由经纪公司和独立投资顾问销售、由专业人士运营的定制投资组合——分管账户正在蓬勃发展。资产管理协会报告称，去年第三季末，独立账户持有的资产达到6,450亿美元，较上年同期增长20.7%，较2003年同期增长41.0%。尽管SMA增长速度超过共同基金,其资产在截至2005年11月的12个月增长了10.6%,至8.77万亿美元,许多资产管理公司以及SMA赞助商小券商担心未来,而不是因为缺乏富有民间任何迫在眉睫的问题,而是因为技术问题。“目前连接参与者的Andy-of-Mayberry电话和传真网络阻碍了该行业发挥其潜力，”戴维·加德纳(David Gardner)说，他是西弗吉尼亚州查尔斯顿的一位咨询师，与MMI和Depository Trust & Clearing corp合作开发中央通信设施。如今，连接和运营成本占到赞助商收入的20%至25%。随着业务的增长，这个数字会让每个人超越临界点。”目前，这一业务较为集中:五家经纪公司——花旗集团(Citigroup)、美林(Merrill Lynch & Co.)、摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)、瑞银集团(UBS)和瓦乔维亚集团(Wachovia Corp.)——占据了几乎80%的交易量。每家公司都以自己的形式与资产管理公司进行沟通。如果一个经理是由这些公司之一选择的，它必须支付链接费用，并以经纪委托书的格式进行沟通。随着业务发展到包括地区券商和独立顾问，一些基金经理支持15至20名赞助商关系。密歇根州咨询公司史密斯巴尼咨询集团(Smith Barney Consulting Group)前总裁、MMI数据标准委员会主席弗兰克•坎帕纳雷(Frank Campanale)表示:“从某种意义上说，对大型基金公司来说，维持现状没什么问题:它们为什么要让较小的竞争对手更容易接触到领先的基金管理公司?” "But removing the communications bottlenecks would give more investors and advisers access to a wider number of money managers, and that would increase the business overall."In 2003, after the MMI released a report by Deloitte & Touche that predicted imminent gridlock, the trade group began developing what have evolved into 14 standard messages, or information points, about each account. At the same time, DTCC started work on a sponsor-manager interface akin to the Fund/SERV mutual fund processing service operated by its National Securities Clearing Corp. regulated subsidiary.But commercial vendors that provide communications pipelines between money managers and sponsors argued that a not-for-profit utility would pose unfair competition to them, prompting DTCC to withdraw a filing it had submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission."We are opposed to a closed standard," says Hilary Fiorella, vice president of marketing at CheckFree Investment Services, a Norcross, Georgiabased vendor. "If DTCC implements the MMI standards, is truly open like [the] FIX and Swift [protocols] and wants to serve as a hub, that's okay."DTCC is now working on an open hub that will be available to everyone and located in a nonregulated part of the organization, says Ann Bergin, who oversees distribution ser-vices there. The hub will use the MMI standards and proprietary DTCC schema, or programming language and formats, that are recognizable by the computer systems of DTCC users. Most brokerages and managers already use the New Yorkbased utility either directly or through intermediaries."The ultimate benefit of standardization using a hub comes through the concentration of traffic," adds Bergin. "Using our schema but communicating through another hub doesn't get anyone there."Bergin says a steering committee of initial users is being formed, but getting the hub going may require a major player to take the first step. Fortunately, says one executive working on the project, "one large manager, whom all the large firms have in their programs, is moving toward requiring that sponsors use the hub to access its managers. That could be the trigger."