Structured notes have spent years at the edge of the advisory conversation—acknowledged, occasionally used, but rarely woven into the core of a portfolio. Part of the reason for their sidelining is mechanical: without a way to model them alongside traditional holdings, advisors have had to make the case for structured products largely in isolation, relying on intuition and broad strokes rather than hard analytics. Halo Investing, the award-winning platform that democratized access to structured notes and protective investments, built Aura to close that gap.
Matt Radgowski, CEO of Halo Investing, sat down with The Wealth Advisor to walk through what Aura does, why it matters for practice management, and how his company is thinking about the road ahead.
The Missing Piece in the Structured Products Conversation
Anyone who has tried to make the case for structured notes inside a client portfolio knows the friction. The product logic is sound—defined outcomes, downside mitigation, controlled participation—but the inability to show a client exactly what a note does within their specific allocation has made adoption harder than it needs to be. Radgowski has seen this dynamic play out across his career in financial services, and he draws a direct line between product adoption and model inclusion.
“If we kind of look through time, product breakout happens once it’s incorporated into the model or into the managed solution,” he points out. “ETFs had steady growth, and once they were included in those advisors’ models, they really broke out.”
Aura lives inside the existing Halo wealth technology platform—the same one advisors already use to find, design, and purchase structured notes—and extends it into portfolio analysis, scenario modeling, and client-ready documentation. The pitch for a structured note no longer has to happen in isolation; it can take place in the context of a client’s existing allocation.
“Really, the whole idea of Aura is if we can get the structured outcome product, the structured note, into that portfolio solution,” Radgowski says, “it’s easier to identify. It’s easier to use and really explain to the end client—why is it here? What job does it do? And what is the benefit that it’ll provide?”
Three Clicks to a Simulated Portfolio
The workflow inside Aura is simpler than most advisors expect. An advisor identifies a note on the Halo platform—growth-oriented, income-oriented, or otherwise—and hits a single button to move it into Aura. From there, the security is slotted into the appropriate allocation bucket: equity or fixed income. The platform takes over from that point, generating expected return, standard deviation, downside risk, and downside risk frequency data that model the product’s potential impact on the portfolio’s overall profile.
For advisors who aren’t sure where a given note might fit, Halo built a scenario library. Home offices, Halo itself, or even a peer advisor can create and share scenarios within the platform. “They simply point, click, it’ll show you that note inside a portfolio,” notes Radgowski. “You can see if it’s a good fit for your client’s investment portfolio and take it away from there.”
The end output isn’t just internal analysis—it’s designed to go in front of a client. The output was reviewed by FINRA, which means what an advisor sees in Aura is something they can hand directly to the people they serve. Seeing both when structured products make sense and, as Radgowski notes, “just as importantly” when they might not be the right fit, is built right into the tool—a deliberate nod to the fiduciary obligations every advisor walks in the door with.
“We live in a best-interest world,” he adds. “We want to find the right solution, and Aura and that output ready to use with the end client helps us get there more quickly.”
Building a Note Around a Portfolio Problem
One of the less obvious applications of Aura is its use as a problem-solving tool. Every advisor has a portfolio with a pressure point—an asset class that feels overvalued, a position that creates concentration risk, an allocation that doesn’t behave the way a client’s risk tolerance demands. Aura makes it possible to engineer a structured note specifically around that pain point and then immediately test whether it can do the job.
The flexibility here is real. Advisors can build custom solutions targeting specific underliers, multiple underliers, specific protection levels, or specific participation profiles. A note can be designed to maintain exposure to an asset class while adding downside mitigation—useful when a client needs to stay aligned with an investment policy statement but the underlying market looks stretched.
“If you have a certain asset class that you know, based on your policy, you want exposure, but from a relative valuation, you may think it is overvalued,” Radgowski explains, “you can actually allocate more to the structured note within that same underlier or asset class and give yourself that downside protection.”
