Money market funds lose appeal each time the Federal Reserve cuts rates. Certificates of deposit (CDs) tie up capital for months or years. Treasury bills require constant rolling and oversight. And for advisors, managing client cash often means doing the work without getting paid for it.
Pacer Financial’s new partnership with financial technology firm Save® aims to address all three pain points simultaneously, offering a solution that combines Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) backing, daily liquidity, and equity market exposure through a savings platform unlike anything advisors have seen before.
The partnership, announced in early November, grants Pacer exclusive distribution rights to Save’s Liquid Market Savings Platform through wealth management and brokerage channels. The platform enables advisors to link client savings accounts to exchange-traded funds (ETFs)—including several Pacer funds—creating accounts that seek to deliver equity-like returns while maintaining full FDIC insurance and next-day access to capital.
Sean O’Hara, President at Pacer ETF Distributors, a division of Pacer Financial, spoke with The Wealth Advisor about how the partnership offers advisors a cash management solution that seeks to solve problems on both sides of the desk—helping clients generate potentially better returns while opening a pathway for advisors to be compensated for managing what has traditionally been the least profitable part of a portfolio.
A Cash Solution Built for Declining Rates
O’Hara frames the partnership as a direct response to current market conditions and the persistent problem of idle cash. With the Fed cutting rates and investors sitting on record levels of cash, the timing appears particularly relevant.
“It’s a very, very interesting concept to me, given where we are with the Fed policy and given how much money’s in cash—and there are problems on both sides. If I stay in cash, I’m going to get a lower return. If I move out of cash, I take on a little bit more risk,” O’Hara explains. “So, what the program does essentially is it offers a fully FDIC-insured savings account, so you have 100% liquidity on a daily basis. You have 100% FDIC insurance. That FDIC insurance can ramp up to $50 million per individual account.”
The platform’s structure aims to remove the trade-off that typically requires advisors to choose between safety and returns. Rather than earning traditional interest, account holders connect their savings to an eligible ETF. “You can link the return of that individual savings account to an exchange-traded fund of your choice. And over time, historically, you would get a higher return by doing so,” says O’Hara.
The program launches with a roster of index funds tracking the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, emerging markets, MSCI EAFE, and gold, alongside select Pacer ETFs. The bank uses the interest that normally would accrue to purchase one-year-and-one-day call options on the linked ETF each month, creating a structured approach that seeks to capture upside while protecting principal.
Financial Engineering Meets Daily Liquidity
The options strategy powering Save’s platform draws from concepts familiar to advisors who work with indexed annuities or structured notes, but with crucial differences. O’Hara emphasizes the liquidity advantage as a defining feature.
“It’s a concept that’s been utilized a number of different ways in other vehicles like indexed annuities, for example, where they’re using an option strategy to provide a principal guarantee with some reasonable return on the underlying index,” he notes. “It gets used somewhat in structured notes, but there’s big differences here—this is 100% liquid on a daily basis, and you get the FDIC insurance.”
Account holders requesting withdrawals before 2 PM receive their funds the same day; requests submitted after 2 PM arrive the next business day. The liquidity extends beyond convenience—the structure allows investors to exit positions during market downturns without locking in losses. “And because you’re liquid on a daily basis, if you want to, you just pull your money out and put it back in the next day after you decline in that asset,” explains O’Hara.
Monthly option purchases aim to help smooth volatility, creating new entry points as markets rise, fall, or move sideways. The structure accommodates different market scenarios without threatening the underlying capital. “You can have a scenario where the market goes up, and you do really well. You can have a scenario where the market bounces around and goes nowhere but is flat for a year, let’s say, and still make a profit,” he points out.
The tax treatment adds another layer of efficiency. “One last thing that’s really important about it is the taxation. On normal savings accounts, you get taxed as ordinary income because it’s interest,” says O’Hara. “Here, because we’re buying that one-year-and-one-day call option, you’re getting capital gains treatment on your gains.”
Once gains settle into the account, the full balance—principal plus appreciation—becomes FDIC insured. “So, once you make a gain that goes into your savings account, now that’s fully FDIC insured as well. You can never go backwards; you can only go forward,” he adds.
Keeping Advisors in the Center
Cash management is traditionally a tricky area for advisors. “As financial advisors, you sort of struggle with: how do I manage my client’s cash?” O’Hara observes.
Clients often expect advisors to optimize idle cash, but traditional vehicles—sweep accounts, money markets, short-term Treasuries—produce little revenue for the practice. As a result, managing cash can become unpaid work.
The partnership structure positions advisors as essential rather than optional. Save pays the advisory fee, eliminating direct costs to clients while ensuring advisors receive compensation for managing cash allocation. The arrangement solves what O’Hara identifies as a persistent compensation gap in advisory practices.
