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Forget To Mention They Added Cash to the Account?
Do Your Clients Deposit Money into their Brokerage Accounts and Not Tell You? Clients do not always provide the same information flow that they may expect of their investment advisors. Events may change the impetus for a financial plan and investment decisions are made without the input of the investment advisor on occasion. One aspect that affects the performance of a portfolio, and possibly the perception of the investment advisor’s acuity, is when a client moves cash into the account being...
Unified Managed Accounts (UMAs)
UMAs are the Modern Day Evolution of Brokerage Account Structures Unified Managed Accounts (‘UMAs’) are the result of an industry that originated with brokers opening commission-based accounts with no access to third party managers which then migrated to SMAs with relatively high minimums and only one strategy. UMAs were inspired by an industry seeking greater transparency, better information flow, and increased ease of use, all with lower administrative burdens, and are being adopted at an...
Product TAMPs vs. Platform TAMPs
Limited by Your Strategy Selection? Many firms these days call themselves turnkey asset management platforms (‘TAMPs’) but beneath the name there are ‘product’ TAMPs and ‘platform’ TAMPS. The difference? With a ‘product’ version, almost all the strategies are theirs and the ‘managers’ are them. These are product platforms being run by asset managers, not full service ‘platform’ TAMPs being run by an independent platform provider like SMArtX Advisory Solutions. These ‘product’ versions can...
Four Characteristics of a Strong TAMP
The acronym ‘TAMP’ (Turnkey Asset Management Platform) is used freely across the financial industry, denoting an investment platform used to facilitate and streamline investment operations. The proliferation of the term, TAMP, has been spurred by the several different types of firms who have launched platforms and want to be easily associated with a burgeoning industry. However, not all TAMPs are built the same, and some using the moniker are merely product platforms or marketplaces where you...
Diversification
SMArtX INSTITUTIONAL SERVICES Access to a diversified range of non-correlated investment strategies can be key for larger firms to cater to their extensive, and often sophisticated, client base. Smaller RIAs limited by a reduced sample size of investment strategies put them at an immediate disadvantage to larger firms, particularly during times of market volatility when clients are looking for answers on how to best address sharp market movements. Firms can be limited in many ways due to a...
Achieving Scale
SMArtX INSTITUTIONAL SERVICES A key element to any growing firm is the ability to effectively scale current operations and output. Failure to do so can result in decreasing product quality, deteriorating customer service, and overall loss of business. Fortunately for financial professionals there has been a wave of financial technology developments that have only just begun to disrupt the industry. Turnkey Asset Management Platforms (TAMPs) like SMArtX Advisory Solutions play an instrumental...
Real Time Trading
SMArtX INSTITUTIONAL SERVICES The retail investor’s trading speed is often said to come a distant second to the fast-paced order routing of institutional investors. Investment firms have even been set up physically closer to exchange to cut down on the time it takes for a trade to reach the datacenter. This type of speed is even more relevant in today’s volatile market as sharp intra-day moves means trading T+1, later in the afternoon, or even in the next hour can mean missed opportunity and...
What is Alternative about Alternatives?
FinTech Revolutionizing Managed Accounts - Part 6 Investors generally reference “alternatives” as investments that fall outside the two primary asset classes, equities and bonds. These investments can be as vanilla as options and currencies, or far more esoteric, like timber, collateralized debt obligations, or art. The problem with such a broad classification system is many commonplace investment strategies are grouped with obscure asset classes when these strategies have more in common with...
Direct Indexing
FinTech Revolutionizing Managed Accounts - Part 5 Security indexes (or indices, depending where you are from) predate the 20th century and have been used as benchmarks for investment managers for many decades. Beginning in 1975 (or potentially as early as 1967), investors began using index funds as a way to passively invest in a subset of securities based on a clear set of rules, gaining broad market exposure while reducing costs. Over the last few decades, we have seen enormous growth, of...
Exclusions and Tax-Loss Harvesting
FinTech Revolutionizing Managed Accounts - Part 4 Advisory clients can be an eccentric bunch, with varied demands and unconventional reasons behind them. Whether your client has taken a firm stance against the perils of tobacco, the side effects of petroleum, or simply doesn’t want to invest in a specific state because that is where their ex-spouse is from, advisors are beholden to their client requests. Fortunately advances in fintech make it easier to accommodate client requests, and take...