The TAMP marketplace has reached a pivotal moment. Models have moved from experimental to essential, and advisor adoption has crossed the threshold from niche to mainstream. The percentages have finally flipped in the right direction, with model-based management now occupying the center of the industry’s asset allocation and deployment strategies.
But Kyle Fleming, Director of Product Strategy at SS&C Black Diamond Wealth Solutions, wants advisors to know something important: the story is far from finished.
“I think we’re just getting started,” Fleming tells The Wealth Advisor’s Scott Martin. “Being the cornerstone of successful advisory practices in the U.S. is something we’re very proud of, but we’re definitely not done.”
Working with more than 3,300 advisory firms that use Black Diamond in various capacities has given Fleming a front-row seat to where the industry is heading—and the gap between where advisors are and where they need to be remains significant.
Beyond the Robo-Advisor Prophecy
Fifteen years ago, robo-advisors arrived with predictions of wholesale disruption. Automated portfolio construction and rebalancing would replace human advisors, according to the conventional wisdom of the time.
The market rejected the premise. Investors and advisors alike understood what technology enthusiasts missed: managing money represents only one component of a much deeper value proposition centered on relationships and guiding families through financial transitions.
“I think it comes down to scale and efficiency and the trust that is put into arguably one of the most important parts of being an advisor, which is managing the money,” Fleming explains. The advisory model survived the robo-threat precisely because advisors recognized where they add irreplaceable value—and where operational efficiency could amplify the impact.
The backdrop has only grown more complex. The question advisors face now: how to deliver exceptional service across multiple generations efficiently enough to grow profitably.
“We’re living through this intergenerational wealth transfer where the relationship doesn’t stop with just the household that the advisor’s working with,” Fleming points out. “It extends way beyond that to the next generation, to their children, their children’s children.”
Managing a few accounts has evolved into stewarding generational households and generational relationships—requiring firms to engage families early, deliver digital-first experiences, and earn loyalty across generations before assets transition to heirs.
The Personalization Paradox
Delivering on wealth transfer opportunities requires solving a paradox: Advisors cannot scale by treating every client identically, but they cannot afford fully bespoke solutions for thousands of relationships either.
Fleming sees technology as the bridge between individual attention and operational scale. Black Diamond began with performance reporting and has expanded dramatically over the past decade, with the evolution following a deliberate logic. “I think having the technology be able to solve the relationship side of things really opened the door for the rest of the process, which is billing, rebalancing, and trading and portfolio construction,” he explains.
Financial planning sits squarely in the middle of the equation, connecting an advisor’s understanding of client relationships and goals to the portfolio construction needed to reach the outcomes. The modern advisor approach brings everything together—relationship management, goal-setting, implementation, and ongoing optimization within a tax- and risk-efficient framework.
“It’s not just siloed, ‘I only do this part, this person does this part.’ It’s all coming together, which I think is incredibly powerful,” says Fleming. Fragmented workflows can create gaps where value gets lost—integrated systems aim to eliminate that problem.
“Ultimately, why we’re all here—technology providers and asset managers and advisors—all working for the benefit of that end investor to improve their financial lives. That’s what gets us out of bed in the morning,” he adds.
The Mosaic Approach to Practice Management
The next phase of TAMP evolution moves beyond simple outsourcing to something more nuanced. Advisors need the flexibility to determine which functions to delegate, which to retain, and when to adjust the balance based on client needs or firm capacity.
“We’ve always considered ourselves to be that extension of the back office of an advisory shop, not a replacement for the back office,” Fleming emphasizes. “So, while we’re personalizing our capabilities for advisors in order to deliver those outcomes for their investors, advisors have more and more choice.” Rather than presenting advisors with an all-or-nothing choice, Black Diamond has designed its platform to support what Fleming describes as a mosaic approach.
“Advisors that choose to partner with Black Diamond, they kind of have the best of both worlds,” he notes. “We can take models off of the shelf; we can take models from other asset managers; or, if an advisory firm still has that DNA to build their own bespoke portfolios that they want to then deploy to their investors, they can.”
The unbundling extends further. An advisor might build proprietary portfolios but delegate trading and rebalancing, while another firm may adopt off-the-shelf models with minor customizations and outsource everything else. Most firms operate somewhere in the middle, Fleming says, managing certain relationships directly while delegating others based on complexity, household size, or strategic importance.
“Nearly 100% of them are doing a little bit of this themselves, and then they’ve delegated or outsourced the rest,” he observes.
Fleming offers a practical example: an advisor managing a transitional period where hands-on involvement matters for three months, followed by a more hands-off approach once the portfolio reaches its target state. “It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. There can be choice and preference going into the investment management,” he explains.
Breaking the Control-Versus-Efficiency Trade-Off
Conventional wisdom has held that advisors face a binary choice: maintain control and sacrifice efficiency, or gain efficiency by surrendering control. Black Diamond’s approach rejects that trade-off.
“The advisor still has control over the entire lifecycle and the ability to influence those outcomes, but they don’t have to do the heavy lifting anymore because technology and services and technology improvements have come in to make it seamless,” explains Fleming.
