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Target Templates added by SmartLeaf

A new twist on its managed accounts offering was announced by Smartleaf Inc. yesterday. They launched Target…

A new twist on its managed accounts offering was announced by Smartleaf Inc. yesterday.
They launched Target Templates, a feature added to their overlay offering.
These templates are meant to reduce the time and the complexity of managing a firm’s customized targets.
Targets, by their definition, are blends of model portfolios, which are themselves a combination of firm-recommended asset allocation and product/model selection.
Ideally, model portfolios will capture the best stock selection ideas of both third-party asset managers and in-house advisers.
Managed accounts remains one of those enigmatic areas I have watched for several years that seems to remain ever poised for explosive growth among advisers.
Smartleaf is a provider of overlay portfolio management technology I have started to become familiar with.
Advisers, if they have heard of the company, are probably most familiar with their work on the banking and trust side of the advisory world (for example, they have worked with US Bank, DA Davidson, Comerica, BB&T, and BBVA Compass).
In January U.S. Bank selected Smartleaf to provide a unified overlay platform for its non-brokerage wealth management investment relationships that were being managed through the bank’s Private Client Reserve and Private Client Group. Smartleaf had already been providing overlay technology for the bank’s non-brokerage unified managed account program since 2007 (representing about 40,000 client portfolios).
Smartleaf also counts several registered investment advisory firms and broker-dealers as clients/customers as well.
“By adding Target Templates to our overlay solution, we are helping wealth management firms serve their clients even better by enabling customization according to individual portfolio managers’ expertise as well as each client’s needs,” said Smartleaf chief executive Jerry Michael in a prepared statement on the target templates annoucement.
“This new feature is changing wealth management by allowing firms to deliver a service that combines the consistency and efficiency of a mutual fund with all the advantages of a personal account,” the statement continued.