Multifamily office selects HNW platform provider

FWR Staff

21 October 2008

Fortigent to expand Apogee's investment platform and reporting capabilities. Atlanta-based Apogee Family Office has retained Fortigent, a Rockville, Md.-based wealth-management platform provider to help it expand and deploy its roster of third-party asset managers and to improve its performance reporting.

"Our relationship with Fortigent will help us build upon and build out the core offerings that are most important to our clients, including world-class money management, sophisticated asset allocation, tax-managed strategies like their program, and incorporating alternatives wisely into our ultra-high-net-worth portfolios," says Taylor Fairman, Apogee's head of investments. "In addition, the firm's truly reconciled performance-reporting capabilities will help us to streamline our administrative processes."

Buildout

A unified managed account, or UMA, is a single-account investment product typically featuring a blend of manager-model separately managed accounts, mutual funds and ETFs. Fortigent's UMA program features overlay management by tax-managed investment-product provider Parametric. Overlay management is the process of aligning trading activity, managing cash flow and enhancing the overall tax efficiency of multiple-sleeve investment portfolios.

Apogee's family-office chief Jeff Davis says Fortigent differs from other third-party investment platform providers because it offers "significant customization opportunities, coupled with their open architecture approach and experience in the high net worth niche."

In fact Fortigent started out as the in-house third-party platform of Lydian Wealth Management . It is a subsidiary of Palm Beach, Fla.-based Lydian.

"We are excited that Apogee chose us after their extensive search for a robust partner," says Fortigent business developer John Yackel. "We look forward to helping them meet the sophisticated needs of their existing clients, while we strive to play an instrumental part in their growth as they attract new families."

Renovating its investment and reporting offering is part of a general buildout at three-year-old Apogee. In addition to Fairman, who joined the firm from Philadephia-based Hirtle Callaghan this past spring, the firm has brought in a number of senior staffers this year including Andy Lohn to manage its legal practice, former consultant Claude Beaudry as head of its business-advisory practice and Matt Edwards to lead its insurance-service team.

Apogee has about $80 million in assets under management. The firm expects to see a sharp increase in assets under management and supervision in coming years as its clients -- many of them successful entrepreneurs -- liquidate business assets in reparation for retirement and second careers.

Fortigent has 48 institutional clients and approximately $22 billion in assets on its platform. -FWR

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