“Here, having a sub-advisory solution where you’re linking the return of that savings account to the ETF provides for potentially higher returns and also provides revenue for the financial advisor. So, it solves really everybody’s problem,” he explains. “It provides that FDIC insurance that we talked about and it fits in well with the financial advisor because the work that they do in helping manage cash, they can get some remuneration on that.”
The platform requires advisors to establish accounts through a dedicated portal after signing a sub-advisory agreement with Save. Within the portal, advisors can review historical performance representations for different account configurations, set up client accounts, and select which ETF to link. Custody currently runs through Pershing, with plans to expand to Fidelity, Schwab, and wirehouses seeking self-custody options. The process takes minutes once an advisor completes the initial setup, and Save provides regular statements for recordkeeping and client communication.
The system is intentional, and O’Hara sees the advisor-centric design as fundamental to Pacer’s mission. “That’s who we feel like we’re here to serve. We believe in the financial advice model,” he says. “We believe that people who work with financial advisors have better results, accumulating their wealth, using their wealth in retirement, and as they transfer that wealth from one generation to the next.”
Asset Gathering Through Revealed Cash
Beyond improving returns on existing advisory relationships, the platform can be used as a discovery tool for capturing assets advisors never knew existed. The strategy leverages a common dynamic: clients maintain cash holdings outside advisory relationships, often in CDs or savings accounts at banks where they’ve held accounts for decades.
The possible benefits for the advisor are clear. “I would do this because I can give my clients potentially higher return, number one,” O’Hara says. “Number two is, if you’re a financial advisor and you show this to your clients, what I think will happen more often than not is rather than the money that’s with you, they’ll probably reveal, ‘Well, I have money in this CD over here, can I do that with this?’ So, we can gather more assets by using a strategy like this.”
The platform also functions as a bridge for cash-heavy clients hesitant to enter equity markets at current valuations. “You also can think about it like a training-wheels approach to getting into the equity market,” he adds.
Clients holding cash because of uncertainty rather than tactical timing may gradually increase equity exposure after experiencing how the linked accounts perform. The principal protection can remove the fear of immediate losses that keeps many investors sidelined, while the monthly option purchases create natural dollar-cost averaging into market positions.
“Given where we are—market at an all-time high, interest rates look like they’re heading lower—for people who are looking for a differentiated way to get returns, we think this is a really exciting program,” O’Hara emphasizes.
Starting Simple, Building Complexity
The initial rollout focuses on straightforward account structures, but Pacer plans to expand capabilities as advisors gain familiarity with the platform. “You can combine ETFs if you want,” O’Hara notes. Future iterations will allow advisors to build custom portfolios within single accounts, creating allocations that seek to balance growth potential with volatility management.
“We’ll add other options, we’ll add more ETFs, we’ll add more sophisticated solutions as we go down the road,” he says. The menu of available ETFs will grow beyond the initial roster as demand develops and advisors identify specific allocation needs.
The partnership extends Pacer’s pattern of bringing institutional-grade strategies to the advisor channel. Known for launching ETFs with trend-following and free cash flow methodologies, Pacer has built a reputation for translating complex investment approaches into accessible tools. The Save partnership follows the same philosophy—taking a sophisticated options strategy typically reserved for structured products and making the approach available through a simple savings account interface.
“At Pacer, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation in how we serve advisors and investors, and partnering with Save is a natural next step in that mission,” O’Hara says. “With the Federal Reserve cutting rates and investors increasingly focused on returns, liquidity, and yield, Save’s platform provides advisors with a timely, differentiated tool to help clients put idle cash to work in a uniquely beneficial way.”
A Timely Solution for an Old Problem
Cash management has remained one of the unsolved challenges in wealth management—too important to ignore, too complex to handle efficiently, and too often uncompensated despite the time required. The goal of Pacer’s partnership with Save is to address all three dimensions simultaneously. The platform transforms idle cash into an active component of portfolio management, simplifies the operational burden through automated account structures, and creates a fee stream that compensates advisors for work previously done without payment.
“So, this is a tool that allows us to go back to the financial advisors who work with us and give them a solution that I haven’t seen anything like,” O’Hara says.
And the current market backdrop only heightens the appeal. Equities trading at elevated levels can make some clients nervous about deploying cash into potentially risky assets, while falling interest rates can erode yields on traditional savings vehicles. The platform seeks to address both concerns, offering market participation without principal risk on one side and compensation for portfolio management on the other.
“It seems like this is a terrific opportunity and especially given where we are—market at an all-time high, so I don’t risk my principal, interest rates coming down, so I can get a little higher return,” O’Hara notes. “And then the big thing for the financial advisor is that they can get paid for the work they do.”
