Ameriprise 2013 Annual Report Download - page 18

PART I.
Item 1. Business
Overview
Ameriprise Financial, Inc. is a holding company incorporated in Delaware primarily engaged in business through its
subsidiaries. Accordingly, references below to ‘‘Ameriprise,’’ ‘‘Ameriprise Financial,’’ the ‘‘Company,’’ ‘‘we,’’ ‘‘us,’’ and ‘‘our’’
may refer to Ameriprise Financial, Inc. exclusively, to our entire family of companies, or to one or more of our subsidiaries.
Our headquarters is located at 55 Ameriprise Financial Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55474. We also maintain executive
offices in New York City.
Ameriprise Financial is a diversified financial services company with a 119 year history of providing financial solutions. We
offer a broad range of products and services designed to achieve the financial objectives of individual and institutional
clients. We are America’s leader in financial planning and a leading global financial institution with $771 billion in assets
under management and administration as of December 31, 2013.
Our strategy is centered on helping our clients confidently achieve their goals by providing advice and by managing and
protecting their assets and income. We utilize two go-to-market approaches in carrying out this strategy: Wealth
Management and Asset Management.
Our wealth management capabilities are centered on the long-term, personal relationships between our clients and our
financial advisors (our ‘‘advisors’’). Through our advisors, we offer financial planning, products and services designed to be
used as solutions for our clients’ cash and liquidity, asset accumulation, income, protection, and estate and wealth transfer
needs. Our focus on personal relationships, as demonstrated by our exclusive Confident Retirementᓼ approach to financial
planning, allows us to address the evolving financial and retirement-related needs of our clients, including our primary
target market segment, the mass affluent and affluent, which we define as households with investable assets of more than
$100,000. The financial product solutions we offer through our advisors include both our own products and services and
the products of other companies. Our advisor network is the primary channel through which we offer our own insurance
and annuity products and services.
Our network of more than 9,700 advisors is the primary means through which we engage in our wealth management
activities. We offer our advisors training, tools, leadership, marketing programs and other field and centralized support to
assist them in serving their clients. We believe that our nationally recognized brand and practice vision, local marketing
support, integrated operating platform and comprehensive set of products and solutions constitute a compelling value
proposition for financial advisors, as evidenced by our strong advisor retention rate and our ability to attract and retain
experienced and productive advisors. We have and will continue to invest in and develop capabilities and tools designed to
maximize advisor productivity and client satisfaction.
We are in a compelling position to capitalize on significant demographic and market trends driving increased demand for
financial advice and solutions. In the U.S., the ongoing transition of baby boomers into retirement, as well as recent
economic and financial market crises, continues to drive demand for financial advice and solutions. In addition, the
amount of investable assets held by mass affluent and affluent households, our target market, has grown and accounts for
over half of U.S. investable assets. We believe our differentiated financial planning model, broad range of products and
solutions, as well as our demonstrated financial strength throughout the economic downturn of recent past years, will help
us capitalize on these trends.
Our asset management capabilities are increasingly global in scale, with Columbia Management as the primary provider of
products and services in the U.S. and Threadneedle Investments as the primary provider of products and services outside
of the U.S. We offer a broad spectrum of investment advice and products to individual, institutional and high-net worth
investors. These investment products are primarily provided through third parties, though we also provide our asset
management products through our advisor channel. Our underlying asset management philosophy is based on delivering
consistently strong, competitive investment performance. The quality and breadth of our asset management capabilities are
demonstrated by 117 of our mutual funds being rated as four- and five-star funds by Morningstar.
We are positioned to continue to grow our assets under management and to strengthen our asset management offerings
to existing and new clients. Our asset management capabilities are well positioned to address mature markets in the U.S.
and Europe. We also have the capability to leverage existing strengths to effectively expand into new global and emerging
markets. In the past few years, we have expanded beyond our traditional strengths in the U.S. and UK to gather assets in
Continental Europe, Asia, Australia, the Middle East and Africa. In addition, we continue to pursue opportunities to leverage
the collective capabilities of Columbia Management and Threadneedle in order to enhance our current range of investment
solutions, to develop new solutions that are responsive to client demand in an increasingly complex marketplace and to
maximize the distribution capabilities of our global business.
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