Investment Managers

Placemark works with more than 140 industry-leading investment managers, offering more than 250 investment strategies. Investment managers who participate in our programs act as sub-advisors to Placemark and the program sponsors, passing their model portfolio to Placemark, which acts as the discretionary overlay portfolio manager. The overlay management business model allows institutional investment managers to make their products available without developing any of the operational and back office functionality required to participate in traditional separately managed account programs. 

The selection of investment managers and styles available in any specific sponsor's UMA program is generally controlled by the manager research group within the sponsor organization.  In most programs, the internal manager research groups or external consultants are primarily responsible for selecting specific investment managers or products for their programs that we operate.  Investment managers seeking distribution opportunities should contact the manager research and selection groups within Placemark’s sponsor client organizations directly.

There are many advantages to managers working through Placemark’s overlay management process.

Greater Distribution Opportunities

	UMA programs offer investment managers increased opportunities to participate in different advisor sales channels.
	Managers may reduce distribution costs by leveraging the advisor education and distribution capabilities that are part of Placemark’s UMA programs.
	Participation in a sponsor’s successful UMA program often leads to more SMA accounts and mutual fund sales, creating a “halo effect.”
	Participation in UMA programs via Placemark’s overlay management process entails virtually no start-up costs and is a very inexpensive way to gain incremental distribution on existing successful investment products.
	Time to market and costs of developing and launching a new investment discipline are significantly lowered compared to traditional separately managed accounts.
	Participation in model-based overlay management via Placemark’s overlay management process results in significantly reduced operational costs.