The national registered investment advisor platform Commonwealth Financial Network has launched a series of new tools aimed at helping advisors boost their practice efficiency and meet growing client demands — especially in the domain of tax planning.
Newly revealed planning solutions cover direct indexing, portfolio tax optimization and unified managed accounts. The firm has also established a new "turnkey managed chief technology officer service," all anticipated to launch for the full advisor network after beta testing in 2025.
In an interview with ThinkAdvisor, CEO Wayne Bloom said the collective goal behind the suite of new solutions is helping Commonwealth's 2,200 partnering advisors win back more of their time to focus on delivering excellent client service and growing their practices.
"This launch really represents an important step for the Commonwealth platform and our advisor community," Bloom said. "We're not holding back when it comes to giving them new opportunities to outsource and take advantage of all the capabilities we have to offer."
Bloom added that today's independent advisor has grown much more interested in partnering with RIA platforms and other third parties to add efficiency and scalability to their process. This is especially true on the investment side, he noted, and when it comes to services sought after by more sophisticated clients seeking support with tax oversight.
"That why I like to think of us here at Commonwealth almost as time merchants," Bloom said. "If we can give advisors back more of their time to focus on winning and serving clients, then we're doing what we set out to do."
Big Updates to Portfolio Platform
Commonwealth's announcement highlights a variety of updates to its Preferred Portfolio Select investment management platform, which now offers more than 100 model portfolios.
The first of these is the addition of what Bloom called "personalized indexing." Put simply, Commonwealth will augment its existing direct indexing capabilities to offer personalized indexing in full integration with the PPS Select platform — making it far easier for advisors to offer customized, tax-efficient portfolios.
Complementing this new system is a tax transition tool that helps advisors work with clients to efficiently transition low-basis portfolios over time, according to a preset tax budget. As Bloom noted, the tool can help an advisor transition a client to any of the PPS Select models — or personalized indexing — over time.
Also coming online in 2025, advisors will be able to elect a tax overlay on any PPS Select model, via a system that can automatically conduct tax-loss harvesting without the advisor needing to request specific trades.
Lastly, Commonwealth is spotlighting a unified managed account structure, through which advisors will be able to combine multiple PPS Select models and third-party managers in one account.
