In our previous blog, Adding Personal Financial Planning to Your Practice Without Drowning, we discussed the importance of partnering with the right TAMP and scaling back your tax practice to invest more time in your financial planning practice. The latter is straightforward: as you earn revenue with financial planning and investment advisory services, you’ll be able to reduce your tax workload dollar for dollar and exponentially increase the time available to better serve your clients! Finding the right TAMP, however, requires a deeper dive.
First of all, what is a TAMP? A TAMP – or a Turnkey Asset Management Program – is a tool that plays an essential part in helping CPAs add personal financial planning services to their tax practices. They are primarily a FINTECH solution that CPAs can leverage to consolidate the software and technologies needed to run their practices. In practice, most TAMPs are very similar and provide the software and tools needed for CPA Financial Planners to execute trading management, billing, reconciliation and reporting, client relationship management, financial planning, and more. The support they provide their users and additional services beyond technology is how TAMPs set themselves apart from one another. So, what are three reasons that you need a TAMP for your personal financial planning practice?
1. Compliance SupportSome TAMPs (including the CPAlliance®) assist their users with registration and provide compliance support. For busy professionals like CPAs, having a team of experts to assist you with the compliance and regulatory side of the business is paramount. Compliance prevents a lot of folks from adding financial planning as an additional service, so finding the right TAMP partner that can walk you through the registration process, help you stay compliant, and support you when a State or SEC audit occurs is essential.
2. Back-Office Support
Another area TAMPs differ is in the amount of back-office support and practice management resources they provide. For instance, at CPAlliance® we assist our firms with new account openings, cashiering, and business development. We even sit in on financial planning meetings to help our advisors' clients through complex tax and financial planning situations when necessary. In short, some TAMPs provide more in-depth support than others and give you and your practice a higher bench strength. Ensuring you have highly trained professionals at your fingertips should be a key decision factor.
3. Investment Management
The last piece to consider is how TAMPs help you manage investments. TAMPs offer this service in a few different capacities and outsourcing this function is best done through a TAMP in three ways:
- If you like to "DIY", you can utilize a TAMP's technology and manage portfolios yourself. This route requires a lot of additional time and puts all of the investment liability on you, rather than shared with the TAMP. Most CPAs do not have the time to manage their own 401(k), let alone time to manage money professionally; however, if investments are your bread and butter and you don't mind the additional compliance burden, this option may suit you!
- Some TAMP platforms offer an exhaustive list of money managers you can hire to take on the money manager role. This option allows TAMPs to limit their investment liability and advisors to outsource the investments to a professional money manager, rather than managing the investments themselves.
- And finally, a few TAMPs (hint: like CPAlliance®) offer full-service money management services in an all-inclusive fashion. These TAMPs become an extension of your team and your client's team, managing the investments, taking some of the investment liability off of you, and providing guidance and support for your firm.
Deciding which TAMP option is the best for you comes down to deciding your investment philosophy, evaluating how much time you have to commit to managing investments, and choosing what kind of experience you want for your clients. Overall, you will need to communicate to your clients why the TAMP you select helps your clients achieve and protect financial independence.
There’s a lot to consider in choosing the right TAMP, so be sure to take the time to weigh your pros and cons to determine which TAMP can best support your practice and growth! At the CPAlliance®, we cater to busy CPAs by providing white-glove concierge services to make it easy for them to add financial planning and investment advisory services to their practice.
If you’d like to learn more about the CPAlliance®, TAMPs, or how to become a CPA Financial Planner you should consider joining us for our Personal Financial Planning Boot Camp on June 10, 2024, as part of the FICPAs MEGA Conference. Or, contact me directly at smccabe@cpalliance.com or (863) 688-1725.
Shawn J. McCabe | CPA/PFS, CFP®, MSA, MBA
CPAlliance® Director | Partner