Envestnet enhances platform to woo UHNW advisors

FWR Staff

25 November 2008

Capabilities "help advisors to oversee complex family investment portfolios". Third-party investment platform provider Envestnet has launched a multi-custodial reporting platform to give advisors an edge in capturing family-office assets. In effect, Envestnet is taking capabilities it developed for internal purposes and offering them to advisors in competition with high-wealth reporting providers like Private Client Resources, WealthTouch, Rockit and -- to name a competitor that also offers manager research and access -- Fortigent.

"Envestnet is now positioned to deliver a comprehensive reporting solution to the family wealth manager situated within any type of business -- independent RIAs, single and multi-family offices, brokerage firms, banks and trust companies -- that can tightly integrate investment management with other financial services including financial planning, philanthropy, tax planning, bill payment, and more," says Envestnet's business-development head Andrew Rose.

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The impetus to provide daily updated, fully reconciled and custom-view reporting on assets held at multiple custodians as well on alternatives positions comes partly from the firm's desire to attract new users and partly from demand from existing users.

"We have advisors who are already serving family offices," says Rose. "They're telling us, 'We love what you're doing," but they want to be able to do more." In this context, Rose tells of a Envestnet client that manages a slice of a particular family's assets -- and would like to be able show its wealth-management capabilities across the entire portfolio.

Estimates vary, but it's generally thought there are at least 3,000 private and commercial family offices in the U.S. serving end clients with, collectively, more than $750 billion in investable assets.

Ultra-high-net-worth families need performance reporting thtokeep pace with the array of investments available to them, according to Envestnet's president Bill Crager. "Investment theory has become a challenge of implementation and support," he says. "Envestnet has enhanced its platform to make implementation, on-going management and robust, comprehensive performance reporting possible."

Chicago-based Envestnet provided advisory support to more than 100,000 advisors with $81 billion in client assets across more than 650,000 accounts at the end of August 2008. -FWR

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