North American IFAs partnering for competitive edge

Speaking at the IMAP InvestTech 2017 conference on Tuesday, SS&C global product manager Kevin MacBean said independent advisers across North America are working collaboratively and forming limited partnerships to compete with the larger financial institutions.

These partnerships are leveraging individual advisers’ expertise, where each adviser specialises in a different asset class to provide best-of-breed asset management to clients.

“They’re generally banding together through limited partnerships where they will share client business, where one will run part of the money under, say, Aussie equity, and then they’ll have the other partner run the Aussie fixed income, and another on property,” he explained.

“Generally these structures are starting to form in the US, and advisers are branding themselves together under this parent relationship, then keeping the money in-house and managing the money by their expertise.”

Mr MacBean said this enables advisers to “broaden their investment and asset class knowledge and the depth of their products”, and appears to be the direction a lot of the North American market is heading in.

“I think you’re going to see more and more of that in the US as the independent advisers try to compete with the large institutions,” he said.