We truly live in interesting times. While I don’t know where the coming year will take us, I know it isn’t going to be an easy return to the pre-COVID status quo.
That’s an opportunity if you’re willing to seize all the tools and techniques modern technology provides. Otherwise, it’s a threat. And America's Best TAMPs have risen to the challenge.
The biggest and best edition has arrived. Click cover or HERE to download.
The long-term story is bright. But as we note in the introduction to the newly released America's Best TAMPs 2022, some years are a lot bumpier than others.
That's where opportunities emerge. While several once-promising turnkey asset management platforms had to drop out of our list, new and more ambitious people stepped up to replace them.
We want to make sure advisors using these platforms don't miss the real innovators available, especially when so many of them outperformed everything else around last year.
As we take our first steps out of the post-pandemic world, the market seems as volatile as ever. Confidence has eroded, with crisis after crisis keeping investors on edge.
It’s the perfect environment to capture other advisors’ clients, provided of course that you can offer them something they no longer feel that their current relationships can provide. To capture those clients, you need time to market yourself and the right marketing proposition to win their attention.
Meanwhile, you need a way to shore up your own clients’ loyalty before your rivals make them an offer they can’t resist.
If you want to give your clients differentiated outcomes and differentiate yourself in the process, I urge you to familiarize yourself with these new approaches to the classic portfolio. Each brings something different to the table.
Collectively, they're the future of asset management just as much as the TAMP platforms themselves are the future of how advice gets delivered. Portfolio and platform, strategy and system. They go together like apps in the app store.
I get that a once-a-year industry handbook is going to be obsolete almost the minute we publish it. In an accelerated world, you need to make sure you're looking at the right numbers.
That's why we've launched the Digital Dashboard. It updates live whenever the listed companies need to signal new developments: new strategies, new tools, a helpful blog post you might want to see.
The Dashboard also incorporates live contact links. Feel free to use them. Build relationships. It's what these companies do.
Trial By Fire
The last few years were bumpy. The pandemic shut down wide segments of the economy and forced everyone to rethink the way they interact with the public. The boundaries of the office contracted as face-to-face meetings migrated online.
And that migration took place in the midst of the steepest market crash in over a decade . . . at least until the next one.
I'm pleased to say the companies we list in America's Best TAMPs 2022 didn't even flinch. Their networks held up. Trades got executed. Models updated and risk limits were obeyed.
Customer service teams were already trained to operate online and remotely. This was always what these companies did, even before the pandemic shocks. Their whole value proposition revolves around virtual relationships and all-electronic transactions.
All the pandemic did was test their disaster plans and accelerate their growth trajectories. Many of these companies got so many onboarding requests from desperate and stranded advisors that they opened the doors wide.
If you took advantage of that opportunity, welcome aboard. And if you didn't, I know it's been an exhausting year. Now is the time to make sure the upheavals don't happen again.
Every advisor needs to operate as efficiently as possible. Last year proved how thin the margin of error is in this business.
Examine the "bundle" of tasks you think you're obligated to perform for your clients. You can outsource a lot of it.
Your clients won't mind. They're loyal to you, not your service bureau. But if you can provide better service, they don't care how you do it.
If you don't love an aspect of the job, let it go. For most advisors, that includes all or at least part of the portfolio. Use the time you spent picking stocks building stronger client relationships and prospecting for new ones.
I've seen surveys that advisors who shift to a TAMP approach . . . with virtually any platform . . . can claw back 8-9 hours a week. Serve more clients. Hold more virtual meetings.
Take the occasional weekend. It's up to you.
At this point, I just don't want you to get left behind. While a few names disappeared from the list in last year's turmoil, their assets were quickly absorbed into their stronger competitors.
We closed 2021 with a healthy $2 trillion billion in AUM represented in America's Best TAMPs. This isn't the future any more. It's the status quo. You're either here, one way or another, or you're receding into the pre-pandemic past.
Want to see what you're missing? America's Best TAMPs 2022 is right HERE, ready for free download.
