Tax-Aware Managed Accounts, Open Banking at Scale, and Tokenized Securities Enter Regulated Distribution

Tax-Aware Portfolio Management Moves Into Core Managed-Account Infrastructure

On July 14, AssetMark expanded its direct indexing and tax-management stack inside its Unified Managed Account platform, adding new Index SMA strategies and extending Tax Management Services so tax-smart optimization and rebalancing can be coordinated across eligible index and active SMA strategies in the same custodial account using personalized tax settings. The move builds on an existing direct indexing offering with 8 Direct Index Models, tax customization, and automated tax management in taxable accounts.

AssetMark is targeting advisors serving higher-net-worth and emerging affluent clients with concentrated stock, embedded gains, life-event transitions, and high-tax-state moves, backed by daily tax-smart optimization, capital-gains budgeting, and reporting. Strategically, this pushes tax efficiency from a premium overlay into a default managed-account capability and puts AssetMark in more direct competition with Envestnet/55ip, Orion, GeoWealth, Parametric, and Vestmark.

The broader market is converging on continuous tax management as core infrastructure: AssetMark cites 1.42% average annual tax savings and more than $60 million in client tax savings in 2025, while BlackRock’s Aperio harvested about $3 billion in losses and Parametric reports more than $1.5 billion in harvested losses. The value is shifting toward platforms that embed tax-aware workflows into UMA and proposal systems and convert after-tax performance into advisor stickiness.

Open Banking Becomes a High-Volume Money Movement Rail

Open Banking Limited said the UK open-banking ecosystem has now passed 1 billion cumulative payments, backed by record June 2026 activity of 40.16 million open-banking payments and 2.81 billion API calls. It also reported 100 billion API calls across the CMA9 banks since launch and faster average API response times of 349 ms, about 50 ms better than the prior period.

The mix matters as much as the scale: UK open-banking payments reached 351 million in 2025, up 57% year over year, while payment initiation services grew 53%, more than double the 24% growth in account information services. That points to open banking moving beyond read-only aggregation into a high-volume rail for funding, withdrawals, and affordability checks.

For WealthTech and investment apps, open banking is becoming product-critical infrastructure, not just a compliance layer. The winners will be operators that embed compliant PISP and AISP orchestration directly into onboarding and cash-movement flows, and vendors that own consent management, SCA, and transaction monitoring. For investors, the UK is showing that open-finance compliance infrastructure is maturing into growth infrastructure.

Robinhood and Ondo Push Tokenized Securities Into Regulated Distribution

Robinhood’s launch of tokenized stocks and DeFi access, alongside Blockchain.com and Ondo Finance’s expansion of 173 tokenized stocks and ETFs across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, pushed tokenized securities from infrastructure experiment into retail distribution. At the same time, Ondo secured FINRA approval, the NYSE advanced a tokenized-securities platform for on-chain settlement and 24/7 trading, and DTCC said tokenized-securities processing is already live in production trades on ComposerX.

That builds on last week’s infrastructure story by showing the next bottleneck is regulated packaging and shelf design, not whether the rails exist. Hamilton Lane’s tokenized feeder funds with Securitize cut minimums from $5 million to about $20,000, while BlackRock’s BUIDL passed $500 million in AUM, showing tokenization is widening distribution rather than just modernizing back-office rails. The value pool is moving toward firms that combine approvals, custody, settlement, and wallet-native distribution. That raises the premium on compliance, transfer agency, and servicing infrastructure, while making basic listing and order-routing features easier to commoditize.

Advisor Migration Workflows Are Emerging as the New Control Point

RFG’s use of Feathery to automate advisor transitions, Carson Group’s onboarding of a $1.76 billion RIA, and Osaic adding Pearce Financial to its platform network show the next layer of the consolidation story: once firms have built integrated operating models, the competitive edge shifts to how efficiently they move people, accounts, and processes onto them. Workflow ownership is becoming the control point for distribution scale, with migration speed and servicing continuity now central to platform performance.

That makes integration less about adding another product and more about locking in retention and cross-sell through the operating rails themselves. The firms that win will be the ones that shorten time-to-productivity, reduce transition friction, and make it harder for advisors to leave once assets and processes are embedded. For vendors, the opportunity remains in tooling that accelerates onboarding and standardization; for investors, the progression is clear: switching costs are rising where workflow control is deepest.

WealthTech Is Splitting Into Fee, Private Wealth, and AI Workflow Lanes

N26, Freedom24, and Syfe show mass-market brokerage moving toward zero-fee access, but only within tight constraints: N26 is removing stock and ETF trading fees across 18 European countries with access to 4,000+ US/EU stocks and fractional shares from €1; Freedom24 limits €0 commission to new clients in France, Italy, Romania, and the Czech Republic for up to 12 months or 240 trades; Syfe ties $0 commission to Gold members and above. The pricing race is broadening, but it remains segmented by geography, promotion windows, and account tier.

At the other end of the market, Sun Life Private Wealth is building a cross-border, insurance-led stack across Bermuda, Hong Kong, and Singapore with a single global intake, harmonised underwriting, booking and payment processes, and large-case capacity cited at USD 100m+. Its legacy-planning features, including staged death-benefit payouts and multi-beneficiary policy splits, reinforce how HNW platforms are separating from retail brokerage.

The third lane is self-directed brokerage adding AI as a workflow layer, not a discretionary layer. The strategic pattern is clear: value is moving into segmented distribution, cross-border wealth infrastructure, and permissioned automation that speeds execution without taking control away from the client.