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Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs) manage about one-fourth of all AUM in America. At nearly $5 Trillion in client assets, the opportunity for RIA growth is extremely large yet highly competitive. For the past decade, firm consolidation, market competition, robo-advising, and fee compression have made growing an RIA increasingly difficult. With all these industry changes, what are proven strategies to help grow a successful RIA while maintaining or improving your client relationships?
One way to keep a competitive edge is to offload some or all of your investment management activities to professional money managers who act as subadvisors to your firm. Today, about half of advisors use outside managers for some or all of their investment management, according to studies by Cerulli, Northern Trust, AssetMark, and TD Ameritrade. Of those RIAs that hire subadvisors, 97% of advisors were satisfied with their decision, 98% said their investment solutions were better after working with subadvisors, 80% lost no clients or revenue during the transition, and 86% said working with outside investment managers made them more successful. While those percentages may seem high, they make sense when looking at what outsourcing investment management can deliver for your firm, and we have been happy to help deliver similar results for our clients.
of advisors were satisfied with their decision
said subadvisors made them more successful
said their investment solutions were better after hiring subadvisors
McElhenny Sheffield Capital Management is an experienced investment management firm that works with other RIAs to grow their firms and improve their client outcomes. In our two decades of managing money, we have found that the three items below produce the most benefits to our RIA clients.
The addition of a subadvisor or outside investment manager should be viewed as increasing your value proposition to clients by adding resources to your firm. Outside investment managers increase the number of experts working on client investments, offer a wider range of investment solutions, and allow for the attendance to a broader set of client needs. Not every advisor can be expected to be an expert on all facets of investing. Find investment managers that bring highly-specialized skills to your team and rely on their expertise to assist you to deliver on your clients’ goals. Contrary to common belief, the advisor still retains control over the investment decisions by determining which solutions they adopt to customize their client portfolios. Subadvisor firms typically focus on investment analysis, trading, and monitoring, which allows advisors to spend more time guiding clients through their investment decisions.
In order to develop life-long client relationships, advisors must spend time building a “trust relationship” and delivering a high-quality experience. As an RIA grows, firm resources, especially time, become stretched thin. Advisors that hire subadvisors for over 90% of assets saved more than 8 hours per week, according to the studies mentioned above. This expanded capacity can be directly added to client facing activities further aiding firm growth.
Controlling costs is vital for growing firms. The addition of new people, technologies, and space can all inflate fixed costs. Subadvised investment management is a way to maintain the cost structure as a firm grows. According to AssetMark, “While there is a fee associated with investment management outsourcing, the cost needs to be looked at in context. When considered along with the financial benefits realized from outsourcing, many advisors found that outsourcing investment management actually saved money in the long run. Advisors reported growth in assets under management, higher personal income, lower operating costs and increased business valuation. The time an advisor spends on investment management has a value and may be more effectively spent taking care of other tasks. Delegating investment management can also eliminate the need to hire in-house investing expertise and the costs associated with it. All of these factors can contribute directly to a practice’s bottom line. And when asked, the majority of advisors who outsource say that the cost is reasonable or even less than expected.”
If you have been hesitant to work with an outside investment manager or subadvisor, know that the first step doesn’t have to be a big one. At McElhenny Sheffield Capital Management, we want to help advisors in the easiest, most efficient way possible. We utilize our clients’ current trading platform and custodians (TD Ameritrade, Schwab, Fidelity, and SMArtX) to sub-advise on assets in separately managed accounts.
We specialize in rules-based, tactical ETF strategies. These risk-management strategies provide our best thinking to deliver the results that your clients seek. Adding our differentiated and uncorrelated strategies to your existing offerings can bring more consistency to the investment process and improve client outcomes. Contact us to find out how easy it is to expand your investment team with MSCM.