Most advisors know the frustration intimately. A high-net-worth client wants alternatives in their portfolio, and suddenly the back office is drowning in subscription documents, juggling multiple vendor portals, and manually reconciling performance data across a patchwork of systems. The client, meanwhile, is staring at three different statements wondering where half their money went. It’s the kind of operational headache that makes even the most ambitious RIA think twice before scaling upmarket.
Axxcess Wealth Management, a California-based TAMP with approximately $11 billion in total assets, has spent years building a platform designed to eliminate the fragmented workflows, vendor sprawl, and manual reconciliation burdens that plague advisors working with complex, multi-asset portfolios. Founded in 2011 and launched as a TAMP in 2016, the firm grew out of real family office experience—and the hard lessons that came with it. Now, a leadership team including Chief Investment Officer Cory Persson, Chief Wealth Officer Deron McCoy, and Director of Portfolio Solutions Jeff Anderson—all CFA charterholders—is stepping into the spotlight to share what they’ve built and why it matters for advisors serving the ultra-high-net-worth segment.
A Platform Built From the Inside Out
What makes the Axxcess approach unusual starts with a philosophical difference. Where a conventional TAMP operates as a vendor sitting between the advisor and the client, Axxcess strips out the middleman.
“All of our services at Axxcess are delivered up and through the advisor’s brand, not our brand,” says Persson. The firm’s technology stack, built on an insourced Orion solution, powers everything from model management and trade execution to client-facing portals, but none of it carries the Axxcess name when the client sees it. The advisor stays at the center of the relationship, and the platform operates invisibly behind the scenes.
The practical upside is significant. Advisors working with Axxcess can offer unified managed account (UMA) and unified managed household (UMH) solutions that blend traditional separately managed account (SMA) strategies with private equity, private credit, and hedge funds—all within a single account structure. No extra accounts to open at the custodian. No fragmented statements. One portal, one rate of return, one consolidated view of the client’s full wealth picture. And the efficiency compounds.
“When you have the same process for all of these different goals of the client, and it’s a digital process, and it’s a seamless digital process that takes you from proposal to presentation, to client acceptance and signature, to onboarding and funding, to reporting and then billing, the world just becomes a lot easier for all parties involved,” McCoy says.
Solving the Alternatives Bottleneck
Nowhere does the operational complexity hit harder than in alternative investments. Anderson, Director of Portfolio Solutions, has seen the pain from both sides, having previously worked within an RIA implementing alts directly.
The typical workflow is brutal. An advisor finds an alternative strategy then leans on the operations team to send subscription documents to each qualifying client individually. Documents are filled out—sometimes digitally, sometimes not—then disclosures go out, billing has to be configured separately, and performance reporting becomes a manual reconciliation project. Multiply all of that across a dozen or more clients and several different fund managers, and the process can consume days.
“What we’ve done at Axxcess is be able to deliver that in the UMA/UMH process where everything gets tied together,” Anderson explains. “So, we can fill out the documents digitally. We can go out and send it for signature, send out the appropriate disclosures. We can tie the fee collection and the building right into the same portal that the advisor’s client is already looking at.”
The result is a client experience where alternative holdings show up alongside exchange-traded fund (ETF) model portfolios in a single statement view. Filing deadlines such as K-1 dates are tracked automatically. Capital calls, internal cash flows, and return rates all feed into the same reporting engine. The depth of integration is possible because of Axxcess’s unique position in the data chain.
“The alt marketplace has the alts data but not the client data, and the advisor has the client data, not the alt data. We’re right in the middle, and we have both,” Anderson says. Because the platform can marry both datasets in a single environment, advisors can build proposals demonstrating exactly how alternatives could reshape a prospect’s portfolio—before any paperwork begins. The client experience shifts dramatically as a result. “Now they’re excited about the idea of being able to invest in alternatives,” he adds. “It’s not such a headache.”
Speed is another advantage worth underscoring. When an advisor wants to add an alternative allocation across 50 client accounts and the subscription window is midmonth, the traditional manual process simply cannot keep pace. “A little bit of work, but you can get it done in a matter of hours as opposed to days,” Anderson says. Clients aren’t left sitting in cash, missing market days while paperwork catches up. “We’re trying to make it as easy as possible,” he emphasizes, “so the advisor can go from being operational focused to client focused.”
Seeking Tax Alpha in Perpetuity
Beyond operational efficiency, the Axxcess team has been developing what may be the platform’s most compelling differentiator: a tax overlay capability built directly into the allocator tool.
CWO McCoy frames the opportunity in terms every advisor understands. After a 15-year bull market, an enormous amount of client wealth is effectively locked inside appreciated positions, concentrated stocks, or retirement accounts where liquidation can trigger punishing capital gains or ordinary income taxes. McCoy calls it “trapped wealth,” and the Axxcess platform is designed to unlock it.
