Table of Contents:

What is a TAMP?

TAMP stands for Turnkey Asset Management Platform. TAMPs are designed to simplify investment management for both investors and advisors.

Turnkey Asset Management Programs are tech-enabled platforms that allow RIAs, broker-dealers, asset managers and even CPAs to monitor, manage, and provide back-office support for their clients’ investments and asset allocations. Advisors pay a fee to the TAMP for the investment due diligence, asset allocation decision-making, and execution provided by a TAMP. In turn, advisors save time and energy, allowing them to focus on developing new business and providing better advice across their roster of clients.

Should my RIA firm use a TAMP?

Who should use a TAMP to find time-savings and cost-savings gains?

1. Independent Investment Advisors
Whether you’re leaving an independent broker-dealer or traditional wirehouse, or just starting out on your own as a new RIA firm, a TAMP can provide the needed infrastructure, technology and support to get the your new RIA up and running on Day One.

2. Corporate RIAs
Managing an increasingly large and complex organization means that any incremental efficiencies gained will result in a massive benefit. Corporate RIAs can use a TAMP as their tech stack (or at least the bulk of it), as a way to manage the investment products available to their advisors, and as a way to standardize advisor onboarding and processes. A TAMP can help a Corporate RIA Home Office scale in a repeatable and compliant fashion.

What are the benefits of using a TAMP?

TAMPs work by combining many disparate functions and workflows into a painless and affordable outsourced solution. Advisors no longer have to track down multiple sets of forms or client information to pass along to strategists. Instead, they collect and provide a single packet of information containing the client’s strategist or models and pass it along to the TAMP. As sub-advisor, the TAMP then typically handles all processing and investing. That means no more tedious tasks, like aggregation, reconciliation, reporting, and billing.

How much will it cost my firm to use a TAMP?

What is the process for starting on a TAMP?

It’s true that moving to a TAMP will require careful planning and coordination. Your new TAMP should provide you clarity, context, and confidence every step of the way. Depending on the size and structure of your firm, the transition could take weeks or a few months. Regardless the process can be understood in four key phases:

• Needs Assessment
• Program Design for Your Pain Points
• Transition, Onboarding and Training
• Ongoing, Dedication Support

How will my firm benefit from using a TAMP?

You understand how important it is to act as a partner to your clients – not just managing their money, but listening to their concerns, providing expert guidance, and making strategic recommendations in service of their goals.

How should I do due diligence on a TAMP?

Working with a TAMP enables financial advisors to focus on providing holistic, professional guidance and support to their clients. How? The TAMP takes on those less valuable but still business-critical middle- and back-office tasks.

Since not all TAMPs are the same, it’s important to know what to look for – and what to stay away from – in a TAMP partner. Here’s our 5 red flags to avoid when evaluating the right TAMP for your firm.

1. A fee structure that doesn’t align with yours
When a TAMP outsources some services, or licenses some underlying technologies, fees can
skyrocket to account for the additional providers. Advisors should also look out for hidden
fees baked into some TAMPs’ limited lineups of models and strategists.

2. Outdated infrastructure
TAMPs should be constantly evolving with the wealth management landscape, bringing development teams, trading teams, and operations teams together to develop new capabilities in response to feedback and suggestions from their clients. A TAMP that’s unwilling, or unable, to adapt will in turn fail to help advisors future-proof their businesses.

3. An inability to scale with your growth
Do they grow with you as your AUM grows? Ideally, a TAMP will help you grow by enabling you to focus on deepening your current client relationships and building new ones. And as you do, your TAMP should be able to provide platform services and responsive, tiered pricing options that adjust seamlessly to your new needs.

4. Siloed workflows
Do they have integrated systems on their platform? When TAMPs build their own technology from the ground up using components designed to work together, advisors are able to run their entire practices through a single portal, from portfolio construction to reporting to billing.

What is a SMA? What is a UMA? What is a UMH?

Before we go, let’s talk for a minute about TAMP “wrappers.” There are several styles of TAMP “wrappers” advisors will need to consider. Most outsourced investment managers share their capabilities regarding each of these wrappers, so that an advisor can choose how and when they’ll deploy their TAMP.

Mutual Fund Wrap Account
This style of TAMP offers mutual funds with fees that “wrap around” all of the investor’s mutual fund trading, rather than the end-client paying individual fees for each fund.

Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) Wrap Account
Similar to a mutual fund wrap account, this TAMP solution wraps around ETFs.

Separately Managed Account (SMA)
For end-clients with a significant amount of wealth, TAMPs can provide an SMA, which operates like a mutual fund, but with a single investor owning the account’s assets.

Unified Managed Account (UMA)
This type of account allows an investor to aggregate assets but separately manage different “sleeves,” or asset groupings. Take a deep dive on UMAs by clicking here.

GeoWealth is the TAMP for RIAs

GET STARTED TODAY

Ready To Work Smarter?

Get Powered By GeoWealth