Mr. Anderson: Rehmann is the second largest accounting firm based out of the state of Michigan, with various locations across the state as well as affiliates in other states in the Midwest and Florida. Rehmann Financial is the investment arm of the firm and was designed to support financial advisers in providing research and asset allocation solutions for their practices. As far as the investment philosophy goes, we don't necessarily stick to a single philosophy as much as we try to provide solutions across multiple philosophies. Having said that, right now our core models are generally focused on modern portfolio theory utilizing the Black-Litterman approach, which takes various market capitalization into account. And we use a core satellite approach in doing that. We do also have a model based on behavioral finance, in which we look for historical investor behavior and to be able to coincide that with fundamentals to be able to identify which areas of the market look attractive at certain times.
TWST: I know you have been recognized as a Five-Star Portfolio Manager by Morningstar, and you've had impressive performance with the Rehmann portfolios. Would tell us a bit more about yourself?
Mr. Anderson: I operate in a couple of different hats with Rehmann Financial. As most of the executives of Rehmann Financial, I am part of the financial adviser team, that's a very important thing. As a firm, we want to be able to make sure that any of the people that are in decision-making roles with Rehmann Financial are also being able to defend those roles, deal with the effects of those decisions and scheme across the kitchen table from their clients. Besides that I am also Senior Portfolio Manager for the firm, and my responsibilities include analyzing the various investments and strategies that we're using, and determining not only which areas to allocate assets, but also what the best investment tools are to utilize.
I also wear the Chief Investment Strategist hat for the C-PAS UMA platform. That platform, as the name suggests, focuses on separately managed accounts but implementing them in a unified managed account platform for cost efficiency, tax efficiency and overall convenience. I have a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan; I've been involved in the business since September of 1999. So luckily enough, my 10 years in the business coincide with the worst 10 years in stock market history. Timing is everything, right?
One thing I should point out is that we have taken ourselves out of consideration for Morningstar's Five-Star rating, as we have decided to not pursue GIPS compliance. We've voluntarily taken ourselves out of consideration.
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