A separate account is a
segregated accounting and reporting
account held by an
insurance
Insurance is a means of protection from financial loss in which, in exchange for a fee, a party agrees to compensate another party in the event of a certain loss, damage, or injury. It is a form of risk management, primarily used to hedge ...
company not in, but rather "separate" from its
general account. A separate account allows an investor to choose an investment category according to his individual risk tolerance, and desire for performance. An account may be a generic conservative or aggressive investment allocation, or a specific
mutual fund
A mutual fund is a professionally managed investment fund that pools money from many investors to purchase securities. The term is typically used in the United States, Canada, and India, while similar structures across the globe include the SICAV ...
-type account. Some
offshore companies
The term "offshore company" or “offshore corporation” is used in at least two distinct and different ways. An offshore company may be a reference to:
* a company, group or sometimes a division thereof, which engages in offshoring business pr ...
allow the account owners to specify the type of separate account to open.
Separate accounts in the U.S. markets are often characterized as either managed or non-managed. A managed separate account is synonymous to a mutual fund in the sense that the investments of the separate account are actively managed (such as stocks, bonds or other debt instruments, loans, derivative instruments, etc.). A non-managed separate account is one that invests more "passively" in that it typically owns shares of other managed pools of investments such as mutual fund shares. This is similar to a "
fund of funds
A "fund of funds" (FOF) is an investment strategy of holding a portfolio of other investment funds rather than investing directly in stocks, bonds or other securities. This type of investing is often referred to as multi-manager investment. A ...
" whereby the separate account ("fund") simply invests in shares of one or more mutual funds. This arrangement is sometimes more efficient and cost-effective rather than the insurance company maintaining many separate accounts with similar baskets of securities.
Separate accounts are sometimes confused with
separately managed account In the investment management industry, a separately managed account (SMA) is any of several different types of investment accounts. For example, an SMA may be an individual managed investment account; these are often offered by a brokerage firm t ...
s (SMAs), which are privately managed investment accounts opened through a brokerage or financial adviser that uses pooled money to buy individual assets. These differ from mutual funds because the investor directly owns the securities instead of owning a share in a pool of securities. Most SMAs require a minimum investment of $100,000 or more.
References
Insurance
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