FundFire: Bank of Hawaii Launches $2B UMA Program

Article published on Fundfire on August 12, 2010
By Tom Stabile

The Bank of Hawaii is the latest wealth management outfit to ride the unified managed account wave, unveiling a new program that opens the door to third-party separately managed account managers for the first time. The Honolulu-based bankexpects to shift more than $2 billion of its $6.6 billion in client assets over to the new UMA program, which will include SMAs, mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in its inaugural lineup.

The commercial bank’s Investment Services Group touts itself as the largest trust and asset manager in the Aloha State’s financial services market. To date, the bank has funneled most of its wealth management services through its proprietary investing vehicles, including internal mutual funds and individual bond and equities selection handled by its own portfolio managers. The new UMA takes a much bigger step toward open architecture investing, says Steve Rodgers, the bank’s CIO.

“Right now we’re estimating that about $2 billion of our existing accounts will be converted over,” he adds. “We’re in the process of converting existing accounts over the next several months.”