A TAMP, or turnkey asset management program, is an outside platform that runs the investment and back-office side of a practice for you: model portfolios, trading, rebalancing, performance reporting, and fee billing. Advisors, especially breakaways building an independent firm from scratch, use one to outsource operations and keep their time on planning and clients. The platform charges a fee that sits on top of yours.
Understand the legal and operating mechanics before you turn a private concern into a public move.
- A TAMP is a turnkey asset management program: a third-party platform that handles portfolio management, trading, reporting, and billing so you don't build that machinery yourself.
- It's the platform question nearly every breakaway advisor runs into, because leaving an employee seat means you suddenly own the entire back office.
- The trade is straightforward: you swap build time and infrastructure for cost and some loss of control, since the TAMP fee layers onto your advisory fee.
What is a TAMP, and what does the turnkey part actually mean?
A TAMP is a third-party platform that takes over the investment-management and operational work behind a practice so the advisor doesn't have to build or staff it. The acronym stands for turnkey asset management program, and turnkey is the operative word. You bring the client relationship; the platform supplies the machinery that would otherwise take you months and real capital to assemble.
Why does every breakaway advisor run into the TAMP question?
A breakaway advisor is someone leaving an employee model, usually a wirehouse or a bank, to run an independent business, most often as or under a registered investment adviser. The moment you break away, a wall of infrastructure that your old firm quietly provided becomes your problem to solve. That's why the TAMP question shows up fast.
What does a TAMP actually do for your practice day to day?
A TAMP absorbs the recurring operational load that would otherwise eat your calendar and force you to hire before you're ready. Think about the work that happens whether or not you show up: accounts drift from their targets, dividends need reinvesting, new money needs to be put to work, quarterly statements have to go out, fees have to be calculated and pulled correctly. On a turnkey platform, most of that runs without you touching it.
What does a TAMP cost you, and what does it cost your clients?
A TAMP charges a fee for the work it does, and that fee sits on top of your own advisory fee rather than replacing it. This is the number that decides most of these debates, so be clear-eyed about it. The client pays your fee for advice and planning, and the platform's fee for the investment operations underneath. Both come out of the same account, and the all-in cost is what the client experiences.