What Makes FTAM Different
FTAM’s competitive advantages include:
Team Approach – we operate as a collection of distinct investment teams, each with a unique investment process and research function, as well as a dedication to a team approach to investing. Our team approach to managing money provides multiple sets of eyes watching the investments we make on behalf of our clients, creates long-term consistency to our investment approach, and allows continuity of our process among team members. Additionally, this creates full ownership of the investment decision-making process as well as full responsibility for results by the investment team.
Risk Management Focus – as an institutional money manager, we look beyond performance results. We have built within our culture a focus on managing risk within our investment process and have an established focus on monitoring the types of risk we take on our clients’ behalf. Our risk budgeting process allows us to set expectations regarding the amount of risk we expect for each of our equity products in an effort to decrease undue risk to client portfolios.
Centralized Operations – Each of our investment teams are supported by centralized compliance, operations, risk monitoring, and equity trading functions. Our investment teams are free to focus on investment results without having organizational distractions to impede.
In addition, through the Fifth Third Funds, FTAM offers certain products that are unique in the mutual fund marketplace. They are described below:
All Cap Value - A fundamentally based product that leverages ideas from FTAM's Small, Mid, and Large Cap Value Teams, with an added flexibility to weight the portfolio based on current opportunities within the various "value" market cap segments. This is an “outside the box” investment product.
Micro Cap Value – Smaller than small cap stocks, this is a fundamentally based product that seeks undervalued stocks with a market capitalization of less than $500 million.
Strategic Income - A fundamentally based product that begins with a strategic view seeking the best opportunities for income, including non-traditional income sources like preferreds, convertibles, REITS (Real Estate Investment Trust), closed end funds, and foreign debt. Securities within the portfolio have low correlation to each other, and the portfolio itself has historic low correlation to the traditional fixed income and equity benchmarks.
Dividend Growth - A fundamentally based product seeking companies with dividend growth, earnings growth, and high quality ratings for 80% of the portfolio. The remaining 20% utilizes attractive growth and attractive value companies to make for an all weather portfolio. Due to the income focus, the product has displayed downside protection for volatile markets.
"FTAM’s management structure enables our investment teams to focus on what they do best - manage money."
E. Keith Wirtz, CFA
President & Chief Investment Officer
