Success Story

The Mutual Fund Store

The Mutual Fund Store Selects Tamarac Advisor for Scalability and Productivity

Today, financial advisors are working hard to keep up with an ever-expanding number of client portfolios. Additionally, they must be prepared to respond to the ever changing, dynamic expectations of their clients, while dealing with tax effects, market volatility, and regulatory compliance. What these advisors are seeking is technology that can standardize operations over multiple accounts but remain flexible enough to incorporate essential client customization.

Nobody understands this new world order better than Jon Bentz, chief operating officer of The Mutual Fund Store, an investment advisory firm representing more than 75 Registered Investment Advisors in over 50 locations nationwide. Founded by mutual fund expert Adam Bold, the company has more than $3 billion in assets under management and is set to grow by as many as 16 new locations in 2007.

Bentz knew his company's RIAs were clamoring for more time to spend advising their clients, while still exceeding due diligence requirements for account management. What The Mutual Fund Store had to have was a rebalancing platform that did the necessary back-office work so the company's advisors could excel at the front end. With Tamarac's help, The Mutual Fund Store has transformed the time-consuming, labor-intensive chore of rebalancing into streamlined, efficient, peace of mind.

Bentz approached the search for a new system with the attention to detail you'd expect from an investment firm. He spent six months reviewing and testing the leading software options on the market, and when he was done he decided to make Tamarac Advisor his system of choice.

"Our business model is based on volume," explained Bentz. "Some of our advisors have 600 or more clients. What they needed was a way to do in five minutes what used to take five hours. Tamarac is fast, efficient, and easy to roll out in office after office. It was absolutely the best fit for us. The savings in time spent rebalancing means they can spend more time on trading, keeping current clients informed about their investments, and conferring with new clients on their goals. The true winners are our clients."

Scalability Meets Productivity

Tamarac Advisor is a web-based, global rebalancing platform. Regular rebalancing of a portfolio—to maintain the desired asset allocation for an investment strategy—reduces risk and improves returns.

What sets Tamarac apart is an RIA's ability to integrate customized data for individual accounts or across a family of accounts. Tamarac factors in tax efficiencies, client preferences, risk tolerance, and restrictions on legacy positions. It quickly and accurately produces trade orders ready for advisors to review and execute.

One of The Mutual Fund Store's differentiators is its willingness to advise clients across a wide range of investment capabilities, starting with clients who may have $50,000 to invest, a category ignored by many investment firms. That means more accounts to look after.

"I have 1100 accounts and $90,000,000+ in assets under management," said Scott Capace, a Mutual Fund Store RIA. "If I didn't have Tamarac, I would have to either reduce my client load or not fulfill my obligations to my clients. My promise to my clients is that I will manage their accounts individually and on an ongoing basis. With Tamarac I can provide more personal help to more clients and protect them from market volatility."

State-of-the-Art Technology: Mass Customization

While the feature-rich, web-based software provided the scalability The Mutual Fund Store needed, Tamarac Advisor's customizable rebalancing platform put it in the lead. "Tamarac's mass-customization was the deal-maker," said Bentz. "Rebalancing is smart, but automatically calling out all accounts with a short-term trading fee—that's genius. Tamarac is smart technology."

The software offers speed—simultaneously rebalancing individual accounts or families of accounts at the same time, up to 1,000 accounts in about 10 minutes—and strategic power: Each account or family is rebalanced in the most advantageous way possible according to advisor preferences. Tamarac provides RIAs with optional scenarios based on factors such as risk, tax effects, and fees.

"Tamarac helps our business model work because the advisors can set whatever parameters they want to meet client objectives, whether they want steady long-term gain or need to grow their investment quickly," said Bentz. "With the versatility of Tamarac, our advisors can hear where our clients want to go and help them get there safely. If anything changes, we change the parameters in Tamarac, and we have a whole new set of options to give them."

Cutting Edge Services

Bentz sees even more evolutions in the industry, particularly in the area of tax implications for investment. A major feature of Tamarac is its fully automated tax-aware management, including tax loss harvesting. Tamarac's ability to automatically chart tax effects as part of modeling process gives The Mutual Fund Store an edge.

Tamarac backs its system with the best customer service in the industry. As a web-based solution, the company manages the backend operations. New features are seamlessly integrated; problems are diagnosed and resolved; security and reliability are Tamarac's responsibility. Tamarac's respect for the human side of the equation drove The Mutual Fund Store's purchase. Bottom line, after shopping around, Bentz signed on for Tamarac's superior level of service and support.

An RIA's Best Friend

Tamarac works from RIA input, and its automated tasks are always performed under RIA oversight. Tamarac automatically creates uploadable, multi-custodian trade order files and supports a wide variety of security types including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, ETFs and alternative investments. For The Mutual Fund Store, which works with Charles Schwab, uploading trade order results after review couldn't be easier.

Scott Capace agrees.

"My job as a financial manager is to help people to succeed in life," said Capace. "With Tamarac, I am able to give more people the help they need. I can realize the full potential of my management ability for each and every account. That's good for my company, and it's good for my clients."