Fidelity doles out perks to high-net-worth clients

Fidelity Investments Wednesday rolled out a suite of perks for affluent investors, including access to the company’s highest-yielding money market funds and better rewards on its cash-back credit card.

The move is the latest among financial service providers to entice wealth management clients with bank-related benefits. Robo-advisers such as Betterment and Wealthfront are also competing for clients by dangling such extras as checking services and savings accounts with high yields.

For wealth management clients with at least $250,000 invested, the company is bumping up the cash back they can get through its no-fee Fidelity Rewards Visa Signature Card by as much as a percentage point. The perk is an additional 0.25% back on all purchases for those with the minimum account size, for a total 2.25%, though it goes as high as 3% in total for clients with more than $2 million in the program.

Fidelity is also giving eligible wealth management clients free online options trades, with an unlimited number for those with at least $2 million invested.

The new program, which the company calls Rewards Plus, also waives investment minimums for some of its money-market funds, which as of Monday offered seven-day yields ranging from 0.32% to 0.51%, Fidelity said.

Last year, the company made waves by announcing it would use money-market funds as the default sweep option for new brokerage and retirement accounts, rather than FDIC-insured bank deposits. Some competitors responded that their programs have money-market funds available for sweep money, even if they are not used as the default option.

The new wealth management perks also include identity-theft monitoring and insurance, the company noted in its announcement.

“By building a unique benefits package with Fidelity Rewards [Plus], we believe we are providing a new kind of return on investment to the estimated 22 million American households that could qualify for this program by helping them save and earn even more money as well as further protecting their digital information,” David Dintenfass, the company’s chief marketing officer, said in the announcement.