Investment house Altshuler Shaham Ltd. is opening a new front against the banks, and intends to cancel some of the distribution agreements for its provident and advanced training funds with them. The investment house will distribute via banks only one fund of each investment instrument, and will distribute the rest through insurance agents and other distributors.
Altshuler Shaham's provident funds have NIS 8.6 billion in assets under management.
Altshuler Shaham Provident Funds general manager Yair Levinstein is leading the effort. He told "Globes" yesterday that the objective was "to enable the banking distribution system to operate alongside a distribution system of agents, who will provide a higher level of service and operations for each of the distribution channels."
Levinstein does not think that the banks will object to reopening the distribution agreements.
Banking sources are nonetheless quite displeased by Levinstein's move, which puts them in a problematic position, because they are mandated to provide objective advice to customers and offer them all suitable investment instruments. A situation is quite possible to arise in which Altshular Shaham provident funds that are not included in a bank's distribution agreements could be the best suited to a bank customer's needs, and the bank will be forced to offer it without collecting a distribution fee.
A bank executive said, "This is monkey business as far as we're concerned. If Altshuler doesn’t want to work with the bank, it should cancel the distribution agreement."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on August 27, 2009
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