An investment firm or brokerage that offers investors a wide array of mutual funds from different fund families. Investors benefit by obtaining access to an extensive range of top performing funds, as well as by receiving a consolidated statement of all their mutual fund holdings.

As the mutual fund industry has matured, fund families have been finding it increasingly difficult to channel investors to funds solely from their family, due to competition from other mutual funds and newer products such as exchange-traded funds. Investors also prefer investing across different fund families, since a single family is unlikely to have the top performers in all of the myriad categories now available.