Setting a Strong Product Pipeline: Q&A with Corey Fiedler, Vestmark Chief Product Officer

How is Vestmark’s product roadmap established? 

It starts with our business strategy. We have a long-term, established customer base that relies on the VestmarkONE platform to support many functions of their wealth management business. RIAs and asset managers also look to leverage the same core capabilities too, but they also have unique needs. Our product roadmap starts by looking at what we already do exceptionally well, making sure we maintain and innovate that core platform, and then extend it in ways that support new client needs. 

Can you give some examples of how Vestmark has evolved its products?

Our core platform excels at rebalancing huge numbers of accounts quickly, which is a need for enterprise wealth management firms with millions of clients. We adapted that capability to offer it as a service, particularly to large RIAs. We also developed a new solution, VAST, designed to help optimize portfolios for tax during transition, a major need in the market. We listen to our customers and watch market trends. We won’t chase every shiny object. We identify long-term shifts in how people invest and how firms offer services, and design solutions to meet that need. Some examples:

• In the current market, fixed-income investing has become more prominent. We were among the first to support integrating fixed income alongside equities in a Unified Managed Account, allowing advisors to rebalance across asset classes, saving time and effort.
• Similarly, we recently launched a tax-managed UMA with private assets, which we believe to be one of the first actually in-market. This helps meet the appetite investors and advisors have for alts without creating more work. 

Expanding our customer base also opens up product opportunities. For example, RIAs also have other needs beyond trading/rebalancing, such as sharing results with their clients and generating proposals for new prospects. We added those capabilities so we could have a more complete solution for this audience. 

How do you approach product development and adding new capabilities?

We give ourselves a head start by building solutions adjacent to areas where we already have expertise. We have a team of product developers, interface designers, and financial experts who understand this space intimately. We work closely with sales and strategy teams to match products to what customers want. We are a big believer in the value of prototyping in partnership with our customers. We also leverage our client user groups and individual client interviews to ensure we are including the voice of the customer in all new capabilities. Second, we are always open to partnerships that can jump-start product innovation. Our UMAs with alternative investments are an example – we worked with iCapital and BlackRock. We believe working together made our solution especially compelling in the market.

What is your process for rolling out new products and features?

Our goal is to get a product to market as soon as possible. Once launched, we watch and listen closely so we can continue to refine the product based on how our clients use it, and what their goals are. We believe that is a good balance. Some wealthtech firms say they offer a product once they have the model figured out or the code written – but then they wait for someone to buy it before they figure out how it actually integrates with the client’s business. But we also want to be responsive to a fast-moving industry. If we are too inwardly focused and try to solve everything at once, we may miss the market. A product launch isn’t one and done. Lastly, it’s not all about the product. We support our clients in rolling out these features, focused on messaging, training, and adoption, who in turn can change the value proposition they offer to their clients. Our partnership approach helps ensure customers gain all the advantages these new solutions can offer. 

What is next for Vestmark’s product portfolio?

We have a ton of things in the works, but one we are excited about next is a householding rebalancing capability – being able to efficiently co-manage the portfolios of multiple people in one household. We performed a build/buy/partner analysis and determined this was something that was a strong competency and an area of differentiation, so we built it. It’s something advisors and their clients want, and it uses the rebalancing and tax management capabilities our platform already does at scale. This could be a great solution for firms looking to give their advisors tools that allow them to provide a new level of service, but doing so in a way that saves them time and scales. Our powerful trading engine makes household rebalancing easy. We look forward to sharing more about householding in the coming months! 

UMAs are not suitable for all investors and should be evaluated for suitability by their Financial Professional prior to investing.

Investment strategies that seek to enhance after-tax performance may be unable to fully realize strategic gains or harvest losses. Tax-loss harvesting involves the risks that the new investment could perform worse than the original investment and that transaction costs could offset the tax benefit.

There are limitations inherent in the use of an optimization methodology to manage accounts relative to a designated index; for instance, the optimization tools are not designed to account for current market conditions and any short-term market fluctuations. The optimization tools may seek to estimate individual tax circumstances but cannot incorporate all individual tax information, potentially leading to inaccuracies.