Consultatnt to CPA-based wealth firms adds investment to service platform. iPro One has selected third-party investment-research and performance-reporting provider Fortigent to support its wealth-management offering to CPA-based investment advisories.

"We were attracted by Fortigent's understanding of high-net-worth investors, its open-architecture investment platform, its expertise in alternative investments and its consultative service model," says Keys Tinney, a senior v.p. with New York-based iPro One. "In addition, we were seeking a firm that sponsored a high quality [unified managed account] program that integrates and coordinates multiple investment strategies within a single account in a tax-effective manner that CPA firms can use."

Stocking up

Rockville, Md.-based Fortigent partners with Seattle-based index overlay manager Parametric on its unified managed account, or UMA. Overlay management is the process of aligning trading activity, managing cash flow and enhancing the overall tax efficiency of multiple-sleeve investment portfolios.

Fortigent's CEO Andrew Putterman says he and his colleagues "are impressed by iPro One's commitment to providing a top-tier wealth management solution for their CPA wealth advisory firms. You would be hard-pressed to find two firms whose business models and perspectives on the wealth management industry are more closely aligned."

iPro One, which is one-quarter owned by Houston-based investment bank Sanders Morris Harris, provides operations support and related consulting services to CPA-owned wealth managers. In a ddition to a roster of outsource-only clients, it began taking minority-ownership stakes in its institutional clients this year. To date it has bought into HbK Sorce Financial, the wealth-management subsidiary of Alliance, Ohio-based CPA Hill, Barth & King, and Tegra Financial Partners, an affiliate of Atlanta-based accountancy Habif, Arogeti & Wynne.

In picking Fortigent, iPro One continues the buildout of its wealth-management platform. In recent weeks it has added reporting capabilities from Black Diamond Performance Reporting and a client-proposal system from Advisor Software Inc.

Fortigent, a subsidiary of Palm Beach, Fla.-based holding company Lydian, started out as the in-house third-party platform of Lydian Wealth Management (now City National Bank's Convergent Wealth Advisors). It has about 50 institutional clients and around $22 billion in assets on its platform. -FWR

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