Whether clients view the accounts as permanent cash management vehicles or stepping stones toward fuller equity exposure, advisors gain a tool that seeks to keep cash working while generating revenue for the practice. The combination of FDIC insurance, daily liquidity, and market-linked returns creates optionality that traditional cash vehicles simply cannot match.
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Disclosures
The information being presented is intended for Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs) only and not for individual/retail customers.
Investments in securities are not FDIC insured, not bank guaranteed, and may lose value. Investing inherently involves risk, including the potential loss of principal. It is important for Advisors to carefully consider their client’s investment objectives, along with any associated fees and expenses, before proceeding with investments. The Sub-Advisory services provided by Save Advisers LLC (“Save Advisers”), an SEC registered investment adviser, are designed to help clients achieve favorable outcomes within their investment portfolios. These services, however, are not intended to offer tax advice or comprehensive financial planning for all aspects of a client’s financial situation. They also do not encompass investments outside the Save Advisers platform. For further information about Save Advisers LLC, please refer to the Form CRS, Form ADV Part 2A, and the Privacy Policy. Brokerage services related to the Sub-Advisory services are provided by Atomic Brokerage LLC (“Atomic Brokerage”), a registered broker-dealer and member of FINRA and SIPC. Custodial and clearing services are handled by Pershing LLC, while technology services may be offered by AtomicVest Inc. For more details about Atomic Brokerage, please see their Form CRS, General Disclosures, Privacy Policy, and fee schedule. You can check the background and custodial/clearing services of Atomic Brokerage on FINRA’s BrokerCheck. Fees such as regulatory fees, transaction fees, fund expenses, brokerage commissions, and services fees may apply to your brokerage account.
1.To obtain FDIC insurance coverage, customer funds provided will be deposited into interest-bearing accounts at Third Coast Bank, Member FDIC (“TCB”). The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed on July 21, 2010, made permanent the current standard maximum deposit insurance amount of $250,000. The FDIC coverage limit applies per depositor, per insured depository institution, for each account ownership category. As such, deposits at TCB are subject to FDIC insurance coverage up to $250,000. For deposits exceeding $250,000, TCB automatically allocates deposits through a Reciprocal Deposit Network (“RDN”) to provide extended FDIC coverage of up to $100 million per Client while maintaining a single banking relationship for each client. Actual deposit insurance coverage may be lower if you have other funds deposited at the banks within the Reciprocal Deposit Network. Customers are responsible for monitoring the total amount of their deposits across all network banks to determine the extent of available FDIC insurance coverage in accordance with FDIC rules. Learn more at https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits. Only the funds customers provide and deposit with TCB and the RDN will be eligible for FDIC insurance. TCB is not providing any investment advice or responsible for the purchase or performance of any investment contracts. Client agrees to forgo deposit account interest earnings to participate in the Market Savings Sub-Advisory Program, allowing Save to utilize those interest earnings to purchase strategy-linked securities on their behalf. The strategy-linked securities held in the Pershing LLC custodial accounts are not FDIC-insured, are not bank guaranteed, and may lose value with a minimum return of zero. Maximum balance and transfer limits may apply. Neither Save Advisers, LLC, nor its affiliates, are a bank. Pershing LLC is a member of the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (“SIPC”), formed by Congress to protect “customers” of broker-dealers and to promote public confidence in the U.S. securities markets. Customers of a SIPC Member that fails financially are afforded certain benefits under the Securities Investor Protection Act (“SIPA”). These benefits are relevant only if the broker-dealer that “carries” a customer’s account fails and is liquidated under SIPA. At Pershing LLC, your investments are protected by SIPC up to a maximum of $500,000 total, including $250,000 in cash balances. Coverage limitations apply. To learn more about SIPC coverage, visit the SIPC website at www.sipc.org.
2.The deposit account portion of the Save Market Savings Sub-Advisory Program (“Program”) is provided by Third Coast Bank, Member FDIC (“TCB”). The investment portion of the Program and sub-advisory service is provided by Save Advisers, LLC (“Save Advisers”). Neither Save Advisers nor its investment affiliates is a bank. The minimum deposit amount for the Program is $25,000. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed on July 21, 2010, made permanent the current standard maximum deposit insurance amount of $250,000. The FDIC coverage limit applies per depositor, per insured depository institution, for each account ownership category. As such, deposits at TCB are subject to FDIC insurance coverage up to $250,000. For deposits exceeding $250,000, TCB automatically allocates funds through a Reciprocal Deposit Network to provide extended FDIC coverage of up to $100 million per Client while maintaining a single banking relationship. While a client’s principal deposit in the Program is not exposed to market or investment risks, there are other important risks associated with the Program to consider, including the risk that the APY on a clients’ Program investments could be zero (0%).
