Online Tools from RidgeWorth Investments offer Learning Opportunities

ATLANTA, Sept. 29, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Most advisors know this phrase by heart: "Past results are not a guarantee of future performance."  But smart advisors also heed Winston Churchill's saying: "Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." Indeed, learning from the ups and downs of the financial markets—whether over a few years or several decades—can help advisors to make more informed investment decisions on behalf of their clients. That's why RidgeWorth Investments launched a trio of proprietary, interactive online tools that use historical data to illustrate how different investments might behave in different market environments.

"History offers lessons that inform planning for the present and future," noted Ashi Parikh, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of RidgeWorth Investments. "Our goal in creating these tools is to offer advisors a useful perspective about how portfolios performed in different historical conditions that encompass a wide variety of circumstances. The interactive nature of the tools helps illustrate how complex the interactions can be between such things as interest rates, markets and performance."

Rates, Performance & Markets (RPM) Tool. RPM is an interactive online tool that helps users investigate portfolio performance during historical periods such as rising or falling interest rate environments or bear and bull markets. Users can use interactive sliders to allocate a portfolio with 13 equity and fixed income assets classes to better understand how portfolios with specific characteristics might perform in certain market environments. RPM is available at www.ridgeworth.com/rpm.

Municipal Bond Tool. The Municipal Bond Tool offers a visual way to demonstrate the tax advantage of municipal bonds. By choosing an appropriate income bracket that best matches a client's household income, advisors can select from more than 30 years of data to show yields on both Treasury and municipal bonds, as well as the tax-equivalent yield of muni bonds at different income levels and tax rates. The result is a powerful, interactive tool that can help advisors demystify the benefits of investing in municipal bonds. The Municipal Bond Tool is available at www.ridgeworth.com/muni-bonds.

Mid-Cap Tool. This interactive Mid-Cap Tool allows advisors to compare rolling returns of mid-cap stocks to large- and small-cap stocks over a scalable time period. By selecting different time periods—from one year to ten years, or using more than 30 years of monthly return data—users can see how mid-cap stocks have performed compared to their small- and large-cap peers. The Mid-Cap Tool is available at www.ridgeworth.com/addmidcap.

The development of these tools is part of RidgeWorth Investments' ongoing commitment to serve the advisor community with practical and actionable materials to stay informed and better help them serve their clients. In addition to interactive online tools, RidgeWorth offers white papers and other original thought leadership. The organization's most recent white paper, "The Boutique Advantage," walks readers through the boutique investment management industry, including the reasons investors seek out these agile and highly focused firms, as well as what advisors and investors need to know before choosing a boutique partner. To access this white paper, visit www.ridgeworth.com/news-insights/ridgeworth-research.

About RidgeWorth Investments  RidgeWorth Investments serves as a holding company that owns interests in five investment boutiques with $48.7 billion in assets under management as of June 30, 2014. RidgeWorth's wholly owned boutiques are Ceredex Value Advisors, Certium Asset Management, Seix Investment Advisors, and Silvant Capital Management. RidgeWorth also holds a minority ownership in Zevenbergen Capital Investments. These investment boutiques manage a wide variety of investment disciplines across the fixed income and equity asset classes. Our boutiques provide investment management services to a growing client base that includes endowments, foundations, corporations, healthcare organizations, municipalities, public funds, associations, insurance companies, labor unions and high net worth individuals. In addition, RidgeWorth serves as the investment adviser to the RidgeWorth Funds mutual fund family. RidgeWorth Investments is a trade name for RidgeWorth Capital Management LLC, an investment adviser registered with the SEC headquartered in Atlanta. For more information about RidgeWorth, please visit www.ridgeworth.com.

©2014 RidgeWorth Investments. RidgeWorth Investments is the trade name for RidgeWorth Capital Management LLC, an investment adviser registered with the SEC and the adviser to the RidgeWorth Funds. RidgeWorth Funds are distributed by RidgeWorth Distributors LLC, which is not affiliated with the adviser. Collective Strength. Individual Insight. is a federally registered service mark of RidgeWorth Investments.

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SOURCE RidgeWorth Investments