Strategy Marketplace joins the ranks of America’s Best TAMPs because it goes beyond the expectations of what a TAMP should be. It’s not just an investment management platform: it’s a one-stop financial shop for advisors and their clients.
All robo advisors and TAMPS can manage client assets using a variety of models and managers. But most stop there. They don’t offer other kinds of financial planning guidance and solutions clients are increasingly asking their advisors to provide.
Strategy Marketplace does.
This new member of America’s Best TAMPs is designed for a new breed of advisors who want to be holistic financial problem-solvers rather than portfolio managers. They don’t want to spend their time researching models and managers. They don’t want to get involved in the details of asset allocation and portfolio construction. They don’t want to get bogged down in account rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting.
They understand that their true value comes from helping their clients address the many financial challenges that confront them at various stages of their lives. Financing a major purchase. Protecting their loved ones. Establishing a legacy for their children.
Strategy Marketplace puts this advice—and a wide range of companies and professionals who offer these solutions—at the fingertips of advisors and their clients, online all the time, wherever they are.
For these and other reasons, founder and CEO Joseph Gissy likes to think of his company as a TAMP killer, because it goes so far beyond what traditional outsourced asset management platforms can do.
“We partner with a wide range of investment managers, technology providers and financial services companies to provide a single online resource that makes it easier for advisors to become a true financial concierge for their clients,” says Gissy.
But even though Strategy Marketplace bills itself as a comprehensive one-stop financial destination, it’s built on a bedrock of highly sophisticated investment capabilities.
Much more than models
All TAMPs provide model portfolios. But Strategy Marketplace takes it to a higher level. Whereas most TAMPs match investors with a particular model, Strategy Solutions creates customized blended portfolios that can combine as many as 8 to 10 different models from world-class investment managers, including some that are household names among investment professionals.
Like a robo, the platform can automatically recommend models and invest assets—with the advisor’s approval--based on a client’s responses to profiling questions.
And while most robos take an “invest-and-occasionally-balance” approach to managing investors’ assets. Strategy Marketplace can employ a more robust tactical approach, nimbly overweighting and underweighting asset class exposures as market and economic factors change.
A Comprehensive Financial Planning Toolkit
While some investment-only advisors only use Strategy Marketplace for wealth management, financial planners leverage its capabilities to solve their clients’ financial problems. They can help clients find lenders when they’re buying a home or starting a business. They can open checking and savings accounts for them. They can help them evaluate and choose insurance providers. They can connect legacy planners with estate planners and trust attorneys.
A Family Business
Strategy Marketplace is a closely held spinoff of Capital Management Services (CMS), an independent RIA Joe’s father, Jim Gissy, founded in Missouri in 1986.
After years of working as regional sales director in various beverage companies, Joe joined CMS in 2011 and became its COO in 2018. Along the way, he began partnering with outside managers to offer model portfolios to CMS clients.
Over time, advisors began to ask CMS to manage their own clients’ portfolios. By 2018, over 50% of CMS’s revenue was coming from assets they managed as a TAMP for advisors.
As firms like Betterment and Wealthfront began gaining traction among millennials, Gissy realized he needed to offer better digital capabilities to help advisors woo these younger investors.
He chose to partner with Folio Institutional, which offers both sophisticated investment capabilities and robust back-office support to automate tasks like onboarding and investing.
In 2020, he started Strategy Marketplace as a separate, standalone digital portal offering advisors and their clients access to sophisticated portfolio management capabilities as well as a full suite of financial planning solutions.
The firm has also partnered with Vestwell to offer cost-efficient 401(k) plans that include a variety of models for plan participants seeking managed account options.
Gissy’s hard work is paying off. Strategy Marketplace currently manages $100 million in 500 retail client accounts, plus an additional $50 million in 401(k) plan assets. Given the intense interest among advisors, Gissy believes AUM will cross the $1 billion threshold within a year.
The industry is taking notice. The company had been added to the WEALTHTECH100, an annual list of one hundred of the world’s most innovative fintech companies selected by a panel of industry experts. It’s also been nominated as a finalist in three categories of the WealthManagement.com 2021 Industry Awards.
Gissy’s growth aspirations also extend beyond our borders. He’s currently in discussions with several international banks that want to use the platform to trade in U.S. markets
But Gissy wants to make it clear that Strategy Marketplace is not a white label solution. Even though advisors can view and manage client activities and provide educational content through the portal, the application itself always carries the Strategy Marketplace branding.
This is done purposely. Gissy sees Strategy Marketplace as a value-added tool advisors can use to become the holistic financial quarterback for their always-online clients and prospects.
Another benefit? As a fully digital tool, it removes the need to advisors to limit business development to local clients.
“Using the platform, clients and their advisors can set up and view their accounts and manage all of their activities online together, wherever they are. When you combine it with Zoom and other virtual meeting tools, you eliminate the need for in-person meetings, printed forms and snail mail. You can generate leads and win and service new clients wherever you’re licensed now—or where you want to be in the future,” says Gissy.
To learn how Strategy Marketplace can help you become the financial quarterback for your digital-savvy clients and prospects, contact them today.