3.Investment Sub-Advisory Services offered through Save Advisers LLC (“Save Advisers”), an SEC registered investment adviser. Prior to becoming a customer, if at all, each prospective customers’ financial advisor must answer (on its clients’ behalf as their fiduciary) a series of subjective and objective questions to evaluate both the individual’s objective capacity to take risk and subjective willingness to take risk. Save Advisers does not charge an advisory fee; however, an affiliate receives a platform fee deducted from interest credited by the partner bank for programs administered on the platform. Additionally, Save Advisers pays Pacer Financial, Inc. certain fees for promotional services. These fees are based on program deposits and are structured to address potential conflicts of interest by Pacer Financial receiving lower fees for any allocation to Pacer ETFs (which may be included in the Market Savings Sub-Advisory Program). Pacer Financial, Inc. and its affiliates provide distribution, investment advisory, and index provider services to Pacer ETFs and receive fees from Pacer ETFs for such services. For more information, please visit www.paceretfs.com.
Generally, an APY (annual percentage yield) represents the yearly return on a bank or investment account. Save Market Savings Sub-Advisory Program is a hybrid product whereby principal amounts are deposited with an FDIC-insured depository institution, Third Coast Bank, and Save Advisers LLC provides an investment component, investing the interest earned on the principal balance in the deposit account. The investment component offers the potential to earn a Variable APY derived from investments made by Save within its portfolio strategies. Each month, Save purchases investments based on the prior month’s deposit balance, with the Variable APY equaling the cumulative return for investments selected by Save Advisors and reflected over time through monthly investment allocations. The Variable APY may be 0% but will never be less than the Minimum Variable APY of 0% per annum; if the Variable APY for a particular period is at or below 0%, customers will not receive any Variable APY return for that period. Variable APYs are subject to change at any time; are not guaranteed; and are presented net of fees. The Variable APY presented is hypothetical and reflects potential growth under the program’s rolling 12-month calculation structure. Variable APYs for the Market Savings Sub-Advisory Program are based on historical performance in the S&P 500 Risk-Controlled Portfolio from 2009 to present and reflect potential growth under this rolling investment approach. Most Save Advisers portfolios reflect the return of a benchmark index or ETF. Some portfolios, however, present hypothetical Variable APYs based on hypothetical back-tested performance. All back-test statistics are hypothetical and designed with hindsight. For detailed information, see Hypothetical Back-testing documentation. Both historical performance and hypothetical back-tested performance are no guarantee of future performance, and actual results will vary.
The minimum deposit amount for the Save Market Savings sub-advisory program is $25,000. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act signed on July 21, 2010, made permanent the current standard maximum deposit insurance amount (SMDIA) of $250,000. The FDIC coverage limit applies per depositor, per insured depository institution, for each account ownership category. As such, deposits held in the account at Third Coast Bank (“TCB”) are subject to FDIC insurance coverage up to $250,000.For deposits exceeding $250,000, TCB automatically allocates funds through a Reciprocal Deposit Network to provide extended FDIC coverage of up to $100 million per Client while maintaining a single banking relationship. Management Fees associated with the investments may reduce earnings on the account. Customer withdrawal prior to maturity could result in additional associated costs.
4.Articles and customer support materials provided by Save Advisers are for informational and general educational purposes only and are not investment or financial advice. Generally, investments held over 365 days incur long-term capital gains treatment. Additionally, Save Advisers does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice, and investors are encouraged to consult with their personal advisers. Save Advisers’ internet-based sub-advisory services are designed to assist the Advisor’s Clients in achieving discrete financial goals. They are not intended to provide comprehensive tax advice or financial planning with respect to every aspect of a customer’s financial situation and do not incorporate specific investments that customers hold elsewhere. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of interest on your initial investment. Our program contains certain risks including: the Strategies may not work as designed, the program may not fit your Client’s specific investment objective due to the principal protection initiative, and potential opportunity cost risk. We will deliver to each prospective Advisor further details about the program’s risks including those set forth in ADV Part 2.
By using this website, mobile applications and related services, you understand the information being presented is provided for informational purposes only and agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Save Advisers relies on information from various sources believed to be reliable, including customers and third parties, but cannot guarantee the accuracy and completeness of that information. Nothing in this communication should be construed as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation to buy or sell any security.
Save Advisers’ internet-based advisory services are designed to assist customers in achieving discrete financial goals. They are not intended to provide comprehensive tax advice or financial planning with respect to every aspect of a customer’s financial situation and do not incorporate specific investments that customers hold elsewhere. All investing involves risk, including the possible loss of interest on your initial investment. Our program contains certain risks including: the Strategies may not work as designed, the program may not fit your specific investment objective due to the principal protection initiative, and potential opportunity risk. We will deliver to each prospective customer further details about the program’s risks including those set forth in ADV Part 2.
