Software facilitates enterprise wealth management.

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NorthStar Announces Release 3.5 of Its Enterprise Wealth Management Solution

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 3 -- NorthStar Systems, a leading provider of enterprise wealth management solutions to the financial services industry, today announced the general availability of NorthStar 3.5. Built on NorthStar's industry leading Wealth Management Technology Platform, this release significantly enhances the functionality of NorthStar's Investment Planning and Investment Management Solutions, and leverages out-of-the-box integration with best-of-breed applications, content and data. These new features enable wealth management firms to further link the front office to the back office, and to improve advisor productivity and satisfaction. NorthStar's Investment Planning Solution integrates the Sales & Proposals and Planning modules with the Investment Catalog and Investment Selection modules. NorthStar 3.5 integrates best-of-breed asset allocation components from Ibbotson Associates, a leading authority in asset allocation. Additionally, NorthStar's open architecture Investment Catalog module now supports a wider array of investment products and securities across multiple currencies. In conjunction with this release, NorthStar also offers across the lifecycle of the wealth management process, integration with Lipper data from Reuters. Clients can also seamlessly combine Reuters Plus -- Reuters' premier desktop solution, which provides a combination of real-time, historical and key fundamental data -- with NorthStar's enterprise wealth management capabilities. NorthStar's Investment Management Solution integrates the Investment Catalog and Investment Selection modules with the Client Performance Review and Client Portfolio Management modules. Key enhancements to these modules in 3.5 include the ability for advisors, consultants and their teams to easily create portfolio rebalancing plans to raise cash, add cash, or rebalance an investment portfolio in compliance with the client's Investor Policy Statement. Also, improved search capabilities enable advisors to more easily find investment and product information, portfolio diversification issues, performance deviation and other attributes across their practice. "Release 3.5 is another major milestone for NorthStar as we continue to expand the functionality which enables advisors to deepen relationships with current clients, and to win more assets and new clients," said Robert Zangrillo, CEO of NorthStar. "We have spent a lot of time and effort on our development process to allow us to accelerate the addition of new functionality into our core wealth management solution. Through helping firms and their advisors automate the investment planning and investment management processes, our customers have realized significant advisor productivity gains, reduced compliance risk, and lowered technology and implementation costs," added Mr. Zangrillo. NorthStar 3.5 leverages the capabilities of NorthStar's advanced, web-based Wealth Management Technology Platform, which is designed to enable rapid deployment at a low total cost of ownership. The company's architectural approach leverages the existing systems of the firms, reducing the number of systems where possible, and avoids the operational overhead associated with replication or redundancy of data. NorthStar provides a highly scalable platform for account and data volumes. For additional information, visit www.NorthStar.com. ABOUT NORTHSTAR SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL NorthStar is a leading provider of enterprise wealth management software solutions to financial services institutions, including broker dealers, banks and trusts, asset managers, and service providers to Registered Investment Advisors (RIA). NorthStar provides a suite of software solutions that empowers financial advisors and their teams with full lifecycle advisory capabilities to acquire and manage client assets in a holistic and compliant manner. NorthStar is backed by venture capital firms Benchmark Capital, H.I.G. Capital, and Chess Ventures, as well as Silicon Valley Bank and leading financial services institutions including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch. CONTACT: Vince Crivello of NorthStar Systems, +1-415-344-6100, or vcrivello@northstar.com