Success Story

Encompass Advisors

How Tamarac Advisor Earned a "Buy" Rating from Encompass Advisors

For Jon Randolph Green, 61, owner of Encompass Advisors, good values make for good business.

A Wall Street veteran with 40 years in the securities industry behind him, Green "retired" to the mountains of Brevard, N.C. Wanting to keep busy, he became a registered investment advisor in 1992 (another hat added to that of CPA, CFP and attorney). He managed $100 million in investments at a commission-based brokerage, but he decided commissions didn't suit him and hung out his own shingle.

Green's business is based on trust. His clients' portfolios are generally worth a minimum of $1 million, and average $2–$5 million. Green specializes in retirees, typically husband-and-wife couples between 60 and 70 years old, sometimes managing the investments of their grandparents or children, too. Green appreciates the fact that he's dealing with life's savings. "My investment objective is a secure revenue stream," he explained, "but my goal is for my clients to live today with trust in the future."

Early Riser, Early Mover

Stable, streamlined business operations help support that trust. Working for larger companies, Green too often saw growth pulling infrastructure along after it. Having been through that process, he knew he didn't want to be creating an ad hoc infrastructure driven by client complaints. His new firm is paperless, using a centralized contact management system and Schwab Portfolio Center. Knowing that regular rebalancing of a

portfolio—to maintain the desired asset allocation for an investment strategy—reduces risk and improves returns, he began researching rebalancing platforms before he felt the pinch of time-management.

"It's nice when you can put the infrastructure in ahead of the game," said Green, who gets up at 5:00 a.m. to read and research before the office opens. "It's easier for me to put in a system like Tamarac while I have a smaller client-base."

Tamarac Advisor, a web-based, investment strategy management platform, allows an RIA to integrate customized data for individual accounts or across a family of accounts. The advisor sets the allocation model, and Tamarac factors in tax efficiencies, client preferences, risk tolerance, and restrictions on legacy positions. The advisor reviews and executes the trade order generated. Green loved how responsive the system was to his preferences: "I set it up exactly how I wanted it to work. Now with Tamarac, we could quadruple our business and I doubt that I'd need to add another person."

Shopping for Product, Price & Service

First, Green became convinced it was too inefficient to rebalance using spreadsheets, and besides, he was concerned about accuracy. Schwab, he knew, had rebalancing software. "That was the first thing I tried, but I'm a CPA and I wanted more control, more customization. In researching, I read tons of stuff about Tamarac Advisor and iRebal, so that's who I approached."

What Green learned was decisive. "I just started talking to them, and listened to how they answered my questions. I'm not listening to the technical product specs, I've already looked that over—I'm listening to who they are, who I'm doing business with. Tamarac cared, they followed up, they responded. iRebal was just the opposite."

Tamarac Advisor's features—fee tracking, tax loss harvesting, restrictions for legacy positions, cash raising or investment—and price point helped win Green over. "Like Schwab, it's just what you need at the right price." And he had the level of control he was after: Green could define the asset allocation model and set the rules, just as he used to do with spreadsheets, but with the assistance of Tamarac's automated calculations. After the brief set-up, Green kept tabs to see if customer service was as good post-sale. Tamarac's staff delivered: "I was just so impressed with them in that set-up phase, I was sold."

"It's not sizzle. It really, really works."

Again, for Green, it comes back to trust. His idea of good service is not just a friendly phone conversation. As an RIA, he depends on Tamarac Advisor's speed and accuracy. "For instance, Schwab has a transaction fee that can be included or excluded as part of a trade. It works better if it's included. Now, that becomes an issue if the whole position is included in the trade. Tamarac's accuracy is such that we can trade up to the limit with transaction fees calculated in. I've been in crunches, it's 3:30 p.m., the market closes at 4:00 p.m., it could be fatal if a trade busted. It's such a critical tool."

Of Tamarac Advisor's web-based platform, Green said, "You would never even know that it's not desktop software, except when they say they'll fix something for you or they alert you to an upgrade. At one point I had glitches with my uploads of trades to Schwab. I called Schwab, they said it's us, we're working on it. But Tamarac temporarily modified their trade order system, working with Schwab, until Schwab could get their fix done."

Tamarac's latest feature upgrade includes the ability to support margin positions (including separate margin and non-margin cash positions in the same account) and family account reallocations—with three ways to reallocate the family to its model: complete reallocation, reallocation using the current allocation to meet the model's asset class goals, or reallocation based on account type preferences.

For Green, the last word is that Tamarac is simply the kind of company he prefers to do business with. "Sometimes you buy software, it works fine, it's a good product, but the company is miserable to deal with, you can't trust them. But not only is Tamarac Advisor an outstanding product, the Tamarac team is caring and competent from top to bottom."