Over 100 Investment Managers Now Participating in Placemark Investments’ Overlay Management Process

- Provides Sponsors with More Than 140 Different Investment Strategies
To Construct Unified Managed Account Programs for Advisors and Clients -

DALLAS/WELLESLEY, Mass., August 1 – Placemark Investments today announced that over 100 investment managers are now participating in Unified Managed Account (UMA) programs via Placemark’s overlay management process. Placemark, the leading overlay manager to financial services companies offering UMAs, reached this milestone with the recent addition of managers for multiple new sponsor clients. These investment managers, who act as sub-advisors to Placemark, encompass a wide array of investment styles and asset classes and include many of the most notable and successful names in the managed account industry.

This expanding manager list gives Placemark’s sponsors the industry’s broadest selection when creating UMA portfolios for their firms, reducing the time and expense associated with developing a custom UMA program. New sponsors looking to develop custom UMA programs using their preferred managers usually find that many of those managers are already working with Placemark. Placemark‘s success in attracting top investment managers is due both to its ability to maintain the integrity of the managers’ investment strategies and its ability to support operational procedures unique to each investment manager. Placemark has consistently maintained better than a 90% success rate in hiring and retaining new investment managers requested by sponsors.

Placemark supports sponsors in developing fully open-architecture UMA programs, allowing the sponsor to add or modify their clients’ investment selections. In developing their UMA programs, sponsors generally incorporate a wide array of separate account investment strategies, mutual funds, ETFs and other investment products. Placemark acts as the overlay manager for the sponsor’s UMA program, with discretion over client trading. The exact product mix, feature set, and program architecture is unique to each sponsor, providing maximum flexibility and the ability for sponsors to focus on additional value-adding attributes.

“Advisors should be able to utilize the separate account investment managers and products they prefer, and that have already been selected and reviewed by the home office’s manager selection and due diligence group,” said Randy Bullard, President of Placemark Investments. “At Placemark, our long term goal is to have every separate account investment manager that a sponsor would want available through our overlay management process. We have found that many institutional managers who have traditionally shied away from the operational complexities of SMA programs are attracted to working through our overlay management process.”

Placemark spends considerable time working with investment managers that are added to a sponsor’s UMA program, helping them through the legal and operational processes unique to working with an overlay manager. Participating managers generally view Placemark as a partner in enabling the sponsor’s program strategy.

“We develop a detailed understanding of each manager’s investment philosophy and operational processes when we begin working with them,” said Ron Pruitt, Placemark’s Chief Investment Officer. “It’s of critical importance to us that we preserve the underlying integrity of each manager’s investment style as we implement it through our overlay process. Participating managers need to understand our process to develop the confidence that we can act in this capacity, and we work hard to earn that confidence.”

“We’re happy to be a participant in Placemark’s overlay process, which is providing the financial services industry with a breakthrough investment product that offers new wealth opportunities to so many new investors,” said Barry Peters, Director of Advisory Services at Voyageur Asset Management. “We currently are offering Large, Mid- and Small Cap Growth solutions through their overlay process to multiple sponsors and see enormous growth potential in this relationship.”