Rich Cancro has spent years watching advisors being sold on the promise of technology that never quite delivers. As CEO and founder of AdvisorEngine, he has a clear-eyed view of where legacy platforms fall short—and an equally acute vision of what modern infrastructure should do in practice. AdvisorEngine Portfolio Solutions (AEPS), the firm’s newly launched TAMP, is the product of both.
The platform arrived with considerable momentum earlier this year, and what sets it apart starts with a feature advisors don’t think about until they’re already frustrated: the foundation. A lot of existing TAMPs were built in layers—acquisitions stacked on acquisitions, workflows duct-taped together over a decade or more. AEPS started from scratch, and the difference shows up in everything from onboarding to reporting to how deeply the platform integrates with custodians.
“We’re really excited about it because we think that this is the first time in the industry that the promise of a TAMP of having a really modern infrastructure, modern data experience, workflows, and connecting all the core components of what a modern TAMP should have” is met, Cancro tells The Wealth Advisor’s Scott Martin.
Disclosure: AdvisorEngine Portfolio Solutions (“AEPS”) is included in The Wealth Advisor’s 2026 America’s Best TAMPs publication. America’s Best TAMPs is a directory of investment outsourcing organizations catering to financial intermediaries. The Wealth Advisor, an independent third party, created and administers this publication. AEPS provided compensation in connection with its inclusion. Inclusion in this publication is not an award, third-party rating, or endorsement of services, and is not indicative of AEPS’ future performance. AEPS is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC registration does not imply any specific level of skill or training.
The Infrastructure Problem No One Talks About Enough
Advisors evaluating TAMPs tend to focus on investment strategy access and fee structures. What receives less attention—until it’s too late—is the underlying architecture. Cobbled-together systems create friction at every step: rekeying data, toggling between platforms, chasing down information that should already be connected.
Cancro and his team designed AEPS around three core users—the advisor, business operations staff, and the client—and built workflows that connect all three across the full client life cycle. From prospecting through account opening, funding, rebalancing, reporting, and billing, the platform operates as a single, coherent system rather than a collection of tools loosely tied together. Custodian integration is a non-negotiable part of that equation.
“We think nobody in this space should say they have a scalable platform unless they’re deeply integrated into their custodian,” Cancro says. Comprehensive integrations with Schwab and Pershing mean advisors can move a prospect into the onboarding process, push data digitally into new account opening, and fund accounts—all without ever leaving the platform or rekeying a single field.
During a recent demo, an advisor paused mid-walkthrough and told Cancro’s team that what they’d just shown him would be nearly impossible to replicate with his current provider. “That’s palpable,” Cancro says. “That’s such a fundamental difference in the marketplace and delivering on the promise.”
Reactions like that have become routine. Once advisors see what seamless actually looks like, the contrast with their current setup tends to speak for itself.
Personalization at Every Level
The TAMP’s architecture is built around a concept Cancro returns to repeatedly: personalization. Most platforms offer some degree of customization, but AEPS extends that logic across three distinct layers, all configurable, none of them afterthoughts.
“When we think about personalization, it’s at the advisor level, the advisory-firm level, and also at the client level,” he explains.
Breakaway advisors, in particular, tend to respond to this approach. Many of them left larger firms precisely because they wanted to manage client portfolios on their own terms, not conform to a model dictated by a home office. “When you think about an advisor breaking away and creating their own advisory practice, you don’t have to conform to our technology. You remain you,” Cancro says. “You broke away for independence so you can invest and manage your client portfolios the way that you would like to.”
Firms with more centralized investment models are equally well served. The platform lets home offices set guardrails—approved strategies, model frameworks, investment parameters—while still providing individual advisors room to operate with flexibility where appropriate. Centralized oversight and advisor-level discretion aren’t mutually exclusive here; firms can dial each up or down depending on how they’re structured.
A Model Marketplace Built for Scale
Access to investment strategies is another area where AEPS punches well above its weight for a newer platform. Advisors have immediate access to more than 1,500 strategies from over 300 asset managers, spanning traditional, factor-based, alternative, passive, ESG, and tax-aware approaches, among others. Every manager on the platform undergoes an initial due diligence review, with ongoing monitoring handled by the AEPS Investment Committee.