The sources of trapped wealth vary widely across high-net-worth households, but the allocator is built to address the full spectrum. “Sometimes it’s capital gain related, sometimes it’s ordinary income related, a lot of times it’s both,” McCoy says. “But no matter what the client’s biggest tax pain point is, we can structure these portfolios within the allocator to start solving some of those problems.”
The firm’s approach builds on the familiar evolution from mutual funds to ETFs to direct indexing, then pushes further. Traditional direct indexing generates tax losses through individual stock selection, but the benefits tend to diminish over time as loss-harvesting opportunities dry up. Axxcess addresses the limitation by restructuring portfolios into a 130/30 long-short format.
“Instead of a long-only direct indexing account, we can now run that as a long-short,” observes McCoy. “What we will have now is assets on both sides of the ledger that move inverse to the market. So now we can generate those tax benefits in perpetuity.”
The mechanics function as elegant financial engineering. A net $100 portfolio gets $30 in additional long exposure and $30 in short exposure on top. The net market exposure stays at $100—no hedge fund–style neutral positioning, no leveraged bet on direction—but now $160 is actively at work generating potential tax offsets. And critically, advisors don’t need to liquidate existing holdings to get started. The long-short extensions layer onto the current portfolio in kind, meaning the transition itself doesn’t create a taxable event.
McCoy acknowledges the added structural intricacy head-on but argues the math speaks for itself. “It’s amazing. It’s complicated. There is a layer of complexity, but the benefit I think outweighs the cost,” he says. “So, there’s a little bit of more complexity to a direct indexing account versus just buying a single-ticker ETF, but that complexity came with a benefit. And this is the same thing. We’re adding a little bit more complexity, but it comes with a massive benefit.”
The generated offsets are portable, too. If a client’s existing allocation is already well positioned, capital gain offsets can flow to the 1040 and shelter separate income events. “What we’re trying to do is solve problems,” McCoy adds. “So, if a client has a tax problem, it’s a great problem to have, but we can now build portfolios that specifically address that tax problem. So, whether it’s a large W-2 or 1099 or whether the client is selling a $100 million private business, we can start solving those massive capital gain events that come due next April.”
The impact on long-term wealth accumulation is hard to overstate. “When you can start addressing those major tax pain points of the client, we can start maximizing after-tax net worth because that’s the real ballgame there,” says McCoy.
Where Axxcess Goes From Here
The bigger picture for Axxcess is about letting advisors do what they do best—serve clients—while the platform handles the operational and structural complexity behind the curtain. CIO Persson sees the firm’s value in two dimensions, one shaped by tax freedom and the other by operational simplicity. “For clients, we don’t need to let their tax liabilities dictate their investments anymore—and for advisors, we don’t have to let the complexity of these types of solutions steer us away from using them,” he says.
Delivering on a promise of simplicity at scale is credible only when the people behind the platform can walk advisors through real-world applications. Axxcess has invested heavily on both fronts. “That’s what we’ve done here at Axxcess, both by implementing the technology side of things to make this more efficient and scalable, but also by structuring this team that we have here today,” notes Persson. Advisors exploring the platform won’t encounter a one-size-fits-all pitch; the Axxcess team works collaboratively, he says, to “help them understand, on a case-by-case basis, exactly how we can apply this to their client’s situation.”
With estate planning applications, charitable gifting strategies, and additional tax-enhanced capabilities on the horizon, the Axxcess team clearly has more to share. For now, advisors interested in exploring the platform can reach out through AxxcessWealth.com for a case-by-case consultation.
The convergence of evergreen alts, tax-advantaged structures, and unified account technology represents a pivotal moment for the wealth management industry—one full of opportunity but also operational risk for firms trying to go it alone. “It’s certainly an exciting time, but it certainly can be daunting if you don’t have the right partner,” Anderson says.
And McCoy, for his part, sees no reason for advisors to wait. “We can go out there now and really solve problems for clients, and unlock all that trapped wealth that are in assets that are encumbered by taxes,” he says. “So, we don’t need to let that tax tail wag the dog anymore.”
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Additional Resources
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Disclosures
Scott Martin is not a client of Axxcess Wealth. This interview constitutes an endorsement. No cash compensation was paid. There are material conflicts of interest as Axxcess benefits from increased visibility.
Tax strategies discussed are for informational purposes only and may not be suitable for all investors. Tax outcomes depend on individual circumstances and current tax law, which may change.
These strategies are designed to improve tax efficiency, which may positively impact after-tax outcomes, though results vary.
America’s Best TAMPs is a ranking published by The Wealth Advisor, based on an independent survey of all Wealth Advisor subscribers. Each TAMP provider paid the same sponsorship fee to be listed in America’s Best TAMPs. Rankings are not indicative of future performance.
