New label a nod to growing importance to the company of trust banks, TPAs. Fidelity has ditched the name Fidelity RIA Group for its RIA, trust bank and third-party administrator (TPA) custody and business-support business.

The Boston-based fund company figures the new name, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services (Fidelity Institutional), better recognizes "the evolving role trust institutions and [TPAs] also play in meeting the wealth-management needs of investors," according to a company press release.

Name game

At last count Fidelity custodied about $280 billion for 3,600 RIAs and 200 or so bank trust and TPAs. In part, the RIA Group's name change reflects Fidelity's views on where a lot of wealth-management money is going. The company says that Tiburon Strategic Advisors suggests an increase in personal-trust assets from around $3 trillion to $7 trillion by 2010. It adds that the Spectrem Group sees TPAs getting an increasing share of the retirement-plan market.

"The growing reliance on workplace retirement plans, the maturing of the baby boomers and greater consumer demand for access to sophisticated wealth-management products and services is driving the evolution of our clients' businesses," says Fidelity Institutional's president Jack Callahan.

Variation

Though Fidelity doesn't mention it, RIA assets are expected to grow as well. Independent investment advisories expect to see annual increases of about 21.1% through this and the next two years. RIA grew by about 10% a year since the market downturn of 2001, according to a recent study of 78 RIAs.

"Our name is changing, our commitment to clients has never been stronger," says Callahan. "Our goal is to connect our clients to the strongest platform in the industry, providing new ways to help them thrive and grow profitably."

In any event the "institutional" moniker is a favorite with big advisory custodians. Schwab uses it; so does TD Ameritrade.

On the other hand Pershing's RIA-support business is called Advisor Solutions and Bear Stearns calls its RIA custody unit Bear Stearns Investment Advisor Services.

Fidelity has the biggest institutional custody business after Schwab. -FWR

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