Growing numbers of investors opened accounts with discount brokers during the late 1980s and early 1990s, providing for the first time a competitive alternative to full-service firms. Many banks set up discount brokerage units as an added service to customers,thus putting themselves a step closer to being one-stop financial centers. Banks saw offering brokerage services as a way to make it more convenient for customers to invest in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds and as a vehicle for attracting more self-managed individual retirement accounts (IRAs). Several mutual fund firms, like Fidelity Investments, also started discount brokerage units, chiefly to provide a service for their current investors and to attract new investors. Fidelity already had a number of offices nationwide and toll-free lines, as well as the internal infrastructure to accommodate securities trading ; hence, it was simple and inexpensive for fidelity to enter the discount brokerage business, given its existing resource base.