Raymond James Investment Advisors has rolled out a new “no transaction fee” ETF platform, featuring 119 funds, for advisors and their clients in that division.

Raymond James Investment Advisors has rolled out a new “no transaction fee” exchange-traded fund platform, featuring 119 funds, for advisors and their clients in that division.

The moves comes amid heightened adoption rates of ETFs among RIAs, Raymond James said. According to figures from ETFGI last month, ETFs and exchange-traded products – two index-based investment vehicles that have surged in prominence over the past decade or more – gathered a record $199 billion in net new assets through the end of the third quarter of this year.

“The initial list of ETFs was selected based on our desire to give advisors additional tools to complement their management and hedging of portfolios and to improve performance by lowering the cost of trading,” said Mike DiGirolamo, managing director of Raymond James' investment advisors division.

“We will continually review prospective fund companies that meet our participant profile, with an emphasis on companies that are actively managed and have a pre-existing relationship with Raymond James,” DiGirolamo said.

The platform will allow the firm to offer “sophisticated asset allocation models” to smaller accounts in a household, “without the obstacle of ticket charges,” added David Yvars, principal of The David Yvars Group in New York.

“We serve a number of multi-generational families with estate planning and financial planning strategies, as do most advisors, and this new platform enhances our ability to educate and implement strategies in a cost effective way for our clients’ children and grandchildren, truly getting them involved in the process,” Yvars said. (His RIA firm uses Raymond James for clearing and custodial services.)

Raymond James said it is also exploring offering an no-transaction-fee ETF platform to other divisions of the firm in the future.