Transitioning a prospect or existing client’s financial portfolio to the recommended investment strategy is a complex process. Without diligent oversight and the right tools, constraints such as taxes and restrictions can stall the process and gradually take a portion of the client base off-model, creating performance dispersion among similar investment objectives.
For most advisors, managing this process is challenging to perform at scale given the:
- High costs associated with the extraction and analysis of data necessary to understand tax implications fully
- The trade-off between taxes and proximity to the target portfolio changes daily, requiring continuous monitoring to determine the next best action to get a client’s financial portfolio to target
- Integration of a client’s goals directly into the portfolio management process requires an interdependence between financial planning and portfolio management
We believe advisors can navigate this complex task with a cohesive strategy coupling technology and mathematics – which are paramount to the process. Connecting a client’s financial plan directly to the migration of their financial portfolio increases their confidence in the overall advisor relationship. Leveraging a robust technology solution will enable advisors to improve the client experience dramatically and build a successful partnership for years to come.
As the SS&C Rendezvous team is working to implement world-class model portfolio delivery and proposal tools into the SS&C Black Diamond® Wealth Platform, we focus on three core tenets to drive scale to an advisory firm’s proposal generation and rebalancing operations:
- Customization
In a rapidly growing advisory practice, the entire client base will never be completely aligned with model portfolios. Moreover, the trend in custom indexing and values-based portfolio construction further encourages the potential for the misalignment of portfolios within similar investment objectives. But with the right risk tools, household data, and supporting technology, customization need not be a burden but rather an opportunity to monitor and control client personalization at scale.
- Cost
One way to offset the client relationship is to make a direct oversight on taxes. And in a lower expected return environment, taxes become increasingly important to consider in portfolio management. In addition, a risk-managed and tax-aware approach to proposing financial advice is becoming increasingly differentiated, so having the right technology solution to enforce uniformity across the practice can go a long way in improving the client experience. Moreover, the ability of advisors to manage risk and taxes in a systematic and sophisticated way across the entire household allows them to grow more wallet share with their clients.
- Consistency
The advent of model portfolios arrived originally as a way for advisors to create scale in their investment management service, and this undoubtedly continues to be the case. The most commonly adopted models are risk-target models, in which an investor’s risk tolerance is matched to the risk (or return) target of a pre-specified asset allocation model. While risk tolerance reigns as the dominant measure in creating investment consistency across a practice, we believe the digitalization of the client experience allows for another measure that aligns more closely with the investor’s objective: goals-based consistency.
The SS&C Rendezvous team is working diligently to build model delivery and client proposal systems that will dramatically increase the capacity for advisory firms to customize portfolios opportunistically, rapidly calculate tax implications, and fully promote investment outcome consistency across the practice. Our work is enabled by the proprietary household data structures, reporting, and integrations that the SS&C Black Diamond Wealth Platform has built and refined for its clients over the years. We look forward to discussing these topics further with you and your team.
For more information on how SS&C solutions such as Rendezvous and the Black Diamond Wealth Platform can support your unique advisory business, request your personal demo, call 1-800-727-0605, or email info@advent.com.
