Veteran wealth management executive Scott Welch has been named chief investment officer at Certuity, a registered investment adviser and multi-family office that manages more than $4 billion in assets.
Welch formerly held CIO roles at Wisdom Tree Asset Management and Dynasty Financial Partners. Before those roles, he co-founded the investment advisory firm Fortigent in 2006 and counted Certuity as one of his earliest clients. Welch will now help spearhead Certuity’s holistic approach to its family office services, which include legacy planning, governance and tax planning.
“For wealthy families, [Certuity] has the ability to be a one-stop shop,” Welch told Crain Currency. “There’s a definite trend in the industry toward holistic wealth planning, where you're looking not just at one piece of a family’s pie but the whole pie and trying to make sure it’s a cohesive solution you're delivering to them.”
Evergreen funds are being prioritized by Certuity and other investment managers in the private credit market. An evergreen structure allows institutional investors to take money out more easily than under traditional structures such as drawdown facilities, which often lock up investors’ cash in a fund for seven to 10 years. Firms such as Carlyle and KKR have also launched evergreen funds aimed at private investments.
“Over the last few years, there’s been an explosion of structures that the industry generically refers to as evergreens,” Welch said. “The private credit space has dove into that in a big way, and the market is full of strategies that allow people who are not hyper-wealthy to have access to private credit strategies. It’s been a big phenomenon.”