Firms to offer wealth-management services to trust-based wealth managers. Reliance Trust and FundQuest have joined forces to introduce an end-to-end product suite that will support trust services for banks and wealth-management institutions.

"FundQuest and Reliance each have more than a dozen years of experience in [supporting] open-architecture investments and in providing dependable industry support services," says Richard Thayer, director of investment services at Atlanta-based Reliance. "Our complementary strengths enable us to provide a set of integrated services that will be difficult to match."

One, two, three

Set for launch before the end of March 2007, the suite will include services such as access to premier open architecture managers, investment management services, trading and settlement, trust accounting and custody, and relationship level client reporting.

Bob Del Col, founder and president of Boston-based FundQuest, calls the partnership with Reliance "a triple play for trust institutions." In the first place the new suite gives them the opportunity to "expand their investment offerings to compete with anyone," says Del Col. "Second, they can increase the effectiveness of their client acquisition and retention efforts and third, they can gain efficiencies by outsourcing their back-office operations."

The meat of the matter is the integration of FundQuest's investment platform with Reliance's custody and back-office services. That's supposed to help trust-based wealth management businesses focus on new business development and relationship management -- a familiar, and perhaps compelling, argument for outsourcing.

As a first strike, the new set of trust services will be offered to Reliance's base of about 35 bank-trust institutions and wealth-management firms and to FundQuest's existing bank, broker-dealer, insurance, and registered investment advisor customers.

Reliance and FundQuest will also market the services to new customers.

FundQuest belongs to Paris-based BNP Paribas. It has about $30 billion in assets under management.

Reliance manages and administers around $39 billion in assets. Right now most of its clients are institutions, but Tony Greene, the company's director of corporate communications, says it plans to increase its presence in the private-client realm. -FWR

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