The Fremont Group is a family office and private investment firm based in San Francisco that serves a fourth-generation family with about 40 members. They engage in both direct investing as well as manager selection across a wide variety of asset classes, portfolios, and legal entities. The size of the family and scope of their investments creates a lot of complexity in the way the organization needs to view, analyze, and report on many layers of investment detail and information.
As the family expanded and the volume of data grew significantly it was evident to Chuck Lesem, Director of Planning and Treasury, that the Fremont Group needed to leverage technology to scale the organization. Fremont looked for a solution that matched their business needs and strategy, which focus on two primary goals: providing superior risk-adjusted returns and offering world-class operations.
The Fremont Group needed a solution that could present and analyze data in different formats and at varying level of detail, according to specific management and family member’s needs.
Chuck LesemWe can now translate fund performance into what it means for the individual.
“What really sold us on Addepar was the ability to handle our private investment company needs, the corresponding fund accounting that we do, and then integrate it with our family members who invest in those funds in different ways,” Mr. Lesem explains. “We can now translate fund performance into what it means for the individual.”
Some situations call for a big-picture analysis at the strategic level, while others need granular-level analysis presented in a way that aligns with a specific family member’s viewpoint and needs. Fremont needed to find a solution that could meet all of those needs, while also maintaining the level of accuracy and reliability that was critical to the firm.
Chuck LesemThe flexibility of the system allows us to go through those complexities and figure out a way that it will work for us and still enable us to do the reporting for a wide variety of viewpoints.
Of particular interest was the ability to customize the format of even the most complex information. “Everything we do tends to get very complicated,” says Mr. Lesem. “The flexibility of the system allows us to go through those complexities and figure out a way that it will work for us and still enable us to do the reporting for a wide variety of viewpoints.”
Addepar has allowed the Fremont Group to realize one important goal they envisioned for their ideal process: “When we started the systems transformation process, our goal was for someone in the family office to push a button and see a portfolio from our clients’ perspective.”
Since selecting Addepar, the Fremont Group has realized tremendous benefits through greater operational efficiency and now has access to information that they never had before. This has enabled them to spend more time on analysis and risk analytics, to gain a deeper understanding of their portfolios.