'Firms in Transition' Increasingly Turn to Fortigent

ROCKVILLE, Md., Jan. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortigent, LLC, a leading provider of outsourced wealth management solutions for financial advisors and institutions targeting high net worth clients, today announced that 2009 represented its best year in terms of new client partnerships and the renewal of existing client relationships.

Sixteen firms, representing banks, trust companies, and both start-up and existing RIAs selected Fortigent as their outsourced solutions provider. The new relationships range from "full service" clients to "performance reporting only" and "alternative investments only" clients. In addition, Fortigent renewed existing performance reporting relationships with several key clients, solidifying its position as the industry leader. The banner year brings Fortigent's client relationships to 65 firms that advise high net worth clients on approximately $30 billion in assets.

"The key to our success - in 2009 and going forward, as well - are 'firms in transition,'" said Andrew Putterman, CEO and President of Fortigent. "When you look at the firms that selected us as their outsourcing partner, the common thread is that they are all in a fundamental business model transition. In some cases, they are high producing brokerage or private banking teams that went independent and needed an immediate high-end solution designed for high net worth clients. In other cases, they are existing RIAs that made the strategic decision to either move away from an internal proprietary platform or to move 'upstream' in terms of their target client size, and they needed a fully integrated, open architecture solution. Another important profile was banks and trust companies looking to upgrade their reporting solution, enhance their alternative investment capabilities, or supplement their internal research offering. Because a key value proposition of Fortigent is our ability to tailor our offering to fit a variety of business models, we are able to attract a wide spectrum of potential advisor and bank partners."

"Also rewarding was the renewal of several large and very important performance reporting relationships," Putterman added. "These were competitive situations where we went toe-to-toe against the major players in that space, and we earned the business. I think that validates our belief that we are the industry leader in consolidated data aggregation and performance reporting."

"Finally, we've really positioned ourselves for future success. We beefed up our already robust investment offering, putting more than 40 new managers and strategies through our due diligence process and adding them to our platform. We successfully launched Access Overlay(TM), our Unified Management Account platform, and anticipate significant growth as UMAs become the preferred delivery 'vehicle' for high net worth portfolios. We expanded our alternative investment offering at both the fund of fund and single strategy levels, and we enhanced our already rigorous due diligence process in that area. And we invested significantly in technology, streamlining our aggregation and reporting processes and tremendously enhancing the client user experience."

About Fortigent. Fortigent, LLC delivers a fully integrated and customizable business-to-business outsourced wealth management solution to banks, trust companies, and independent advisory firms. Services include an "open architecture" investment platform with particular expertise in alternative investments, a flexible unified managed account program, and consolidated wealth reporting. Fortigent's web-based portal interface allows access to proposal and rebalancing tools, client portfolio reporting and accounting, as well as industry articles, research papers, and other practice management and business development resources. For more information, visit www.fortigent.com.

SOURCE Fortigent, LLC