Close Close
Popular Financial Topics Discover relevant content from across the suite of ALM legal publications From the Industry More content from ThinkAdvisor and select sponsors Investment Advisor Issue Gallery Read digital editions of Investment Advisor Magazine Tax Facts Get clear, current, and reliable answers to pressing tax questions
Luminaries Awards
ThinkAdvisor
Raymond James and JP Morgan Building Sign

Financial Planning > Tax Planning

Raymond James to Use J.P. Morgan’s 55ip Tax-Smart Portfolio Tool

X
Your article was successfully shared with the contacts you provided.

What You Need to Know

  • The broker-dealer is the first to use 55ip’s technology across its full suite of managed account services.

Raymond James has picked J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s 55ip technology to enhance its managed account platform with integrated tax management capabilities. 

The arrangement is “an industry-first partnership” that should help Raymond James’ advisors make regular changes — like rebalancing and tax-loss harvesting  to clients’ managed accounts, leaders of the two firms say. 

The 55ip software, acquired in 2020 when J.P. Morgan bought the technology firm, is expected to be fully deployed by Raymond James across its full suite of managed account services by mid-2024. 

Overall, the deal underscores two trends in wealth management: first, the growing demand for tax management capabilities and, second, the expanding need for industry players to work with third parties rather than build new tools alone, invest in a complete overhaul or take other highly disruptive and expensive steps, according to executives from the two firms.

“Our partnership with Raymond James is an example of how leading asset management and wealth management firms can partner beyond investment products by providing value-added technology,” George Gatch, CEO of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told ThinkAdvisor in an interview.

Plus, embracing integration can help firms avoid the so-called “rip and replace” cost that — in the past — “was involved with adopting a solution like this,” said 55ip CEO Paul Gamble. “So, a big part of our business model is to be able to integrate our services directly into where the enterprise and advisors are already doing business today.”

To that end, 55ip has built what Gamble calls a “very intuitive, advisor-led experience” that includes automated trade generation and execution, for instance, so advisors can do real-time customization and tax management “at scale but without having to take up more and more of their time.”

According to Gatch and Gamble, there’s an emerging consensus that building tech tools from scratch  in order to deliver added value to clients  results in higher costs and lower performance relative to what can be accomplished via partnerships and service integrations.

The Raymond James’ managed account program currently has about $144 billion in assets, $71 billion of which are taxable; it also includes over 350 investment strategies. According to J.P. Morgan, 55ip assets have increased from less than $2 billion in 2020 to more than $20 billion today.

The Tax Imperative

“It’s a very strong strategic imperative here at Raymond James to enable our advisors to deliver high-quality, advanced services to their clients,”  explained Al Caudullo, Raymond James’ COO for asset management services. “Tax management is one of those service areas that is most in-demand right now.”

According to Caudullo, the selection of 55ip’s technology came after an extensive vendor search, and 55ip’s ability to integrate its solutions into Raymond James’ existing managed account platform was critical. “55ip’s tax technology will be delivered through deep integration with Raymond James’ managed account technology provider, InvestCloud,” he said. 

“We have a longstanding relationship with InvestCloud, so we didn’t want to totally disrupt how our advisors conduct their business,” Caudullo added. “The vision is that advisors will be able to access these services through the existing platform, which is really exciting.” (As of June 30, Raymond James had 8,700 independent and employee advisors.)

Technology for managed accounts continues to evolve with the aim of expanding advisors’  customization resources, he explains. For instance, there’s strong interest in moving from a separately managed account framework in which advisors manage individual portfolios in a tax-efficient way towards a unified managed account framework that brings together clients’ entire financial picture — including held-away assets and other household-specific information.

“This is another step forward for Raymond James when it comes to those highly advanced UMA capabilities and customization,” Caudullo said.

See: What Cetera’s $1B Avantax Deals Means for the Future of Tax-Focused Advice

Photo credit: Shutterstock/Bloomberg


NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.