Personalization runs all the way down to the individual note level. An advisor can design a solution, test it inside the portfolio, confirm it would perform as expected on a stand-alone basis, and walk away with ready-made documentation to support a best-interest recommendation—analysis and compliance support baked into a single, uninterrupted workflow.
Having the Conversation About Structured Outcomes
Client education around structured notes has always required a different kind of conversation. Investors who have absorbed years of messaging about market risk, volatility, and the long-term cost of being out of the market often need help understanding why a product with defined limits on both upside and downside might be a better fit for where they are.
Aura doesn’t rewrite that conversation, but it makes it visual. Negative return frequency is a metric Radgowski returns to often—the ability to show a client exactly how often they’re likely to see a loss, and how a structured note can change that number, tends to land differently than a general discussion of downside protection.
“Visualizing to them, here’s where you gain in terms of reduction of downside risk and here is its impact on return—the cost of that protection—it absolutely facilitates that conversation in a really straightforward way,” he says.
Credit risk and issuer concentration are also built into the platform’s monitoring capabilities. Advisors can see their exposure across structured note issuers and diversify accordingly, applying the same logic they’d use with manager concentration to the counterparty risk inherent in note-linked products.
What’s Coming Next
Halo’s product roadmap reflects the same philosophy that has shaped the company since its founding: Identify a real problem in the advisory process, and build something precise enough to solve it. From democratizing access to structured notes at minimums as low as $1,000, to developing an SMA marketplace for professionally managed protective strategies, to offering a full-service insurance platform built specifically for RIAs, Halo has consistently expanded the toolkit available to independent advisors. Two areas are receiving the most attention right now.
The first is AI integration. As customization options expand, so does the decision-making burden on the advisor navigating them. The next phase of Aura’s development is aimed at easing that load—using AI to enable advisors to more easily identify the right product at the right moment, informed by the analytics already embedded in the platform. “The next iteration of our product will focus on leveraging AI to help curate product for that advisor,” says Radgowski. “So, guide them through that buyer’s experience using the same analytics that we’ve built inside Aura.”
The second is product expansion. Annuities and insurance are already part of the Halo platform, and the longer-term vision is to let advisors model protection-oriented products together—structured notes and insurance solutions in the same analytical framework. “Looking out into the future, we intend to expand that product set so you can really model different things, protection-oriented together,” he observes.
Halo, founded in Chicago in 2015 and now working with more than 40 global banking and insurance partners, built its early reputation by making structured notes accessible to a far broader range of investors than had historically been able to use them. Aura is the next expression of the same mission: Not just expanding access to structured products but making them thoughtfully usable inside the workflows advisors already have.
“Our mission is to protect the world’s investments,” Radgowski emphasizes, “and tools like Aura, if they can help more advisors do that with more clients, then we’ve done our job in the market.”
Additional Resources
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Disclosures
This document or presentation is intended for institutional investors and/or wealth advisers only, and is not intended for distribution to others.
Halo Investing, Inc. is a parent company of Halo Securities, LLC. Halo Investing, Inc. is not a broker/dealer. Securities are offered through Halo Securities, LLC, an SEC registered broker/dealer and member of FINRA/SIPC. Halo Securities, LLC is affiliated with Halo Investing Insurance Services, LLC and Halo Investment Services, LLC. Halo Securities, LLC acts solely as distributor/selling agent and is not the issuer or guarantor of any structured note products. For more information about Halo Securities, LLC, you can visit https://brokercheck.finra.org/firm/summary/279029. For more information about Halo Investment Services, LLC , you can visit https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/firm/summary/325613. For more information about Halo Investing Insurance Services, LLC, you can visit https://secure.utah.gov/agent-search/organizationDetails.html?agent=ZPQy806YK4
Halo Securities, LLC and its affiliates do not provide tax, legal or investment advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal or investment advice. Investors should consult their own tax, legal and/or financial professionals before engaging in any transaction.
