Mercer Advisors launches Aspen Investing with in-house direct indexing
The $100B-plus mega-RIA is folding customized portfolios, every day tax-loss harvesting and unified managed accounts into its Aspen advisor tech platform
Mercer Advisors introduced that it has accomplished the rollout of Aspen Investing, a proprietary capital allocation platform that places the agency’s centralized portfolio administration capabilities immediately within the palms of each advisory staff in its community.
The Denver-based mega-RIA’s replace, revealed Tuesday, successfully brings consumer portfolios totally inside Aspen, the advisory know-how system Mercer makes use of to coordinate planning, tax and property work.
Aspen Investing now capabilities as that system’s capital allocation engine, drawing on what the agency describes as a centralized capital allocation platform of greater than $100 billion.
Mercer mentioned the platform is supposed to offer entry to personalized methods at scale whereas decreasing portfolio prices by way of strategic relationships with asset managers, although the announcement didn’t disclose specifics on price ranges or projected financial savings.
How Aspen Investing builds consumer portfolios
Mercer developed Aspen Investing with wealth know-how supplier Orion. The platform depends on unified managed accounts, or UMAs, which maintain methods from a number of third-party managers inside a single account and consolidate reporting. Advisors can align every portfolio with a consumer’s monetary plan and add tax administration, security-level exclusions or additions, values-based screens and various capital allocation allocations.
Several capabilities are new. Mercer’s personal capital allocation staff now builds and manages direct indexing portfolios, during which shoppers personal the person shares of an index quite than a fund that tracks it.
The platform runs tax-loss harvesting every day and lets advisors set a capital features tax finances. It may work round low-basis legacy holdings, a characteristic geared toward shoppers sitting on massive unrealized features and at advisory corporations becoming a member of Mercer by way of acquisition.
The agency additionally touted the platform’s functionality to assist proposal era, superior reporting with proprietary enterprise intelligence, and assist improve threat monitoring.
“Aspen Investing was designed to offer each consumer entry to the form of portfolio administration sometimes reserved for endowments and enormous establishments, delivered in a method that displays their particular objectives and circumstances,” mentioned Donald Calcagni, Mercer’s chief capital allocation officer, who leads an investing power of greater than 125 professionals.
Mercer Advisors President Daniel Gourvitch framed the launch as a break from standardized mannequin portfolios.
“We’ve moved past fashions to create really personalized capital allocation applications, constructed to replicate every household’s distinctive monetary context and preferences,” he mentioned.
The platform works with a number of custodians together with Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments and Raymond James. Avantos, an AI-native working system for monetary providers corporations, supported its growth.
“Mercer Advisors’ Aspen Investing platform is a case research in personalization the place each household can have a portfolio tailor-made to their distinctive objectives, with out sacrificing effectivity,” mentioned Natalie Wolfsen, chief government of Orion.
A multi-year platform buildout
Aspen Investing is the newest layer on a platform Mercer has been increasing since 2024. In June 2024, the firm introduced Aspen Partners, a non-public bourses providing constructed with Opto Investments, as a strategy to deliver personal market investments to certified shoppers. That providing was constructed to offer certified buyers entry to personal fairness, enterprise capital, personal credit score, actual property and transport systems methods, and is now constructed into Aspen Investing.
In July this yr, Mercer launched the second generation of its AI-enabled Aspen platform, which it describes as a data graph linking shoppers, advisory groups and the providers they obtain. The agency mentioned then that the system was in use by greater than 1,100 of its wealth professionals.
Mercer’s push into in-house direct indexing comes because the technique strikes extra prominently into the mainstream. Direct indexing belongings reached $1.2 trillion on the finish of 2025, in keeping with Cerulli Associates, although a recent FTSE Russell survey of advisors on direct indexing discovered consumer schooling and advisor data stay obstacles to adoption.
The agency’s Aspen platform announcement additionally comes shortly after it tapped the syndicated loan market to refinance $1.9 billion of private debt backing, which it swapped out with a seven-year time period mortgage and revolving credit score facility.
