SEI (Nasdaq: SEIC) today announced that it has been selected by the recently-established Riverfront Investment Group, LLC to provide operations outsourcing services for the firm's separate account business.
Riverfront, which was recently founded by four highly-regarded former Wachovia Securities senior executives, selected SEI following a comprehensive evaluation process. The deal continues a strong 12-month period for SEI as the market continues to reinforce the firm's ongoing leadership in the separate account space.
Under the agreement SEI will provide Riverfront with a fully-outsourced, customized solution centered on delivering automated business processes, account administration, reconciliation, and reporting. Key factors leading to SEI's selection included the company's ability to rapidly scale to accommodate Riverfront's anticipated client growth and its workflow and straight-through- processing environment, which will enable Riverfront to grow its business without disruption. Riverfront also pointed to SEI's comprehensive outsourcing solutions and expertise across investment product lines as a strong differentiator given the firm's anticipated growth strategy.
"SEI is clearly the leader in the investment manager outsourcing space, which they consistently demonstrated throughout the selection process," said Pete Quinn, Riverfront's Chief Operating Officer. "In SEI we have a partner with a proven solution to support a large number of accounts across multiple sponsor platforms in an automated fashion. Their integrated outsourcing infrastructure will enable us to continue to evolve our business and we are excited to partner with them as we grow our business both in the short-term and long-term."
"More and more we are seeing new firms turn to outsourcing as a way to build institutional- quality infrastructures quickly and efficiently," said John Alshefski, Head of Business Development for SEI's Investment Manager Services division. "These are talented, highly-respected industry veterans who want to be able to focus on their investment business. We're pleased that they have selected SEI as a means to give their new firm a competitive advantage. We look forward to partnering with them in this new venture and helping them succeed."