Founded in Atlanta, Georgia, on January 11, 2005, FiduciaryVest LLC is an independent, fee-only, employee-owned investment advisory firm. We currently serve 33 institutional clients representing 62 different asset pools and $8.7 billion in assets.
The continuity of our investment advisory team spans more than fifteen years. The core of our team was formed in 1996 when a team of five professionals established Arthur Andersen’s Institutional Investment Consulting Practice. Seven of our current eleven professionals worked together at Arthur Andersen, and we are proud to have maintained the majority of our client relationships that originated during our Andersen days. Thus, our team has been working together to provide investment consulting services for over fifteen years, which includes the last six years at FiduciaryVest.
FiduciaryVest is owned by its founding principals, Philly Jones and Harold Small. There is no financial parent, subsidiary, or affiliated organization.
We have no formal or informal alliances with any banks, investment managers, broker-dealers, or administrative service providers.
What sets FiduciaryVest apart from other investment advisory or consulting firms?
Several of the characteristics of our services that set us apart from our competitors are described below.
Fiduciary Independence
FiduciaryVest is an independent investment consulting firm specializing in fiduciary assets for major market sectors with a particular focus on healthcare and retirement programs. We are highly experienced and comfortable working as advisors and fiduciaries to ensure that our clients meet all legislative, state, and federal requirements for governance, compliance, and best practices for their investment programs. Our firm’s revenues come entirely from our client fees; we receive no income or other benefits from any third-party financial services firms.
The Industry’s Best Consulting Tools
We subscribe to the industry’s best independent research and reporting systems, helping us deliver comprehensive and meaningful reporting on asset class, manager research, and investment performance for each of our clients. In order to maximize our ability to focus solely on serving our clients, we outsource non-client functions of our business.
Customized Client Planning
Our team follows a disciplined approach to building an investment program for our clients. This approach has been refined over the years and is customized for each client. No two clients are alike. Each investment plan is designed to support the client’s unique goals and objectives, accommodate the client’s anticipated obligations and liquidity requirements, and to provide a level of protection from loss over specified time periods that align with the client’s risk tolerances.
Individualized Investment Policies
We consult with our clients to design, document, and execute an ongoing, effective, trackable fiduciary oversight process. We begin by working with the client’s leadership to develop a customized “fiduciary roadmap,” starting by reviewing their existing Investment Policy Statements and working with them to revise these as necessary to clarify the purpose, goals, objectives, and investment philosophies of their governance group.
Targeted Asset Allocation
A well-established principle that underpins all successful long-term investment programs is asset allocation. Over the past 15 years FiduciaryVest’s asset allocation team has developed an approach that begins with defining investment risk in client-specific terms. Our way of doing that is to seek a definition for outcomes that would be unacceptable to the client.
The next steps involve use of FiduciaryVest’s proprietary, stochastic asset allocation modeling tool to develop allocations which have high probability to achieve desired outcomes and minimize the possible occurrence of unacceptable outcomes. One or more of those models is fine-tuned with further input from the client.
Client-Customized Services
Based on the goals outlined and agreed upon in the IPS, we then provide the client with comprehensive investment advisory services, which may include:
- Investment manager search and selection
- Ongoing performance measurement of the investment program, with formal quarterly presentations to the investment Committee and interim communications as needed via phone, email, webcast, etc.
- Fiduciary education services, counsel, and oversight for the staff and investment Committee
Comprehensive Performance Reporting
We monitor investment managers’ performance, style, and compliance monthly, and we present detailed performance evaluations to clients each quarter (or at other specified intervals). At FiduciaryVest, we consider our performance evaluations to be a significant strength of the firm. Their primary purpose is to document the investment program’s and investment managers’ compliance to the stated investment policy guidelines.
Innovative Services
Starting in 2010, we are being retained to serve as the “Independent Manager” for customized investment programs in some of the defined contribution plans we advise. In these cases, FiduciaryVest has been engaged to have discretion over customized age-based life style investment programs for their employee participants. Our discretionary services include asset allocation and glide slope management. The investment programs are comprised of target-date-managed allocations to the mutual funds that are separately available to all participants. The target-date approach is permitted by the US Department of Labor and provides some fiduciary relief to the plan sponsor.
Accountability
We take our fiduciary role seriously. We recognize that our responsibility to each client equals or exceeds the fiduciary responsibilities assumed by the individuals serving on the client investment committees and on their boards. We are a trusted advisor to each client serving as an extension of their staff to help client leadership execute their fiduciary responsibilities and successfully administer their investment programs.
We have no formal or informal alliances with any banks, investment managers, broker-dealers, or administrative service providers.