Automating saves bucks, says study

Brokerage firms blithely doing mutual fund and annuity transactions by hand are paying a far greater cost than they realize, according to a report published today by Aite group LLC of Boston.

More than 41% of the firms who still do this work manually estimate their costs between zero and $20.

The reality is that it costs the broker-dealers between $26 and $41 for mutual fund transactions.

The actual cost per manual annuities transaction is $59 to $80, according to the Aite study entitled “Straight-through-Processing.”

Automating the process saves about 20% per transaction, it added.