Lydian’s Fortigent aims high

Thomas Coyle

19 July 2005

The wealth firm’s advisor-solutions unit eschews a mass-market approach. Multi-family office Lydian Wealth Management has officially re-branded its four-year-old “Advisor Solutions” group as Fortigent. Lydian says it adopted the name – which has been in the market for about a year already – to distinguish its third-party investment platform from its direct-to-client wealth-management services.

Rockville, Md.-based Lydian, a subsidiary of Palm Beach, Fla-based holding company Lydian Trust, has also tapped Henry Morneault, formerly head of wholesale banking at Riggs National Bank, to become Fortigent’s chief operating officer. “With his banking background and experience in managing multiple business lines, to high-net-worth clients,” he says. “More recently our partners have tended to be regional banks or larger advisors that already have a high-net-worth client base, but are seeking to complement their existing in-house products and services.”

Among Fortigent’s recently acquired clients are the private-client group of Cleveland-based National City Bank, New York-based accounting firm Weiser’s capital-management unit, and FBR Investment Management, the wealth-management subsidiary of Arlington, Va.-based investment bank Friedman Billings Ramsey.

High end

Lydian says Fortigent owes some of its success to a strategy of sticking to the high end of the market and refusing to go head-to-head with turnkey asset-management programs (TAMPs) – also known as third-part investment platform providers – in a fight for mass-market assets. Some of the bigger third-party providers are Pershing’s Lockwood Advisors, PFPC’s Advisorport, BNP Paribas’ FundQuest and Brinker Capital.

“The TAMP market is extremely competitive and ,” he says. “It provides them with a practice management perspective they don’t get from other providers.”

Among other third-party investment platform providers is SunGard Advisor Technologies and independents such as U.S. Fiduciary, GlobalBridge Advisors, Envestnet Asset Management and Advisor Partners. –FWR

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