Product & Service Launches – 10/22/2026

55ip Expands UMA Capabilities for RIA Channel

Investment technology platform 55ip announced expansion of its unified managed account capabilities for the registered investment adviser channel.

The expanded platform combines managed and custom model portfolio strategies with equity separately managed accounts in a single account, powered by 55ip’s ActiveTax Technology.

The initial offering includes model portfolios with separately managed accounts from J.P. Morgan Asset Management, 55ip’s parent company, and BlackRock. Additional asset managers are expected to join later this year.

Mercer Advisors Launches Aspen Investing

Mercer Advisors Inc. launched Aspen Investing, a proprietary investment platform.

Powered by Mercer Advisors’ investing team, Aspen Investing provides advisers with direct access to Mercer’s full suite of investment solutions. The platform enables advisers to build a personalized portfolio for each client.

Built in collaboration with wealth technology provider Orion, Aspen Investing uses unified managed accounts to integrate strategies from multiple third-party managers within a single account. Portfolios can be aligned with a client’s financial plans and investment objectives, incorporating tax management, security-specific exclusions or additions, values-based overlays and alternative investment allocations.

The platform also provides portfolio capabilities, including direct indexing, advanced tax management, integration of legacy positions and enhanced reporting and monitoring.

Sagard Expands Private Business into U.S. Wealth Market

Sagard, a global alternative asset management firm, announced the entry of its private credit business into the U.S. wealth market. Sagard’s private credit business had $5.9 billion in assets as of June 30.

The expansion builds on Sagard’s strategic partnership with Baird Financial Group, announced in September 2025, which includes collaboration on distribution, product innovation and adviser engagement in the U.S. wealth channel. Sagard will develop educational content, private markets insights and other resources to help financial professionals evaluate the role of private credit in client portfolios, according to the announcement.

Adviser, Industry Exec Debut Platform for Guidance Through Aging Transitions

Tom West, managing senior partner at Signature Estates & Investment Advisors, and Suzanne Schmitt, an industry executive who previously led aging investor strategy at Fidelity, launched Healthspan Wealth, a platform designed to help advisers guide clients through aging, health and caregiving transitions.

The platform includes more than 100 event-based journeys that begin when a triggering event is identified. In the instance of a client assuming caregiving responsibilities for a parent, for instance, advisers are given conversation topics to assess, plan and monitor their client’s finances, legal documents, long-term care plans and lifestyle needs. Firms can also build their own journeys through the platform’s journey builder, which allows firms to encode their existing processes into the same structured format.

StepStone Launches Total Portfolio Allocator

StepStone Group L.P. announced the launch of StepStone Total Portfolio Allocator, a modeling tool that provides financial professionals and plan sponsors with a way to view the impact of adding private assets to a public market portfolio.

The tool leverages SPI by StepStone, StepStone’s web-based platform and technology solutions suite for private market portfolios, which centralizes and analyzes private markets data from general partners, funds and underlying investments.

Total Portfolio Allocator users can begin with a public market risk profile, add private markets allocations across four asset classes and compare hypothetical returns, volatility and risk-return metrics with an equivalent public-markets-only portfolio. Users can also examine historical drawdowns and explore how modeled portfolios would have behaved through the 2008 financial crisis, COVID-19 and the 2022 interest-rate shock.

Schwab Asset Management Launches International Bond ETF

Schwab Asset Management, the asset management arm of the Charles Schwab Corp., launched the Schwab International Bond ETF, an exchange-traded fund designed to provide investors with access to the international investment-grade bond market. The ETF began trading on the NYSE Arca under ticker SCIN on October 21 and has an expense ratio of 0.06%.

According to the announcement, SCIN’s goal is to track as closely as possible, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index comprising international non-U.S. dollar denominated investment-grade debt securities. The ETF invests in international developed and emerging markets and uses forward and future contracts to hedge foreign currency exposure back to the U.S. dollar.

SCIN offers exposure to a mix of international investment-grade bonds, including sovereign, quasi-government, corporate, securitized and collateralized securities across more than 40 countries. The fund’s largest country exposures are expected to be France, Germany, Japan, the U.K. and Italy.

Vanguard to Expand Target-Date Lineup with Target Retirement Growth Trusts

Vanguard announced the upcoming launch of the Vanguard Retirement Growth Trusts, a series of target-date collective investment trusts that maintain a higher exposure to equities than a traditional target-date fund.

The new series, built on the same foundation as Vanguard’s retirement funds and trusts, automatically adjusts its investment mix as investors approach retirement age. By keeping a higher exposure to equities across a participant’s glidepath, however, the CITs are intended for plans with participants whose needs, risk tolerances or retirement objectives may be better suited to take on additional equity risk.

Allspring Announces ETF Share Classes for 3 Mutual Funds

Allspring Global Investments launched exchange-traded fund share classes for three existing mutual funds, which began trading on October 21.

The share classes are:

• Allspring Short-Term High Income Fund-ETF Class, which seeks current income by investing primarily in a diversified portfolio of non-investment-grade corporate debt securities with an average effective maturity or three years or less;
• Allspring Strategic Municipal Bond Fund-ETF Class, which pursues tax-free income by principally investing in a diversified portfolio of municipal securities, and;
• Allspring High-Yield Municipal Bond Fund-ETF Class, which seeks high current income and capital appreciation by investing in a diversified portfolio of municipal securities, most of which are rated triple-B or lower.