Managed Account Marketing vs. Reality

In my last post I discussed some of the limitations of the unified managed household account or UMH, in which the investments of a household are managed within a single account. Part of the challenge here in describing the managed account space is that TAMPs and other UMH providers have gotten a bit ahead of themselves, promising more than can be realistically delivered in a wealth management environment defined by systems spaghetti and silos. Keep in mind that UMA was launched in the 1990s as a way station on the long road to UMH, and has been by no means perfected. Pulling data from multiple custodians remains difficult, for example. All the more reason why stretching overlay management and other unifying features of the UMA onto a household framework doesn’t always make much sense. Real UMH functionality may be a while away, but the good news for firms and their end-clients is that core UMA functionality has real potential to deliver short-term. Deeper automation and the more efficient management of data can help resolve existing trade-offs between personalization and scale, if not completely. Technology vendors must provide advisors with such tangible enhancements and stop trying to build castles in the sky. And wealth management firms should turn down the marketing bluster. It’d be best if both acknowledge the inherent limitations of the managed account product and focus on concrete ways to improve the client experience.