At Focus Partners Advisor Solutions, model portfolios are only the beginning. The firm combines a systematic, evidence-based approach with hands-on planning support, aiming to give financial advisors a comprehensive, flexible platform that scales with their clients’ complexity. With an emphasis on tax efficiency, research-driven strategy, and deep personalization, Focus Partners positions itself as a TAMP built for advisors who want more than basic infrastructure.
In an interview with The Wealth Advisor’s Scott Martin, Kevin Grogan, Chief Investment Officer of Systematic Strategies at Focus Partners, discussed the firm’s philosophy; its evolving service model; and why academic discipline, tax-savvy execution, and access to professionals with deep experience set Focus Partners apart in the TAMP marketplace.
From Models to Meaningful Customization
Grogan leads a team focused on far more than basic model management. His role includes overseeing model portfolio design, but the broader objective is to provide advisors with flexible, research-backed tools for a range of planning challenges. Focus Partners’ Systematic Strategies group develops and evaluates investment strategies for a wide array of client circumstances—including tax planning, income needs, and asset transition issues.
“We are evaluating all sorts of different strategies that our advisors can use to help in certain client circumstances, whether it’s to help with taxes or other challenges that they might have,” Grogan says.
Focus Partners’ curated portfolio architecture establishes a foundation of thoroughly vetted models. But Grogan emphasizes that the firm’s differentiator lies in its investment philosophy, which centers on evidence-based, systematic investing. “Our recommendations aren’t based on my opinion or the opinion of anyone else on our firm’s investment committee,” he says. “It’s about what the academic and practitioner literature says about the best ways to construct portfolios to help our clients achieve their goals.”
By rooting decisions in consensus, not speculation or market timing, Grogan and his team offer advisors a portfolio framework they can trust—and build upon when specialized situations arise.
Avoiding Common Investment Pitfalls
Grogan identifies two persistent mistakes that can drag down long-term performance: paying excessive fees and trying to time the market. “Of course, expenses aren’t everything,” he says, “but you don’t want to pay too much for the expenses of the funds that you are recommending for your client portfolio.” At the same time, he cautions against reactive decision-making during volatile periods. “You have to be right twice, both when to get out of the market and then when to get back in. The evidence shows that’s very, very difficult to do.”
For advisors working with high-net-worth or clients who respond to events emotionally, the temptation to time markets or chase performance can be strong. Grogan stresses the importance of sticking to a well-designed long-term plan, especially in turbulent markets. Advisors, he says, play a critical role in helping clients avoid behavioral traps and stay invested.
A disciplined approach also helps Focus Partners avoid over-indexing on cost at the expense of net outcomes. “You want to focus, in our mind, on maximizing net-of-cost and net-of-tax return,” Grogan says. “It can make sense in certain circumstances to pay a little bit more than, say, index fund prices, but you want to make sure that what you’re left with at the end of it is an expected return that gets you ahead of simply owning, say, a total market index.”
Active Tax Management, Not Just Active Investing
In place of traditional alpha-seeking, Grogan highlights the potential in a more deliberate and humble form of active management, centering on smart factor exposures and tax-aware implementation. “We think there are some academically rooted ways where you can do better than the market by tilting or overweighting towards certain factors that have been identified in the academic literature,” he explains.
But Grogan identifies a bigger opportunity in active tax management, especially when markets are volatile. He points to 2025 as a textbook example. “We saw the market from February 20th to April 8th go down about 19% over that stretch of time. And yet, the market’s up 6–7% so far this year,” he notes. “If you don’t do tax-loss harvesting and you don’t check for it year round, you have missed that opportunity.”
Focus Partners monitors for tax-related opportunities continuously. Grogan’s team executes rebalancing, processes new deposits and withdrawals, and captures losses across accounts to offset realized gains. The goal is to improve client outcomes without increasing behavioral risk or complexity for the advisor.
Planning Support That Complements the Portfolio
To help advisors take full advantage of tax-aware strategies, Grogan’s team works closely with Focus Partners’ Advanced Planning specialists. “We have lots of tax experts, estate planning experts, to help advisors deliver top-notch solutions for not just the investment side but everything else,” he says.
The highly specialized planning support extends to clients with complex financial lives—such as business owners preparing for a sale, individuals holding concentrated stock positions, or families facing significant liquidity events. “We’ve also vetted other more niche tax solutions that are investments that help solve tax problems,” Grogan adds. “Inclusive of things like separate accounts and exchange funds . . . where they have a big unrealized capital gain circumstance or a capital gain that they know they’re going to have to realize, where they’re going to be selling a business or something like that.”
Rather than fitting every client into a single framework, Focus Partners provides infrastructure and guidance that aim to allow advisors to scale while addressing nuanced, high-stakes scenarios. Grogan says that, in many cases, those edge cases determine whether an advisor wins or loses new business. “It might be a circumstance where 90+% of your clients use a model, and they don’t really need any of these additional services that we have,” he says. “But for the 10% of clients where it’s important, it winds up being really, really important—where it’s the difference between that advisor getting hired or not getting hired.”
Personalized Access and Advisor-Centric Service
While many platforms tout scalability and automation, Focus Partners prioritizes direct engagement between advisors and subject-matter experts. Grogan counts those advisor conversations as among the highlights of his role. “They do have access not just to me but to our broader team of experts, and honestly, that’s the favorite part of my job every day,” he says. “Working with advisors on complex situations or helping to explain our investment strategy and markets to clients—those are my favorite aspects.”
Accessibility provides thoughtful partnership, so advisors don’t have to interpret research or apply tax strategies on their own. They receive coaching and support, not just a dashboard. That hands-on service becomes particularly valuable when macro conditions are murky or headlines stir client anxiety.
Grogan emphasizes the importance of staying grounded and sees value in trying to “approach markets with humility, understanding that the market does a really, really good job of setting prices,” he says. Even when new information hits the wires, it’s typically priced in quickly. “So, you’re not able to trade on it. It’s not value-relevant information . . . and we always want to keep that in mind with respect to the portfolio decisions we’re making.”
Expanding into Alternatives, Carefully
As Focus Partners continues to broaden its offerings, Grogan believes that alternatives might play a growing, yet carefully controlled, role in client portfolios. “You can get into trouble,” he cautions. “You see headlines pretty much weekly of different funds in the alternative space that run into challenges, and we remain skeptical of the vast majority of alternative investment strategies out there.”
Still, Grogan acknowledges the benefits that certain strategies may offer, especially when well understood and thoughtfully deployed. “We do think there are some that can really add value to client portfolios,” he says. “We’ve got some advisors on our platform that use alternatives extensively. They use them with every client. We’ve got some clients that don’t use alternatives with any client, and we’re obviously totally comfortable with both of those extremes or something in the middle.”
By respecting advisor discretion and providing vetted tools rather than mandates, Focus Partners helps ensure that portfolio design stays aligned with client goals and advisor preferences.
A Platform That Elevates the Advisor
Focus Partners Advisor Solutions gives advisors a flexible, advisor-centric platform supported by deep investment expertise and personalized service. The team’s systematic approach, combined with tax-smart implementation and planning collaboration, seeks to enable advisors to deliver measurable value across client types and market conditions.
“We have a robust investment platform that is getting deeper by the day,” Grogan says. “Just getting deeper expertise and solutions in all sorts of different areas in the investment realm, inclusive of things like alternatives, and again, things in the specialized tax strategy space.”
Advisors looking for a partner who shares their commitment to delivering the highest level of client service may find Focus Partners poised to help them optimize their time doing so, offering a platform that seeks to adapt to client needs, empower growth, and enhance the value of advice.
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