Custom RSS allows advisors to bundle specific funds/topics into one RSS feed.

ATLANTA – RidgeWorth Investments announced today that it has enhanced its really simple syndication (RSS) offering to allow website visitors to bundle any of a range of its 53 RSS feeds into one manageable feed. The custom feed allows visitors to tailor the RidgeWorth information they receive to their specific needs and have it delivered to a place of their choosing.

“Our first step was to develop RSS feeds at the fund level, because we realize that these days advisors buy individual funds, not fund families,” said David Craig, RidgeWorth’s Director of Marketing. “We didn’t want to bombard advisors with information about all 50 of our funds when they may only be interested in three or four. We also realize that there are many different websites that advisors need to visit. Although we’d love for them to visit our site from time to time, we’re more than happy to send the information they need directly to them through the feeds.”

In developing the initial feeds, Craig said that the end goal was to let advisors completely customize their experience by combining multiple topics of interest into one feed. “A retirement plan advisor, for instance, may be interested in information about our Mid-Cap Value Equity Fund, Total Return Bond Fund and Retirement Thought of the Week,” said Craig. “Instead of subscribing to three different feeds, the advisor can build a custom feed that includes all three topics. Whenever anything hits our website related to those topics, it goes out in the feed.” For funds, the feed includes daily prices, quarterly fact sheets, commentaries, shareholder reports and more.

The Custom RSS can be delivered in a range of ways, including standard RSS readers (iGoogle, Bloglines, etc.) and a browser “bookmarklet.” Advisors with their own websites could also imbed the “Retirement Thought of the Week” on their own sites. Details for each can be found on the RidgeWorth Custom RSS feed webpage.

RidgeWorth has also developed a presentation that explains RSS and its benefits, for those who aren’t currently using it. RidgeWorth believes that RSS is one small step to take to help manage the information overload on the web.

ATLANTA – RidgeWorth Investments announced today that it received two of the four "group awards" given to Small Companies at the 2010 Lipper Fund Awards ceremony held in New York on Wednesday, March 24. Lipper awarded RidgeWorth the Small Company "Overall" and "Mixed-Asset" Awards for the highest consistent return among qualifying small companies over the three-year period ending 12/31/2009¹.

"It is a great honor to be recognized for these awards by such a highly-regarded organization as Lipper," said Ashi Parikh, President & CIO of RidgeWorth Investments. "Our sole focus at RidgeWorth is to create a culture that fosters investment excellence. Our ability to develop that culture across many asset management boutiques is a tribute to our investment talent and to all of our employees at RidgeWorth. Our winning both the "Mixed-Asset" award and the "Overall" award provides validation that we are doing what is right for our clients."

As of 12/31/09, more than 70% of RidgeWorth's fixed-income, equity and asset allocation funds beat their peer group medians for the 3-, 5- and 10-year periods². For the 3- and 5-year periods, more than 50% finished in the first quartile of their respective peer groups.

Learn more about RidgeWorth Investments and the RidgeWorth Funds.

¹ Lipper Small Company Group Awards are given in four categories – Overall, Equity, Fixed Income and Mixed Asset. To qualify, a fund family must have at least three equity, three fixed income and three mixed-asset funds. Small companies consisted of those fund families with assets under management of less than $34.5 billion. For more information on the Lipper methodology, visit www.lipperweb.com.
² For the period ending 12/31/09, 17/41, 29/37, 26/36 and 18/24 beat their peer group medians for the 1-, 3-, 5- and 10-year periods, respectively. Of those that beat their peer group medians, 7, 20, 19 and 11 finished in the first quartile.

About RidgeWorth Investments
RidgeWorth Investments serves as a holding company that owns interests in eight investment boutiques with approximately $63 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2009. RidgeWorth's investment boutiques manage a wide variety of investment disciplines across the fixed income, equity, and liquidity management asset classes. Our boutiques provide investment management services to a growing client base that includes endowments, foundations, corporations, healthcare organizations, municipalities, public funds, associations, insurance companies, labor unions and high net worth individuals. In addition, RidgeWorth serves as the investment adviser to the RidgeWorth Funds mutual fund family. RidgeWorth Investments is a trade name for RidgeWorth Capital Management, Inc., an investment adviser registered with the SEC headquartered in Atlanta. Learn more about RidgeWorth.

The Lipper ranking is as of 12/31/09, based on total return and does not reflect a sales charge. Rankings are for the I Share class only. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For most recent month end returns, click here.

Short bonds offered better long-term risk-adjusted return than long bonds

ATLANTA -- RidgeWorth Investments announced today that it has published a whitepaper highlighting that for more than 30 years short-term bonds have offered a much better risk-adjusted return than long-term bonds. “Many bond investors are aware that moving from short bonds to long bonds has allowed them to capture more income. What they may not know is that short bonds captured 75% or more of the returns of long bonds most periods and that the Sharpe Ratio for short bonds was much higher than long bonds.”, says Chad Stephens, portfolio manager for the RidgeWorth U.S. Government Securities Ultra-Short Bond Fund.

