CASE STUDY

Brian, Independent RIA, $125M AUM

Brian works long days as a part of a team of two with $125M in AUM. He is an independent RIA and has over 100 households, each unique in their situation. His average client has $500k in investable assets and is 10 years from retirement. His client group is generally focused on planning for the saving-to-spending transition and looks to Brian to help them navigate as they enter retirement.

Why He Was Looking for a CIO Partner

Brian had been trying to manage all of his CIO services in-house, including model selection, trading, and handling complex one-off’s for his most sophisticated clients.

The existing structure lacked consistency in the investment process. To grow the firm, Brian wants to take on another advisor to scale their model, but because they don’t have a repeatable, replicable investment process, adding an additional advisor presents complications from both a compliance and a liability standpoint.

In addition, the increased volatility last year, coupled with the booming market, highlighted the challenges of doing all the management himself. Clients demanded additional cash, which had to be thoughtfully managed for tax consequences. Clients also wanted to shift allocations to become more aggressive as the market recovered, and as inflows increased late in the year, putting new money to work required more time developing strategies.

This was taking him away from the work he wanted to do – meet with clients and grow the practice.

Brian needed help with the full suite of CIO services, including:

Creating a scalable and repeatable investment process, whether through model strategies or custom.
Help mapping each client’s financial plan to an investment strategy and ensuring that the strategy. was executed flawlessly and monitored going forward.
Ongoing account management for things like RMDs, Roth conversions, inflows and outflows, etc.
Finding the right technology tools for his practice.

However, Brian was wary of outsourcing the CIO function because he wanted a more customized option. He felt that institutional-quality investment management was the key differentiator for his clients.

The Solution

Invariant Investment Management worked with Brian to review his accounts and determine the right approach for each. Invariant offers a comprehensive range of model portfolios, and by working as co-fiduciaries, Brian and Invariant collaborated on matching each client to the appropriate portfolio, while maximizing tax-efficiency at the individual account level.

Invariant was able to assume complete trading and back-office support for Brian’s business, streamlining his practice considerably and lowering his and his clients’ costs.

Finally, in both ongoing client service and new-prospect outreach, Brian was able to leverage Invariant’s proprietary in-house research and was also able to collaborate with Invariant to build out customized proposals that helped him close new business. By supporting security selection and portfolio construction decisions with detailed research, Brian was able to offer the same institutional-quality portfolio management he felt was key to his business.

The Outcome

Not only was Brian to increase client satisfaction through the streamlined services, but he was also able to service clients more effectively and continue to build the practice by spending more time on marketing and business development.

Reduced Investment Costs
Scaled Portfolio Creation for Clients
Streamlined Operations
Differentiated Himself with Tactical Solutions