Vestmark and Allspring Partner to Deliver Scalable Tax-Aware Portfolios for RIAs

Vestmark and Allspring Global Investments have partnered to provide registered investment advisors with a scalable solution for personalized, tax-aware model portfolios. By integrating Allspring’s active investment strategies with Vestmark’s unified managed account infrastructure, the collaboration addresses the growing demand for sophisticated customization without the operational burden typically associated with managing complex, high-volume client accounts.

What was announced

The partnership combines Allspring’s public markets investment solutions and portfolio construction consultation with Vestmark’s trading and tax-aware implementation technology. The offering is designed specifically for registered investment advisors (RIAs) who require institutional-quality, actively managed solutions but wish to maintain control over asset allocation within an open-architecture framework.

Built on Vestmark’s unified managed account (UMA) infrastructure, the service provides advisors with access to outsourced investment management, trading, rebalancing, and tax-aware transitions. A central component of the partnership is the integration of Vestmark Advisory Solutions and its VAST tax-overlay solution, which allows for ongoing tax management behind the scenes. This enables advisors to deliver personalized outcomes for clients with complex tax situations while maintaining the efficiency of their broader practice.

The scale of the partnership is significant, given the market positions of both firms. Allspring Global Investments currently manages $603 billion in assets under advisement. Meanwhile, Vestmark’s enterprise platform supports more than $2 trillion in assets and more than five million investor accounts. The partnership aims to simplify the implementation of these assets by automating the "back-office" elements of portfolio management, such as tax optimization and trade execution, which are often the primary bottlenecks for growing RIA firms.

"Advisors increasingly want greater control over portfolio construction without taking on the operational complexity that comes with implementing and managing customized portfolios at scale."

Rob Battista, Executive Vice President, Advisory Solutions at Vestmark

The companies involved

Vestmark is a prominent provider of wealth management technology and services, specializing in the infrastructure required to deliver investment strategies at scale. The firm’s platform is a cornerstone of the managed account industry, supporting 6 of the 10 largest managed account program providers in the market. Its technology suite covers UMAs, model portfolios, direct indexing, and tax optimization, serving over 72,000 financial advisors.

Allspring Global Investments is a global asset management firm with a focus on public markets. With $603 billion in assets under advisement, the firm provides a broad range of differentiated investment solutions. Allspring operates as an independent asset manager, offering active investment expertise to institutional and intermediary clients globally. The firm’s involvement in this partnership highlights a shift toward providing not just investment products, but also the consultative portfolio construction advice necessary for advisors to navigate increasingly volatile and tax-sensitive market environments.

What FF News has reported before

Vestmark has been consistently active in expanding its ecosystem through high-profile strategic partnerships with major asset managers. FF News previously reported on the firm being selected to power Vanguard custom model portfolios for RIAs, a move that signaled its growing dominance in the custom model space. This was followed by a strategic agreement with Fidelity to deliver open-architecture custom model portfolios. More recently, the firm has facilitated broader market access for other major players, including a strategic agreement with Capital Group and the launch of custom model portfolios for VanEck. These developments underscore Vestmark's role as a primary infrastructure provider for the industry's shift toward mass-personalization.

What this means

The wealth management industry is currently caught in a tension between the need for "mass personalization" and the reality of operational constraints. RIAs are under intense pressure to justify their fees by providing bespoke, tax-optimized portfolios, yet doing so manually is impossible at scale. This partnership highlights how the "platformization" of asset management is the only viable path forward. By embedding active management directly into a tax-aware UMA framework, firms like Allspring and Vestmark are putting traditional Turnkey Asset Management Programs (TAMPs) under pressure. The open question for the sector is whether technology can truly democratize sophisticated tax-loss harvesting and custom indexing for the mass-affluent, or if these services will remain the preserve of high-net-worth clients due to the underlying complexity of the trades.