Model Portfolio & SMA Strategists Showcase - Flipbook - Page 44
SMAs & MODEL PORTFOLIOS
managed to one strategy. An advisor
sees the whole family, the aging
parent’s account, the adult children’s
accounts, the eventual transfer of
wealth between them, and the tax
and titling decisions that transfer will
inevitably trigger.
Coordinating asset location,
beneficiary designations, and
generational transition planning across
multiple accounts and multiple family
members is squarely advisor work,
and it’s work that becomes easier, not
harder, once the underlying portfolio
construction has been delegated. An
advisor who isn’t spending real time
on individual security selection has
more room to actually do this well
instead of treating it as a once-adecade conversation prompted by an
estate attorney.
This guide has stayed deliberately
focused on the portfolio-construction
and delivery decisions that sit at
its center, and it’s worth naming
plainly what that focus leaves out.
A genuinely holistic practice also
touches insurance planning, longterm-care and healthcare-cost
projections, cybersecurity and
data-privacy safeguards for client
information, digital-asset custody, and
the advisor’s own eventual practice
succession. None of this guide
develops these topics, not because
they don’t matter, but because they
sit adjacent to the SMA and modelportfolio decision rather than inside it.
A client’s full plan needs all of these
pieces coordinated somewhere.
This guide is about doing the portfolioconstruction piece well, not about
being the only document an advisor
ever needs.
Building Your Model
Portfolio Stack
T
his chapter doesn’t introduce new
material so much as it assembles
everything from the preceding
chapters into a single working decision
process, the sequence an advisor can
actually run through, client by client, to
arrive at a structure and provider set
that fits rather than one that was simply
convenient to set up.
Step 1: Decide how hands-on you want
to be, honestly
Before evaluating any specific provider,
be honest about which posture actually
describes the practice. Is the goal to
remain closely involved in selecting and
screening among outside managers,
or to delegate the entire portfolio
construction process and focus energy
elsewhere? A practice that wants to
stay hands-on is usually best served
by a model marketplace with strong
screening tools, retaining discretion
over final selection. A practice that
wants to delegate more completely is
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better served by working directly with a
small number of trusted SMA or UMA
providers and letting a TAMP’s overlay
management handle the coordination.
Step 2: Segment clients by actual
need, not by asset level alone
Asset level matters, but it’s an
incomplete segmentation tool on its
WHEN TO REACH
FOR THIS
The six-step order,
one more time
Posture, then segmentation, then real
due diligence, then the full fee-stack
math, then platform compatibility, then
the client conversation, in that order.
Skipping a step doesn’t guarantee a bad
outcome. It guarantees a decision made
with less information than was available
on something that will govern a client’s
wealth for years.