Backing that universe is a meaningful institutional relationship: Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions provides additional research and oversight, giving advisors a global perspective on asset allocation and macroeconomic conditions without requiring them to build out their own research infrastructure.
Smaller and midsize RIAs have historically had to choose between access and affordability—institutional-caliber strategies at one end, operational feasibility at the other. AEPS collapses that trade-off. As Cancro puts it, the goal is “the ability to really deliver on the promise of having an advisor work the way they wanted to work”—with the investment depth and the infrastructure to back it up.
The Tax Transition Problem, Solved
One of the most common friction points when onboarding a new client is managing the transition from an existing portfolio. Tax exposure, embedded gains, and legacy holdings can turn what should be a straightforward process into months of uncomfortable conversations.
Cancro walked through a recent example of the AEPS capabilities that facilitate a smoother process: An advisor who saw a tax transition planning demo on a Friday and had built a transition plan for a new client by Monday. The platform evaluates embedded gains and generates optimized, phased implementation paths designed to minimize tax impact. What used to be a manual, advisor-led process—pulling data from multiple sources, modeling scenarios, communicating a plan—now can happen within a single workflow.
Tax-loss harvesting, gain deferral, and client-specific exclusions (security or sector level) are also built into the trade management layer, running automatically within the parameters advisors set. The goal is to get to better after-tax outcomes without adding operational complexity.
Ongoing Funding Made Easy
Account opening captures a lot of attention in platform demos. What matters just as much—and gets talked about far less—is what happens after. Ongoing funding events: bonuses, inheritances, business sale proceeds, year-end windfalls. The moment a client has new money to invest should be frictionless for both sides.
AEPS is constructed so that additional funding can be initiated by either the advisor or the client, depending on how the relationship is set up. Cancro frames the whole operation around the idea of driving real value at scale: making it simple for a client to move money when a liquidity event happens means more assets under management, better client outcomes, and less back-and-forth for the advisor’s team. “Don’t you want to make it really easy when your client gets their bonus just to push a button and get money moved into the account? That’s driving scale, and that’s driving real value to our clients,” he says.
Every step of the process—from initial outreach to ongoing funding to quarterly reporting—goes out under the advisor’s brand. White-labeled communications, client-facing portals, and customizable reports all reinforce the advisor’s identity, not the platform’s.
“They’re an independent advisor for a reason,” Cancro emphasizes. “It’s to really help them be themselves.”
Service That Shows Up
Technology is only as good as the support behind it. At AdvisorEngine, service isn’t a department—it’s something Cancro treats as a direct reflection of the company’s values. He sits in on client meetings regularly, and the feedback he hears is consistent. “I’m so proud of that, and I know how important it is to serve advisors,” he says. “We service them well; they can service their clients well.” A CEO who stays that close to the client experience isn’t just a nice detail—it shapes how the whole organization operates.
AEPS is available at advisorengine-portfolio-solutions.com, where advisors can request a demo or start a conversation with the team. For advisors who’ve been running on legacy infrastructure and wondering whether there’s a better way to operate—a thoughtful option to support independence, efficiency, and the clients they’re trying to serve—the answer is now a demo request away.
Additional Resources
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Disclosures
For Financial Professional use only.
For informational purposes only and for use with the intended audience. Not for public distribution. This material should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any security or investment strategy.
Certain statements may reflect current expectations or opinions and are not guarantees of future results. All investments involve risk, including the possible loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results. AEPS does not provide tax or legal advice; clients should consult their own tax and legal advisers. Please review our Form ADV and program documents for complete information on services, fees, and conflicts of interest.
Descriptions of platform capabilities and services are for illustrative purposes only and are not guarantees of specific outcomes. Certain services are provided by AdvisorEngine Portfolio Solutions (“AEPS”). AdvisorEngine Portfolio Solutions (“AEPS”) is an investment adviser registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration does not imply any level of skill or training. AEPS is a wholly owned subsidiary of FT FinTech Holdings LLC and an affiliate of AdvisorEngine Inc. Additional information about AEPS is available in its Form ADV Part 2 available at adviserinfo.sec.gov.
