Independent investment consulting firm Taiber Kosmala & Associates recently launched Taiko, “a boutique, full-service OCIO solution built for RIAs, national advisory firms, broker/dealers and trust companies.”
“Combining the institutional research platform and consulting heritage of Taiber Kosmala with innovative, custom technology, Taiko provides growth-minded firms with bespoke institutional-grade investment portfolios, a personalized investment and operations back-office and an integrated technology stack,” according to a Tuesday press release.
During a recent interview, Chris Horvath, managing director at Taiber, said he had been working at the firm for nearly three years “being the platform architect and designing the advisor experience from a technology perspective.”
Designed to serve RIAs and financial institutions ranging from $100 million in AUM to multi-billion-dollar national enterprises, Taiko “applies an institutional-caliber process to each client by delivering a curated gallery of investment strategies supplemented by custom practice management tools and technologies,” according to the release.
Horvath said they wanted to combine the “strong consulting presence powered by brand-new customized technology.”
Horvath said they don’t like to use the term “turnkey” because they felt they were “not taking the keys from a wealth management firm.”
“We’re sitting shotgun in the car, so to speak,” said Horvath. “It’s such a highly customized and collaborative effort, the entire OCIO solution. … We’re providing platform services to implement all of the investment consulting ideas in collaboration with our clients and then taking for the trading and the rebalancing, billing functionality, portfolio accounting services and really the technology consulting side of our business. All of that kind of wrapped in one.”
Taiko’s OCIO solution enables firms to offload non-revenue-generating middle- and back-office responsibilities, according to the release.
“The Taiko Portal provides a personalized, singular view of investment performance, vetted SMA managers and alternative investments, capital markets and economic research, alongside a series of dashboards that streamline communication with Taiko’s team, simplify workflows and strengthen the client experience,” stated the release.
Horvath said they are often asked to create custom model portfolios with their clients.
“That’s something we get asked to do quite a bit. Not every firm might be interested in having a custom suite of solutions like that, but it is a focus for a lot of RIAs that we work with; their ideas blended with ours,” said Horvath.
As far as pricing, Horvath said they customize that based on several factors.
“It’s a data-driven approach so we do some discovery upfront with a prospect to really extract,” said Horvath. “There’s explicit costs and implicit costs. The hard costs are really technology. Making sure that we know the volume of their business. How many clients? How many accounts? And that helps us calculate the hard costs. We charge a basis point fee for a platform fee, and then an investment management or OCIO fee. So, there’s really just two pricing elements to that varying by each client.”
Horvath said they look at the internal expenses to make sure that the “all-in cost is digestible and appropriate for each firm and the clients that they serve.”