fixed-income ETFs can play in tax loss harvesting. Tax loss harvesting is a strategy that involves selling investment securities at a loss to reduce federal capital gains taxes. Framstead notes that typically, investors will turn to the equity markets for tax loss harvesting, but with the bond markets also experiencing losses this year, fixed income should be considered part of the strategy. In an article for Bloomberg Tax, she wrote, “To realize capital losses through tax loss harvesting, investors must not purchase the same or a substantially identical fund or security for 30 days after the sale. During this time, cash raised from the sale of securities can be reinvested in strategies that are different from those that generated the loss.” She believes that the differentiation that active ETF strategies provide relative to other funds “may make them a compelling investment during the wash sale period as a way for investors to maintain exposure to a changing market while still booking losses.”

Finsum:Capital Group’s ETF director recommends incorporating active fixed-income ETFs into a tax loss harvesting strategy to take advantage of the differentiation that they provide.

Category: Bonds: Total Market

Keywords: active etfs, ETFs, fixed income, tax loss harvesting

Merrill Lynch has landed a San Franciso-based financial advisor from Morgan Stanley. Nandi Gunning, who managed $430 million at Morgan, joined Merrill Lynch’s private wealth management business, which caters to high-net-worth clients. According to the firm, the former CMW Group is now the CWMG Group with the addition of Gunning. The team includes advisors Anthony Canini, John Myers, and Andrew Wages. The CWMG Group also includes five support staff and is based in San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio. It oversees $2.5 billion in total. Gunning got her start at Morgan in 2014. She was drawn toward Merrill’s capabilities in banking, lending, and trust offerings. She also liked the idea of switching from running her own practice to working on a team. As part of a statement, she wrote, “While everyone has unique gifts, the power of teams is bringing together individual skills and talents, diverse perspectives, and vast experience to serve a common purpose. Diverse teams have a broader, more comprehensive view, and the more perspectives the better.” Merrill had previously landed a $1 billion team from Citi earlier in the month.

Finsum:Morgan Stanley advisor jumps ship to Merrill, drawn by the firm’s banking, lending, and trust offerings and the chance to work as part of a team.

Wavertown, a discretionary fund management firm in the UK, is currently pulling in net inflows of £100mn per month from financial advisors, with 85% going into model portfolios. Waverton attributes the growth in demand for its models due to the structural shift in the advice market towards outsourcing portfolio management. In 2020, the firm also noted an uptick in demand for real assets exposure and absolute return strategies from advisors and clients. Currently, more than 30 percent of assets in the model portfolios are allocated to those asset classes. The firm, which has assets under management of £8.6bn, works with 500 advice firms in the UK and offers a range of model portfolios. The firm is noteworthy for the fact that, unlike many other providers, Waverton does not allocate to external funds. Instead, it invests directly in equities, bonds, real assets, and absolute return funds. The firm started as JO Hambro Investment Management and was owned by Credit Suisse from 2001 to 2013. A private equity-backed buyout took place and the firm then renamed itself Waverton in 2014.

Finsum:A structural shift in portfolio management outsourcing has increased the demand for model portfolios driving inflows for a UK-based Wavertown.