NEWPORT BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--United Capital Financial Advisers LLC (“United Capital”), the country’s first and largest financial life management firm, has created a sophisticated suite of defensive strategies in the U.S. With newly-added strategies from SpiderRock Advisors, LLC, and iCapital Network, the United Capital Investment Management platform rounds out a formidable suite of protective and tactical strategies offered with competitive fees.
United Capital has invested heavily in its investment management platform to provide exceptional defensive strategies to help safeguard the financial life goals of its clients, as they face the headwinds of market volatility in 2019 and beyond. United Capital’s size and scale allow it to offer a comprehensive, fully-managed index portfolio at a competitive cost. Third-party advisors who use United Capital Investment Management through FinLife Partners are able to access these strategies as well.
“When I joined the United Capital team nine months ago, I saw an opportunity to expand our investment management capabilities and drive down costs,” said Kara Murphy, chief investment officer for United Capital. “Thanks to our comprehensive approach, partnership with emerging portfolio managers with exceptional expertise, and leveraging our scale, we can give our clients access to strategies that have been favored by the largest institutions, endowments, foundations and family offices for decades.”
Safeguarding financial lives through new defensive strategies
Murphy and her team identified a demand for additional defensive strategies to complement United Capital’s wide selection of tactical asset allocation strategies. To aid advisors in this goal, United Capital has partnered with SpiderRock Advisors and iCapital Network. SpiderRock offers options overlays which have an objective to provide additional income and mitigate investment risk. iCapital Network offers access to alternative investment strategies in a number of different structures to increase diversification and potentially reduce portfolio volatility for experienced, large investors.
SpiderRock’s options strategies, which will be managed by SpiderRock as a sub-adviser for United Capital, attempt to shield clients from market volatility with a suite of customizable strategies as overlays for existing portfolios. These strategies may create a compelling alternative to simply selling stocks or increasing fixed income exposure to mitigate risk. SpiderRock’s customizable options strategies may also help clients earn additional income on their investments, enable wealth migration for beneficiaries and assist in strategic liquidation to optimize exposure to capital gains taxes.
The United Capital Investment Management platform also supports alternative investment strategies from iCapital, letting advisors offer low or negatively correlated assets that may reduce risk and help enhance total return. iCapital’s proprietary set of private equity, hedge, and real estate funds have integrated seamlessly with United Capital’s leading technology platform, creating new avenues for diversification.
Guidance-driven, client-first investing
These defensive strategies play an integral part in the financial life management process pioneered by United Capital. Guidance-driven investing forms the bedrock of United Capital’s investment management. By understanding the financial life goals of clients, advisors can use the platform to build a financial plan and a personalized portfolio that aligns with clients’ individual goals, priorities and preferences. The platform matches clients with the strategies and tradeoffs that make the most sense for them.
United Capital’s investment platform is based on incorporating partnerships with the largest institutional investment firms where size and scale matters. The platform also sources unique, emerging managers to direct proprietary strategies with innovative structures and investment philosophies. This results in a platform with a broad variety of choices for clients and advises, including low-cost index-focused core strategies, as well as an array of satellite approaches, including protection-focused strategies that seek to limit downside risk, tactical strategies that may take advantage of market changes, and performance-oriented strategies that seek to outperform the market over the long term.
In combining both approaches – guidance-based investing and a process that seeks best-of-breed institutional managers – United Capital offers clients a financial planning and investment management process that is substantially personalized and differentiated from anything else in the market.
“We’ve built our investment management platform around the idea that money is the fuel for the lives our clients want to live,” Murphy said. “As we look ahead to 2019, we believe our selection of best-in-breed strategies and competitive fees will allow our clients to live richly.”