Access Partners

Separately Managed Account (SMA) is actually a simple approach that has been used for very large fiduciary trusts for many years. Unlike a mutual fund, where investors own a piece of a collective pool of securities and where investors pay the same expense ratio regardless of their size, an SMA has a negotiated fee.

A key attribute of the SMA approach is to directly hire investment management firms to construct and manage portfolios of individual securities for each client's portfolio (e.g., small cap value, mid-cap core, or international equities). These investment firms manage a designated portion of a client's diversified portfolio according to the manager's style-specific mandate.

Selecting an appropriate high quality investment management firm is one of the most critical steps of SMA delivery. While billion dollar accounts can easily execute this strategy, many intermediate-sized portfolios can find the approach cumbersome.

Access Partners has combined the strengths of the SMA approach with institutional-quality consulting and unique technology to bring SMA's to relationships with $500,000 to $100+ milllion on a cost-effective basis.