Orion Advisor Services, LLC (“Orion”), a portfolio accounting service provider for advisors, has announced that its direct-indexing tool for Advisor Strategy and Tax Return Optimization (“ASTRO”) will become available to all financial advisors on the Orion platform on March 1, 2018.

With ASTRO, advisors can quickly and economically create customized, separately managed account (SMA) portfolios for all of their clients. Advisors can build tax-efficient non-qualified accounts, replicate indexes with customized tilts, incorporate legacy stock positions into model portfolios, accommodate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) requests, and receive notifications when an account is out of tolerance, all with built in automated tax-loss harvesting.

“As investment management continues to become increasingly commoditized by robo advisors and low-cost products like ETFs and index funds, advisors must find new ways to demonstrate their value to increasingly savvy investors,” said Eric Clarke, CEO of Orion. “ASTRO provides advisors with the edge they need at a disruptive price point.”

Editor’s note: $50 per account per year is a very competitive price.

 “Until now, the high costs and massive time commitment associated with building highly customized separately managed accounts prevented financial advisors from bringing these capabilities to clients,” Clarke said. “The powerful technology fueling ASTRO empowers advisors to accomplish all of the above in minutes at a fraction of the cost.”

TIME AND COST EFFICIENCIES

“Orion’s technology plays a central role as our advisors continue to attract and serve the increasing demand of their high-net-worth investors,” said Scott Kubie, Chief Investment Officer of Carson Group. “ASTRO puts us in a position to manage taxes and risk more effectively in a fraction of the time. It’s an impactful benefit, both for our Carson Group Partner firms and, ultimately their clients, because it gives them the opportunity to better integrate low-cost positions into the portfolio.”

ASTRO’s intuitive interface and proposal capabilities are extended to advisors via Orion’s Insight App, making this capability accessible through CRM integration partners Salesforce and Redtail. ASTRO also lets advisors view the risk and diversification characteristics of the optimized portfolio relative to the advisor’s benchmark replication portfolio.

“This optimization technology provides substantial efficiencies in an area that often demands too much manual effort. In order to do the heavy lifting on an individual account basis, advisors need a powerful engine that is typically only available in the institutional setting and at a much higher price point,” said Joe Smith, CFA, Senior Market Strategist for Orion client CLS Investments. “We see this direct indexing technology as leveling the playing field between advisors and the large asset managers.”

On top of the value this tool adds to the end investor, ASTRO also delivers several practice management benefits to the advisor:

• Scalability: The technology behind ASTRO’s algorithms, its intuitive user interface, and workflow allow advisors to run customized and optimized portfolios for all of their clients, thus increasing practice efficiency and capacity. The efficiencies created by ASTRO will also increase when used with Eclipse, Orion’s integrated, fully-customizable trading and rebalancing platform.
• Growth: Advisors can use ASTRO as a differentiator and prospecting tool by creating customized model portfolios for prospective clients based on their preferences and existing legacy positions.
• Cost Savings: The cost savings created by ASTRO can be passed on to the client or absorbed by the advisor to boost profitability.

“At Orion, we’re all about making the lives of financial advisors easier by creating efficiencies in their day-to-day operations,” Clarke said. “This technology represents a huge step forward for our industry, and I’m excited to see the potential this will unleash for our advisors and their clients.”

To learn more about ASTRO, visit orionadvisor.com/astro.

ABOUT ORION

Orion Advisor Services, LLC (Orion) is a portfolio accounting service provider for advisors. The firm has unique insights into the advisory profession because it was founded for investment advisors by an investment advisor in 1999. The firm’s technology solutions empower more than 1,300 firms, have $600+ billion in AUA and over 2 million accounts.  For more, please visit www.orionadvisor.com or follow Orion’s news and insights blog.