Westwood Holdings Group (WHG) Risk Analysis

We are dependent to a significant degree on our ability to maintain our relationships with clients, consultants, managed account platforms and other intermediaries. Our ten largest clients accounted for approximately 20%, 21% and 22% of our fee revenues for the years ended December 31, 2024, 2023 and 2022, respectively. There can be no assurance that we will be successful in maintaining existing relationships, securing additional relationships or achieving the superior investment performance necessary to earn performance-based advisory fees. Our failure to retain one or more of these large relationships or to establish additional profitable relationships could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our brand is a valuable intangible asset that could be vulnerable to threats that can be difficult or impossible to anticipate or control. Regulatory inquiries and rumors could damage our reputation, even if they are unfounded or satisfactorily addressed. Our reputation could also be negatively affected by employees and third parties acting on our behalf, who may circumvent our controls or act in a manner inconsistent with our policies and procedures. Public perception of our brand could be negatively affected by decreases in our profitability, AUM or stock price. Damage to our brand could impede our ability to attract and retain customers and key employees and could reduce our AUM, which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations.

Our operations are complex, and our failure to properly perform portfolio responsibilities, including security pricing, corporate actions, investment restrictions compliance, daily net asset value calculations, account reconciliations, tax reporting, investment performance calculations and portfolio oversight could result in reputational harm or subject us to regulatory sanctions, fines, penalties and litigation. We use advertising materials, public relations information and other external communications to market and sell our investment products. Failure to accurately calculate and present investment performance data within established guidelines and regulations could result in reputational harm or subject us to regulatory sanctions, fines, penalties and litigation. Damage to our reputation could impede our ability to attract and retain customers and key employees and could reduce our AUM, which could have a material adverse effect on our results of operations. Significant regulatory sanctions, fines, penalties, and litigation could also materially adversely affect our financial condition and results of operations.

Our future success depends upon our ability to attract and retain professional and executive employees, including investment, marketing, client service and management personnel. There is substantial competition for skilled personnel within the asset management business, and failure to attract, develop, retain and motivate qualified personnel could negatively impact our business, financial condition, results of operations and future prospects. In order to retain or replace key personnel, we may be required to increase compensation, which would decrease net income. Investment and sales professionals often maintain strong relationships with their clients, and their departure may cause us to lose client accounts, which could have a material impact on our revenues and results of operations.

We rely on third-party vendors to perform important portions of our operations, and there is no assurance that our third-party vendors will properly perform or follow our processes, policies and procedures. There is no assurance that our plans for transition or delegation to a third-party vendor will be successful or that there will not be interruptions in service from these third parties. A third-party vendor's failure to accurately perform important operations or follow our processes, policies and procedures could result in the loss of clients, significant regulatory sanctions, fines, penalties and litigation, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.

Our business is dependent on information technology systems and the cybersecurity controls we and our third party vendors have in place to protect those systems and the information contained therein. Despite the implementation of protective measures and endeavoring to modify them as circumstances warrant, our computer systems, software, networks and vendors may be vulnerable to human error, natural disasters, power loss, spam attacks, unauthorized access, distributed denial of service attacks, computer viruses and other malicious code, and other events that could result in significant liability and damage to our reputation, and have an ongoing impact on the security and stability of our operations. The techniques used in these attacks are increasingly sophisticated, change frequently and are often not recognized until launched. A failure of our controls or our third party vendors' controls to protect our information technology from an external or internal attack or to prevent a breach of confidential client or competitive information could materially interrupt our operations and expose us to regulatory and legal actions, which could have a material adverse effect on our operating results, reputation and stock price. As attempted attacks continue to evolve in scope and sophistication, we may be required to expend substantial additional resources to modify or enhance our protective measures, to investigate and remediate vulnerabilities or other exposures or to communicate about cyber attacks to our customers. We, as a public company, have controls and procedures that relate to cybersecurity disclosure and are required under the federal securities laws to disclose information relating to certain cyber attacks or other information security breaches. Successful cyber attacks at other asset management companies or other market participants, whether or not we are affected, could lead to a general loss of customer confidence in the industry that could negatively affect us, including harming the market perception of the effectiveness of our security measures, which could result in a loss of business.

Any delays or inaccuracies in securities pricing information or information processing could give rise to claims that could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. We are highly dependent on information systems and third-party vendors for securities pricing information, information processing and updates for certain software. We, or our third-party vendors, may suffer a systems failure or interruption, whether caused by an earthquake, fire, other natural disaster, power or telecommunications failure, unauthorized access, force majeure, act of war or otherwise, and our back-up procedures and capabilities may be inadequate to prevent the risk of extended interruptions in operations.

