U.S. separately managed account firm's growth spurs increase in offshoring. Chicago-based wealth-management platform provider Envestnet Asset Management plans to expand its operations in the Indian state of Kerala.

"The backbone of our entire operations is based here," says Babu Sivadasan, head of engineering at Envestnet. "We plan to increase our current employee strength of 165 to more than 200 soon."

Offshored outsourcing

Envestnet's office in the city of Thiruvananthapuram handles the operational aspects of wealth management, including platform development, maintenance and administration. These Kerala-based activities drive Envestnet's "software as a service" or SaaS approach to wealth-platform processing, which it has sold to institutions such as ING's Financial Network, Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management and Harris Bank.

"By embracing SaaS in 1999 in the U.S., we are able to offer a highly customizable platform to support various segments of the wealth-management space," says Sivadasan. "Today we are the second largest independent platform for wealth management solutions and we currently provide solutions that manage $37 billion in assets under management." -FWR

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