The main appeal for wealthy individuals is the access to professional money managers, a high degree of customization and greater tax efficiencies in a fee-based product.
There is broad agreement that managed accounts provide the added benefits of greater transparency, liquidity and control.
[3] Managed account minimums and the cost to operate managed account programs have steadily dropped as technology helps with efficiency and scale.
Increasingly, managed account products are seeing interest from the "mass affluent" as well.
The retail managed accounts industry was sized at $1.70 trillion in 3Q 2009.