Our focus on serving vertical markets, each of which has customers with similar needs and challenges, allows for narrowly-focused and rapid product development, which results in technology that is often better suited than a horizontal solution to address customer needs and challenges. In addition, our proprietary, scalable and secure multi-tenant architecture enables us to have relatively lower research and development expenses than traditional software companies. Based in large part on those advantages, we have invested, and will continue to invest, heavily in research and development at each of our businesses to continue to develop differentiated, vertically-focused cloud-based offerings, which are highlighted by:
• 5,543 commercial and personal property and casualty insurance products from approximately 100 carriers that Bolt is able to offer through its platform;
• the broad reach of FolioDynamix’s wealth management platform, which serviced approximately $ 658.8 billion of assets under management (“AUM”) as of September 30, 2016 , and its complementary investment advisory services, which encompassed approximately $ 22.6 billion of AUM (of which $ 5.5 billion are Regulatory AUM) as of September 30, 2016 ; and
• VelocityEHS’ industry-leading proprietary database, which contains over 11 million safety data sheets.
Another key component of our business strategy, in addition to our multi-vertical domain expertise and effective and efficient research and development, is the leverage inherent in the recurring revenue generated by our cloud-based software delivery model. In part because our customers are required to make periodic payments to continue receiving access to our cloud-based products and services, we have established long-term relationships with our customers, many of which are governed by multi-year contracts that have historically high renewal rates. The consistent revenue stream provided by our recurring revenue model, coupled with our relatively high gross margins, allow us to drive revenue growth more consistently over time through investment in lead generation, sales and marketing. In order to ensure that we are effectively leveraging our cloud-based model, we closely monitor and manage the revenue growth rates, along with the gross margins, number of customers and a variety of customer retention and sales efficiency metrics, at each of our businesses.
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