Virtually all aspects of our business are subject to laws and regulations, including the Investment Advisers Act, the Investment Company Act, the Patriot Act, the Finance Code and anti-money laundering laws. These laws and regulations generally grant regulatory agencies broad administrative powers, including the power to limit or restrict us from operating our business, as well as powers to place us under conservatorship or closure if we fail to comply with such laws and regulations. Violations of such laws or regulations could subject us or our employees to disciplinary proceedings and civil or criminal liability, including revocation of licenses, censures, fines or temporary suspensions, permanent barring from the conduct of business, conservatorship or closure. Any such proceeding or liability could have a material adverse effect upon our business, financial condition, results of operations and business prospects. The regulatory environment in which we operate is subject to change. We may be adversely affected as a result of new or revised legislation or regulations or by changes in the interpretation or enforcement of existing laws and regulations. In recent years, regulators have increased their oversight of the financial services industry. Some regulations focus on the investment management industry while other, more broadly focused regulations still affect our industry. The Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 significantly increased and revised the federal rules and regulations governing the financial services industry and has generally resulted in increased compliance and administrative requirements. For example, the SEC's adoption of Form PF and revisions to Form ADV impose additional reporting requirements for SEC-registered investment advisors. ERISA Section 408(b)(2) and related regulations require additional information to be provided to ERISA-governed retirement plans. We believe that changes in laws, rules and regulations, including those discussed above, have increased our administrative and compliance costs however we are unable to quantify the increased costs attributable to such changes. See "Item 1. Business - Regulation." We engage in product offerings and international business activities through our global multi-asset securities product offerings that are available to our international and domestic clients. As of December 31, 2024, approximately 1% of our AUM is managed for clients who are domiciled outside the U. S. As a result, we face increased operational, regulatory, compliance, marketing, client service, reputational and foreign exchange rate risks. Rapid regulatory change is occurring internationally with respect to financial institutions, including, but not limited to, anticipated revisions to the European Communities (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities, or "UCITS") Regulations 2011 and the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive. The failure of our compliance and internal control systems to properly identify and mitigate such additional risks, or of our operating infrastructure to support international activities, could result in operational failures and actions by regulatory agencies, which could have a material adverse effect on our business. We devote considerable time and resources to both domestic and international compliance; however, we may fail to timely and properly identify regulatory requirements or modify our compliance procedures for changes in our regulatory environment, which may subject us to legal proceedings, domestic and foreign government investigations, penalties and fines. Our business involves risks of being engaged in litigation and liability that could increase our expenses and reduce our results of operations.Many aspects of our business involve substantial risks of liability. We could be named as defendants or co-defendants in lawsuits or could be involved in disputes that involve the threat of lawsuits seeking substantial damages. As an SEC-RIA, mutual fund adviser, trustee to certain Trust clients and publicly traded entity, we are subject to governmental and self-regulatory organization examinations, investigations and proceedings. Our investment strategies could be subject to actual or threatened lawsuits and governmental and self-regulatory organization investigations and proceedings, any of which could harm the investment returns or reputation of the applicable fund or result in our being liable for any resulting damages. There has been an increased incidence recently of litigation and regulatory investigations in the asset management industry, including customer claims and class action suits seeking substantial damages. While customers do not have legal recourse against us solely on the basis of poor investment results, if our investment strategies perform poorly or we provide poor financial advice, we are more likely to become subject to litigation brought by dissatisfied clients. In addition, to the extent customers are successful in claiming that their losses resulted from fraud, negligence, willful misconduct, breach of contract or other similar misconduct, these clients may have remedies against us, the mutual funds and other funds we advise or our investment professionals under the federal securities laws or state law. See the discussion of legal proceedings in Item 3. "Legal Proceedings".

Our employees and certain third-party vendors handle significant amounts of assets along with financial and personal information for our clients. Our employees or third party vendors could misuse or improperly disclose such information, either inadvertently or intentionally, which could harm our reputation. We have implemented a system of controls to minimize the risk of fraudulent use of assets and information; however, our controls may be insufficient to prevent fraudulent actions by employees or third party vendors. If our controls are ineffective, we could be subject to costly litigation, which could consume financial resources, distract management, damage our reputation and result in regulatory sanctions. Such fraudulent actions could also adversely affect clients, causing them to seek redress.

Our revenues are primarily generated from fees derived as a percentage of AUM and AUA. The value of our AUM and AUA can be negatively impacted by several factors, including: - Market performance: Performance of the securities markets could be impacted by a number of factors beyond our control, including, among others, general economic downturns, political uncertainty, acts of terrorism or natural disasters. Negative performance within the securities markets or short-term volatility within the securities markets could result in investors withdrawing assets, decreasing their rates of investment or shifting assets to cash or other asset classes or strategies that we do not manage, all of which could reduce our revenues. In addition, during periods of slowing growth or declining revenues, profits and profit margins are adversely affected because certain expenses remain relatively fixed. - Investment performance: Because we compete with many asset management firms based on our investment strategies, the maintenance and growth of AUM and AUA is largely dependent on the investment performance of the assets that we manage. Poor performance may result in the loss or reduction of client accounts, which decreases revenues. Underperformance relative to peer groups and/or relevant benchmarks for our various investment strategies could adversely affect our results of operations, especially if such underperformance continues for an extended period of time. The historical returns of our strategies and the ratings and rankings we, or the mutual funds that we advise, have generated should not be considered indicative of the future results of these strategies or of any other strategies that we may develop. The investment performance we achieve for our customers varies over time and variances can be wide. Certain of our investment strategies have capacity constraints because there may be a limit to the number of securities available for certain strategies to operate effectively. In those instances, we may choose to limit access to new or existing investors.