An advisor can enroll a whole household, delegate tax-efficient trading and rebalancing, then customize specific models with individual securities—all while maintaining strategic oversight.
“It is this very repetitive and very consistent experience of managing portfolios as long as you have the right technology and the right trading team behind you,” Fleming notes. Goals change, allocations shift, and investors move through life stages, but the underlying workflow becomes repeatable once the infrastructure exists to support personalization at scale.
The Workflow Revolution
Fleming keeps circling back to workflow—not because the technology itself lacks sophistication, but because workflow represents the actual challenge advisors face. Screens and features matter less than how the pieces fit together in daily practice.
“If they are siloed, it’s much more difficult to do because sometimes the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. With a comprehensive solution that all of these things are tied together, it becomes more visible,” he explains. Integration eliminates the friction that accumulates when advisors must constantly context-switch among disconnected systems.
An advisor begins with a prospect’s goals and values—the context behind the money—designs the portfolio strategy, then hands off execution to the trading team. “And at the end of the day, the advisor looks like a genius. Investors received the outcomes that they were looking for and financial lives improved. That’s really what we’re all about,” says Fleming.
The workflow insight connects directly to practice economics. “The idea of growing and scaling without adding headcount so that your revenue grows quicker than your costs do, and they’re not a linear-type growth, is incredibly difficult to do until you find the right model,” he emphasizes.
The Time Allocation Question
Acknowledging the competitive dynamics driving adoption, Fleming observes that many advisors delay action until they sense they’re falling behind, but the delay carries opportunity costs.
“Where am I spending the most amount of my time and what is the return on that time investment?” he asks.
Advisors spending 60–70% of their time on trading, cash management, tax optimization, and operational tasks have little capacity for prospecting or deepening existing relationships. The practice can stagnate. Whether pursuing aggressive growth or reclaiming personal time, the technology should support both paths.
“Where time is spent” emerges as the critical variable separating firms that thrive from those that struggle. “The advisory practice is going to be successful and is going to continue to grow. I think that’s a very important consideration, where time is spent,” says Fleming.
The most compelling use case might be the simplest: becoming the advisor who answers the phone. Fleming points to numerous industry studies showing investors leave advisors primarily in response to insufficient communication or unavailability. Operational efficiency creates capacity for responsiveness, and responsiveness builds loyalty more effectively than minor performance differences ever could.
The Adoption Spectrum
Fleming sees two distinct paths forward, with most firms landing somewhere in the space between them. Models-based businesses are growing rapidly, but advisors don’t have to abandon their proprietary investment philosophy to gain efficiency. Firms can keep building custom models and just outsource the trading/rebalancing (the least valuable activity), or they can go fully off-the-shelf.
Both paths work—adoption opportunities represent a spectrum—and success depends on choosing your approach and finding a platform that supports it cost-effectively. You don’t have to choose between “models-based” and “proprietary philosophy,” he notes—you can have both by outsourcing only the operational execution.
“All that comes down to is choosing the right path and then finding a platform that can support that type of complexity and those workflows without incurring a ton of additional costs,” says Fleming.
Still, he acknowledges the challenge: “The hard part is for an advisory practice to figure out where they want to be when they grow up, what goals they have, what clients they serve, and what those clients’ goals require them to grow into.” Black Diamond cannot make strategic decisions for firms, but the platform can support whichever direction a firm chooses once leadership gains clarity on objectives. “Once they do that hard work or speak with us to help them understand how to do that or how to answer those questions, then I think the sky’s the limit,” Fleming adds.
The Extension Model
Emphasizing the central philosophy shaping Black Diamond’s approach to serving advisors, Fleming says: “We’re an extension of an advisory firm. We don’t replace advisory firms. We’re here to help. We’re here to listen and ultimately build better and better solutions that are solving these problems over time.”
Rather than requiring standardization, the platform creates space for firms to maintain their distinct approaches while gaining operational leverage. The product roadmap continues evolving based on client feedback and emerging needs.
“We’re always on the lookout for new problems to solve,” he notes. The current focus on personalization at scale represents one inflection point, but Fleming expects additional challenges to emerge as the wealth transfer accelerates and client expectations continue rising.
The Mission Beyond the Tools
Fleming’s perspective transcends technology and centers on impact. “I think, ultimately, we can help advisors help more investors,” he says. “We’re doing a great thing because of how much value the advisory model can deliver, and ultimately improving clients’ financial lives, investors’ financial lives is the most important thing, and that’s really what we’re focused on.”
Technology cannot replace human judgment and relationship-building, but capable systems can dramatically expand each advisor’s capacity to serve more families without sacrificing service quality.
Advisors need greater leverage to meet rising client expectations while maintaining practice profitability. The firms that master the balance between personalization and systematization will capture disproportionate market share in the years ahead.
Fleming’s message: The infrastructure exists to support nearly any practice model an advisor might envision. The remaining work belongs to advisory firms themselves—clarifying their strategic direction, identifying where they create unique value, and building the operational muscle to deliver consistently excellent outcomes across hundreds or thousands of client relationships.
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