Sigma Planning Corporation latest RIA to partner with WM-platform provider. Ann Arbor. Mich.-based RIA Sigma Planning Corporation (SPC) has launched a new separately managed account (SMA) platform using technology, back-office services, advisor productivity tools, performance reporting, and investment research from FundQuest. The platform is meant to equip SPC's 500 or so advisors to provide customized investment advice and account services to their clients.

"We analyzed the market very carefully to find a partner with advanced technology and deep research capabilities [that] are backed up by strong operational and wholesaling support," says SPC's director of financial planning Tony Bacarella. "We are confident that FundQuest's client services and wholesaling teams will provide excellent support to our [advisors] and management team as we continue to expand our presence in the RIA market."

(SPC shouldn't be confused with Sigma Financial Services, a Roanoke, Va.-based retirement-income planner that recentlytapped back-office outsourcer BridgePortfolio to support a manager-models-based program.)

Breakaways and custodians

FundQuest provides third-party investments to fee-based private-client platforms across all distribution channels but it's seeing a particular uptick in demand from RIAs. In addition to working with 12 of 20 biggest independent broker-dealer networks, three of the 10 biggest U.S. banks, 10 of the 50 top insurance-company-based broker-dealer networks as well as a bevy of community-bank, credit-union, retirement-plan and trust-investment service providers, it supports more than 80 RIAs.

Demand from RIAs is being fueled by an increase in the number of brokers -- especially wirehouse brokers -- moving to the investment advisory space, according to FundQuest's national sales director Bob Peatman. "Advisors from the wirehouses are used to having access to due diligence, money managers, reporting and billing -- and our product is most like what they're used to seeing."

But FundQuest is also winning converts among "traditional RIAs who tend to do everything themselves," says the firm's CIO Tim Clift. "Even if they like to pick stocks, they're not likely to be covering more than a few styles and we cover a lot more than that."

Another reason for FundQuest's success among RIAs is that custodians -- segment's primary gatekeepers as far as vendors are concerned -- have grown "more accommodating to outside products," says Peatman. "They've really shown themselves eager to give the advisor more choice."

Over the past few years FundQuest has become a preferred provider on the institutional platforms of Schwab and Fidelity, the two biggest RIA custodians, in addition to fourth-place Pershing and, most recently, the JPMorgan Chase unit that absorbed Bear Stearns ' custody and clearing business.

Boston-based FundQuest, a subsidiary of Paris-based BNP Paribas since mid 2005, works with more than 130 financial institutions. With U.S. and European operations put together, it has $64 billion in assets under management and administration. SPC has approximately $1 billion in assets under management. -FWR

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