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Advent keeps a big firm in the family

I do not often write up what I term “client win” posts (okay I wrote one yesterday on…

I do not often write up what I term “client win” posts (okay I wrote one yesterday on social media compliance but that was different).
Advent Software Inc. announced yesterday that Homrich Berg, a $2.2 billion wealth management practice, would be migrating from Advent’s legacy Axys portfolio management system to the Black Diamond platform.
Black Diamond, which Advent acquired in April, will provide web-based portfolio management, performance reporting and data reconciliation.
Canned quote from Homrich for the prepared statement:

“Black Diamond’s institutional quality performance and risk metrics allows Homrich Berg to dive deep into investment analysis, while the flexible intuitive graphical interface for clients allows easy usage for even the casual users of technology.” said Adam Fuller, Principal at Homrich Berg, “The new reports will provide an aggregated view of clients’ total assets that we manage including alternative investments and assets held away, which is important for a firm like ours that uses alternative investment strategies and has complex family office clients. The bottom line is Black Diamond gives us cutting edge technology, scalability to support our continued growth, and a better client experience.”

Canned or not it is true. Black Diamond has a solid reputation among advisers, which is a big part of why Advent bought them in my opinion.
The other is to end the hemorrhaging of clients away from both Axys and Advent to some other provider (lots of advisers have told me that Advent’s other typical migration path for advisory firms to their APX product is just too expensive for them, both in terms of annual cost and migration/setup costs).
In an interview at Advent’s conference earlier this year, Advent president Peter Hess joked about the side-benefit of the acquisition: “In fact, we are no longer losing out on occasion to Black Diamond,” he said, referring to competition from the firm pre-acquisition.