America’s Best TAMPs Showcase - Flipbook - Page 20
2026 AMERICA’S BEST TAMPS
Envestnet and
AssetMark
remain the
dominant players
by assets and
reach, but size
tells only part of
the story.
acquisition multiples routinely run between
three and a half and six and a half times
revenue. The cash coming in may be
identical. The business you’ve built is
worth twice as much, sometimes more.
As automated portfolio tools and
robo-advisory platforms continue to
proliferate, the line between financial
services and technology companies
blurs a little more each year. That
blurring creates a real opportunity,
depending on which side of it you
currently sit on.
The advisors who will thrive in this
environment are not the ones who
treat automation as a threat to be
outlasted. They’re the ones who put it
to work, build better systems than their
competitors, and find ways to let other
advisors leverage their expertise while
paying for the privilege. Don’t fight the
robots. Own them.
If you’ve built your practice as a service
professional, growing your AUM one
client relationship at a time, adding a
technology dimension to your offering
changes the nature of your business in
ways that go well beyond operational
efficiency. After all, when you’re a
pure technology provider, selling
software and subscriptions to advisors
or institutions, layering in genuine
financial expertise gives you something
your competitors may not be able to
replicate quickly.
Anyone who has watched entrepreneurs
build and exit companies understands
what that difference means in practice.
And the benefits don’t wait for the exit.
A stronger, more scalable platform
accelerates growth, extends your reach,
and puts you in a fundamentally different
position relative to the competitive
forces reshaping the industry.
THE HOLISTIC CLIENT PERSPECTIVE
Most clients don’t work with a single
advisor. They arrive with existing
relationships spread across multiple
firms, driven by a belief that different
advisors bring different areas of expertise,
or simply by the accumulated inertia of
financial decisions made over many years.
The result, from the advisor’s perspective,
is an incomplete picture.
The valuation math alone makes the
case. A traditional advisory firm typically
commands a multiple of around two
and a half times revenue, adjusted up
or down based on how much of that
income is recurring versus transactional.
And without a complete picture, genuine
asset allocation is guesswork. You can
build the most sophisticated portfolio
imaginable for the assets you can see,
but if you don’t know what’s sitting in
the accounts you can’t see, you aren’t
actually managing risk. You’re managing
a portion of it.
Automate even a portion of the
relationship management function and
you’ve crossed into fintech territory, where
Aggregation tools exist precisely to
solve this problem, giving advisors
the ability to build a truly holistic
20
TM
view of each client’s financial life and
deliver advice that accounts for the
whole rather than just the part. The
case for prioritizing this capability is
straightforward: aggregation aligns what
advisors do more closely with what
clients actually need, and that alignment
is what creates the kind of long-term
relationships that sustain a practice.
Despite that, only a small percentage
of wealth managers have made client
asset aggregation a real priority, which
means the opportunity remains largely
uncaptured.
There’s a revenue dimension here as
well, and it’s one that many advisors
are leaving on the table. Assets held
outside the core relationship are assets
the advisor is already monitoring
and incorporating into their planning
work. Charging a modest fee for that
oversight, typically in the range of three
to five basis points on held-away assets,
is entirely reasonable.
Advisors who take the time to clearly
explain how that oversight improves the
risk and return profile of the client’s total
portfolio, rather than just the slice they
formally manage, find that clients rarely
push back. The value is visible. The fee
reflects it.
PICK YOUR PLATFORM
When it comes to selecting a TAMP
partner, the decision ultimately comes
down to which capabilities matter
most to your firm and how well a given
platform supports the way you want to
work. The good news is that today’s
TAMP landscape is genuinely flexible.
Few providers force a firm into a single
operational model or a predetermined
way of doing business. You define your
strategy first, and the right platform
follows from that.
