Access Capital, co-founded and run by President and Chief Executive Officer Ron Homer since 1997, runs the publicly traded Community Investment Fund. Most of the $500 million mutual fund’s 130 investors are banks, including about 20 that are based in Massachusetts.
The fund invests in debt securities that support community development in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, and banks invest in the fund as a way to help meet their obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act.
“This is great for our customers – they will get more resources. RBC is a triple-A rated bank. And I think the fact that we’ll be lowering the fees [and will have] more liquidity in the fund is all beneficial to our customers. We will still be based here, locally, and I’ll still be active in the community and may have a bigger budget to spend,” said Homer, who will continue as the president of Access Capital, which will become a division of $34 billion Voyageur.
Voyageur President and Chief Investment Officer Mike Lee said in a statement that more and more Voyageur clients these days are looking for investment opportunities “consistent with their values.” The Community Investment Fund provides them with specific ways to do that, he said: the ability to target investments by income and region, “pinpointing where their invest-ment can make a positive impact in a community.”
Homer said he was surprised but pleased when Voyageur approached him to ask if his company wanted to be acquired shortly after Access Capital hired the Minneapolis-based invest-ment advisor to advise the Community Investment Fund. Homer is a longtime member of Banker & Tradesman’s Advisory Board, a group of quarterly opinion column writers.
Banks will continue to get CRA credit for investing in the Community Investment Fund as they have in the past, Homer said, but now will have the opportunity to draw out money daily, if needed, instead of quarterly.
Access Capital President and CIO David Sand described the opportunity to work with Voyageur and other RBC-owned entities in Boston and around the United States – such as top-10 broker-dealer Dain Rauscher and a housing finance advisor group that works with state housing finance agencies – as “pretty unusual.” He said the transaction “makes a lot of sense” be-cause clients now will have the same access to increased resources.
CIF’s largest investor is the state employees’ retirement fund (Massachusetts’ Pension Reserves Investment Management), which has $75 million of $150 million total targeted to Massa-chusetts. In January 2007, CIF opened to individual investors with a minimum of $25,000, a strategy that has not yet attracted many investors.
Sand said investors he’s spoken with have been “very positive” about the acquisition and announced changes.
