Model Tactics provide advisors with the power to quickly and efficiently create and manage tactical variations of an investment strategy to better manage client needs or respond to market conditions.
DENVER (October 13, 2008) – Trust Company of America, the most innovative provider of custody, trading, and rebalancing services to fee-based Registered Investment Advisors, today unveiled a revolutionary portfolio-management solution called Model Tactics. For a given modeled portfolio, Model Tactics allows advisors to quickly define variations of the investment model and then easily apply the variations to individual accounts, groups of accounts, or all accounts in a single action. This innovative functionality provides greater flexibility for advisors to manage modeled portfolios for clients whose needs are similar but not exact, or to easily implement predefined variations of a modeled portfolio across all client accounts even at a moment’s notice.
The Trust custody platform is a single, web-based application. Eliminating manual uploads, reconciliation, and trade allocations, the platform provides complete trading and rebalancing capabilities that save valuable time, reduce costly errors, and facilitate strategy optimization. The platform was built specifically for modeled portfolios, providing efficiencies and scalability not found in integrated custody, portfolio management, and rebalancing software solutions. The platform already offers advanced modeling, including Composite Models (i.e. models of models), and now offers two types of Model Tactics – Account-based Model Tactics and Template-based Model Tactics.
Account-based Model Tactics allow an advisor to define strategy flavors to meet different client needs and assigning the appropriate tactic to each client account. Accounts can also be segmented easily for trading or rebalancing because model processing occurs at the tactic level. Standard modeled portfolios and Composite Models are ideal for clients with identical needs; however, before Model Tactics it was difficult to manage clients whose needs were similar but not identical. Current solutions on the market require advisors to create different modeled portfolios for each situation. This can exponentially increase the number of modeled portfolios an advisor has to track and manage and makes tracking the performance of the overall investment strategy very difficult.
“At Trust, we’re committed to providing advisors with tools that allow them not only to serve their clients better, but also to save time and energy in the process.” said Terry Reitan, Trust Company of America president and CEO. “Our first client to adopt Model Tactics uses it to carry highercash levels in accounts that take regular distributions and keep accounts without distribution requirements fully invested – reducing their time spent rebalancing accounts to free up cash for distributions.”
Template-based Model Tactics allows an advisor to easily switch between different definitions of a modeled portfolio to meet market conditions or client needs. They work similar to account-based tactics but tactics can be freely applied and aren’t required for each account. They work seamlessly for making strategy adjustments as market conditions change or easily implementing predefined strategies at a moment’s notice. Template-based tactics lets an advisor switch from one tactic to another in just a few clicks – a new tactic can actually be assigned, processed, and executed in under 10 minutes.
The value of Model Tactics for each advisor is as varied as their business model. For example, Model Tactics can allow new money to be directed towards lower risk securities, waiting for scheduled rebalancing into the overall strategy. Sector rotators can use them by defining different tactics for different market conditions. Or an advisor can prepare multiple tactic definitions in the morning, and then quickly implement one of those definitions immediately based on a market event.
“We were very excited when we heard about Trust’s new release,” said Jerry Wagner, President and CEO of Flexible Plan Investments. “The possibilities for Model Tactics are extensive. We plan on using them to help us manage client accounts subject to short-term redemption fees.”
“Right now we have a lot of clients who want to take advantage of tax-lot harvesting,” said Stephen Ludeman, President of Ludeman Capital Management. “The efficiency of scale we can gain from using Model Tactics to help process only applicable accounts is significant.”
By adding the ability to apply tactical variations within a modeled portfolio, Trust has again developed advanced technology to make an advisor’s life easier.
