First Rate embraces a business line philosophy to help grow our business and keep our existing client experience second to none. While some companies choose to create the best experience through larger business units, with vertical hierarchy, First Rate has chosen horizontal hierarchy as our organizational approach and strategy. We believe that keeping teams smaller balances our need for profitability through scale with our need to make our client experience exceptional. One of our First Rate pillars is Think and Act Like an Owner, and one way we do that is to empower our General Managers to provide leadership to both the top and bottom lines of our business. Coinciding with our Executive Leadership Team announcement, First Rate would like to make you aware of the following organizational changes:

Service Bureau Transitioning to Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). Many of our customers choose to engage our BPO due to our own internal expertise in loading, auditing, and reconciling performance data and configuring our First Rate system for our clients. We now have two BPO business units, each with a unique focus.

• Kate Baird leads the new BPO Wealth group, which focuses on our clients with complex needs in terms of reporting requirements, multi-currency investments, and/or other significant customizations to our platform.
• Rob Bethmann leads the new BPO Turnkey group, which focuses on clients utilizing our platform in a standard fashion with little customization, but that have a heightened need for accuracy, consistency, and reliability.

ASP Multiplies to Become Managed Hosting. While First Rate began and continues to offer a locally installed option, most clients have transitioned to a hosted First Rate solution. In response to the growth and success of this offering, we have multiplied our Managed Hosting business into two business lines with two new General Managers, Jeanne Benson and Terry Gaines.

• Jeanne Benson has been promoted to the role of General Manager of the Managed Hosting Wealth group. Most of their customers have significant customizations with emphasis on high volume and tight overnight SLAs, and this team is uniquely equipped to support them.
• Terry Gaines has been promoted to the role of General Manager of Managed Hosting Turnkey. Similar to the BPO Turnkey group, the Managed Hosting Turnkey business supports most of our clients who leverage the First Rate platform in a standard way with minimal customizations.

Products Multiplies to Become Solutions. Clients have long used our product offering in varying ways, with some focused on our investment performance calculation engine to access highly accurate investment performance data while others utilize our user experiences and investor facing client reports. To align ourselves with how our customers use our solutions and support our continued growth, we have multiplied our Products business into three business groups, two of which are new to our organization.

• Debra Detweiler has been promoted to General Manager of the Reporting & Analytics Solutions business. Reporting & Analytics manages the development and delivery of our front office facing user experiences and client reporting solutions. The Reporting & Analytics team is nearing the completion of the Reporting Refresh project, which has received significant positive feedback from our clients.
• Patrick Flaherty has been promoted to General Manager of our Performance & Integrations Solutions business. Performance & Integrations focuses on our highly scalable and efficient performance engine and APIs. Working in tight collaboration with the Reporting & Analytics team as well as third party Fintech platforms, the Performance & Integrations business line is focused on producing accurate results that can be accessed by any user or front end effortlessly with our new generation of APIs.
• Sabine Adams continues as General Manager of our Professional Services business line. The Professional Services team oversees all customizations, implementations, and one-time projects on behalf of our clients. Professional Services helps our clients flex the First Rate platform to meet unique needs while allowing our Reporting & Analytics and Performance & Integrations solutions teams to focus on delivering base solutions for all clients.

As you can see, First Rate has a deep bench of strategic leaders, which supports our long term strategy of remaining an independent and innovative leader in the Wealth Management solution industry (Check out our series on being a FinTech Unicorn – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). We firmly believe that this organizational strategy will provide the dedicated attention and investment required to grow our business in terms of number and type of client while also making our existing client experience second to none.