| Harvest Investments, Ltd. (Harvest), founded in
1991, is a registered Investment Advisor based in Burr Ridge,
Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Harvest uses a proprietary technology
that was developed internally, to process and refine investment
information at the portfolio level. This allows Harvest to provide
independent, expert investment information to Board Members,
Internal and External Auditors, and other CPA's and Professionals
who work with investment portfolios and are required to independently
test investment information or internal controls, or who are
not investment experts themselves and are looking for outsourced
assistance. The information provided is not investment advice
and should not be used as investment advice.
Harvest reviews investment portfolios and provides a variety
of reports, allowing fiduciaries (Boards), management, and
other professionals (CPAs, Lawyers) to better understand what
the investment managers are doing with the portfolio(s) in
question, and to shed more light on the risks being taken.
The reports also serve as independent tests of the effectiveness
of Internal Controls. Harvest reports summarize key information
that targets risks and disclosure needs, and that provide
management summary and compliance information that is useful
to those who are removed from day-to-day management of the
portfolio. Although Harvest provides a wide range of disclosure
and audit-related investment information, the most common
types include: independent verification of market value; accounting
and regulatory disclosure; purchase and sale price testing,
income testing, and; policy compliance testing.
Harvest subscribes to market information databases, trading
services, regulatory agencies, accounting organizations, and
other resources in order to stay current and have access to
new investment information and trends. Harvest also maintains
professional relationships with broker/dealers, traders, portfolio
managers, and other investment professionals in order to provide
current information and market valuations for securities.
These relationships and our market coverage are overseen by
our in-house market specialist. Harvest is not a broker/dealer.
Harvest's procedures for obtaining independent market valuations
depend on the types of securities being priced. For fixed
income instruments, Harvest relies primarily on its relationships
with broker/dealers and their trading desks. Harvest maintains
relationships with several different regional firms in order
to gain access to traders specializing in as many types of
fixed income securities as possible. Fixed income securities
sent to Harvest for pricing are first sorted by type and then
blindly distributed to the appropriate traders at the broker/dealer
firms. Certain types of securities may be priced using other
resources as well. For most common and preferred equity securities
and mutual funds, Harvest relies on data services which provide
price information that originates with equity exchanges. Direct
real-estate, venture capital, and similar types of investments
are not generally priced by Harvest. Other types of securities
are handled on a case-by-case basis. Pricing resources are
maintained and quality controlled on an ongoing basis, under
the guidance of our market specialist.
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