The white paper, entitled “Time to Invest in Short-Term Bonds?”, reviews short-term bonds’ historical performance and volatility relative to long-term bonds, evaluates current market conditions that may favor short-term bonds and examines the risk/reward trade-offs between short-term bonds and long-term bonds. Key findings were that short-term bonds offered:

1. Less downside risk relative to long-term bonds
2. Solid long-term performance1
3. Attractive risk/reward trade-off
4. Compelling investment opportunity created by current market environment
5. Incremental yield for investors with excess cash

This paper is the latest in a series that RidgeWorth has developed to educate advisors and investors about style classes that it believes are generally overlooked. Earlier this month, RidgeWorth launched the addmidcap.com microsite and white paper to outline the benefits of mid-caps.

About RidgeWorth Investments
RidgeWorth Investments serves as a holding company that owns interests in eight investment boutiques with approximately $63 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2009. RidgeWorth’s investment boutiques manage a wide variety of investment disciplines across the fixed income, equity, and liquidity management asset classes. Our boutiques provide investment management services to a growing client base that includes endowments, foundations, corporations, healthcare organizations, municipalities, public funds, associations, insurance companies, labor unions and high net worth individuals. In addition, RidgeWorth serves as the investment adviser to the RidgeWorth Funds mutual fund family. RidgeWorth Investments is a trade name for RidgeWorth Capital Management, Inc., an investment adviser registered with the SEC headquartered in Atlanta. Learn more about RidgeWorth.

RidgeWorth's planadvisortools.com can be a key resource for 401(k) advisors and more

ATLANTA -- RidgeWorth Investments announced today that it has launched a new site dedicated to the needs of retirement plan advisors. The new site, www.planadvisortools.com, has an interactive, customizable retirement plan benchmarking tool and an array of general resources that 401(k) advisors can use to help plan sponsors meet their fiduciary duty.

"An advisor to retirement plans must be well equipped to help a plan sponsor meet its fiduciary duty," said David Craig, RidgeWorth's Director of Marketing, "Planadvisortools.com provides a wide range of resources that we have developed as well as information about industry resources that an advisor can use to educate themselves and help plan sponsors."

The Department of Labor warns that a fiduciary "should establish and follow a formal review process at reasonable intervals to decide if it wants to continue using the current service providers or look for replacements." One of the ways in which that formal review process can be satisfied is through regular plan benchmarking. The new site includes a robust plan benchmarking tool, marrying PlanSponsor's proprietary Defined Contribution Plan Survey and RidgeWorth’s own research.

The tool can be used by retirement plan advisors to:

RidgeWorth partners with productivity expert Kip Gregory of The Gregory Group

ATLANTA -- RidgeWorth Investments announced today that it will hold the second in a series of webinars on efficient practice management in partnership with Kip Gregory on Tuesday, February 9 from 4:00 – 5:00pm EST. This webinar, which will be structured like a workshop, will focus on Mastering the Art of 21st Century Networking by using social networks in new ways.

Social networking among the investment professional community continues to rise. In RidgeWorth's previous webinar, entitled "Can social networking really lead to client acquisition?," 60% of participants indicated that social networking will grow in importance over the next year or two, and one out of five said it already plays or will play a significant role in their 2010 marketing efforts. "Advisors we've been working with have been able to use the social networking strategies we've shared with them to both retain current clients and acquire new ones," said Elizabeth Wilson, national sales manager for RidgeWorth. "Many are surprised at how easy the strategies are to implement and how effective they can be."

In this one-hour web-based workshop, Kip and Elizabeth will show advisors step-by-step how to utilize free industry resources in combination with social networking platforms like LinkedIn to bring their networking into the 21st century. "We want to take advisors beyond the introductory ideas of social networking to detailed steps that can be taken to leverage an array of resources to better identify, qualify and engage potential clients," said Gregory.

The workshop will showcase several case studies in effective prospecting for advisors in the retirement plan market and the high net worth market.

The workshop is geared toward advisors who have had some exposure to social networking platforms. Advisors who are new to social networking can visit www.ridgeworth.com/practice-managementip (registration required) for the "Can social networking really lead to client acquisition?" webinar replay.

Master the Art of 21st Century Networking Workshop
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM EST

Space is limited.
For registration information, visit:

www.ridgeworth.com/practice-managementip
(registration required)

About RidgeWorth Investments
RidgeWorth Investments serves as a holding company that owns interests in eight investment boutiques with approximately $63 billion of assets under management as of December 31, 2009. RidgeWorth's investment boutiques manage a wide variety of investment disciplines across the fixed income, equity, and liquidity management asset classes. Our boutiques provide investment management services to a growing client base that includes endowments, foundations, corporations, healthcare organizations, municipalities, public funds, associations, insurance companies, labor unions and high net worth individuals. In addition, RidgeWorth serves as the investment adviser to the RidgeWorth Funds mutual fund family. RidgeWorth Investments is a trade name for RidgeWorth Capital Management, Inc., an investment adviser registered with the SEC headquartered in Atlanta. For more information about RidgeWorth, visit www.ridgeworth.com.

About Kip Gregory
For more than a decade, Kip Gregory has been helping advisors and other industry professionals overcome the challenge of harnessing technology to increase business capacity. His book "Winning Clients in a Wired World" details hundreds of fast, easy-to-implement methods of saving time and systemizing success with tools and resources you use every day. For more information on Gregory's book, or The Gregory Group's consulting and speaking services, visit http://www.winningclients.com or http://www.gregory-group.com.