Separately Managed Accounts (SMAs) are regaining traction as a cornerstone of personalized investment solutions. Their appeal lies in the control they offer: direct security ownership, tailored allocations, and full transparency. For high-net-worth clients in particular, SMAs have become a clear signal of premium service and bespoke attention.
What makes SMAs even more compelling is that they fit naturally into existing wealth management infrastructures. In Europe especially, SMAs represent a practical path to evolve away from rebate-based models and toward transparent, fee-based advisory. But despite their advantages, SMAs are notoriously difficult to scale. Managing thousands of individualized portfolios, each built around a client’s preferences, constraints, and risk profile, has traditionally been a manual, resource-intensive effort that’s hard to maintain over time.
Moving Beyond Operational Limits
Scaling SMAs requires more than headcount. It requires a shift in how portfolios are built, monitored, and communicated. Sphere, MDOTM’s AI investment platform, addresses this need directly by giving asset and wealth managers the ability to deliver true personalization at scale.
The platform replaces repetitive manual tasks with automation, ensuring that each portfolio can reflect the latest market views, client-specific constraints, and strategic decisions, while maintaining control and compliance. With a user-friendly interface and no-code logic, investment teams can create and rebalance customized portfolios quickly, without sacrificing precision.
What makes this transformation possible is Sphere’s ability to ingest client-specific inputs, from ESG exclusions to instrument preferences, and translate them into tailored portfolios that remain aligned with each investor’s objectives. It enables scalable personalization with speed and consistency.
Precision at the Core of Every Portfolio
Sphere puts control at the center of the SMA setup process. Managers can define how portfolios are built, from the investable universe to allocation logic. Instruments can be tagged and scored based on multiple dimensions, such as fee levels, liquidity, or suitability—ensuring that rebalancing decisions are not just automated, but aligned with strategy. The platform also supports constraints like tracking error targets, asset class bands, turnover thresholds, and minimum trade sizes.
These rules are stable and reusable, meaning once defined, they can be applied to thousands of portfolios without additional configuration. When market views shift or constraints change, updates are easy to implement across the board, allowing investment teams to remain agile without losing oversight.
Real-Time Monitoring and Strategic Oversight
Once portfolios are live, Sphere continues to deliver value through its monitoring and bulk analysis capabilities. Managers can view each account in detail—tracking volatility, performance, and exposure changes—or zoom out to assess the full book of business across any metric. When a portfolio drifts from its strategy or breaches a limit, Sphere flags it immediately, giving managers the opportunity to intervene before misalignment grows.
The platform’s bulk tools allow for targeted action. For example, a manager can filter all portfolios that exceed a certain tracking error and instantly bring them back in line. This level of control turns SMA oversight from a reactive process into a strategic lever, helping firms stay consistent, compliant, and responsive.
Reporting That Speaks Directly to Clients
A key challenge in SMA delivery is not just building the portfolios, but explaining them. Clients expect clear, personalized reporting,especially when they’re paying for bespoke management. Sphere solves this with an AI-driven reporting engine that automatically generates high-quality portfolio commentaries and insights.
Every commentary reflects the portfolio’s real data, logic, and risk profile. The language and tone can be tailored to fit different audiences, from detailed internal memos to client-friendly summaries. These commentaries explain not just what the portfolio holds, but why, turning technical decisions into meaningful narratives that support trust and transparency.
In parallel, Sphere can generate full reports that include performance analysis, allocation breakdowns, and rebalancing comparisons. These reports are ready to share instantly, cutting down on the time and coordination usually required across investment and marketing teams.
Seamless Integration, Scalable Deployment
Sphere integrates easily with intermediary platforms, broker systems, and client portals via secure APIs or scheduled data feeds. This ensures that data flows reliably between systems and that reports are always based on the latest information. By eliminating manual data handling, firms reduce errors, accelerate processes, and increase operational efficiency.
This seamless integration makes Sphere a practical solution not just for small teams looking to expand, but for large institutions managing SMA programs at scale. It empowers them to automate complexity while maintaining control and quality.
A New Operating Model for Personalized Wealth Management
The return of SMAs reflects a deeper shift in the industry: investors want personalization, transparency, and service that goes beyond the generic. But delivering that at scale requires new tools.
Artificial Intelligence enables firms to meet this demand, not with more people, but with smarter infrastructure. It turns SMA delivery into a streamlined, high-impact process that strengthens client relationships and drives growth.
With the right technology in place, SMAs become not just scalable, but a strategic advantage.
