A TAMP is an outsourced platform that handles the investment management and operational work of an advisory firm — portfolio management, trading, rebalancing, reporting, and billing — while the adviser keeps the client relationship.
The work a TAMP absorbs is the work that scales badly in a small firm. Trading and rebalancing across many accounts. Performance reporting that reconciles. Fee billing. The documentation that supports all of it when a regulator asks.
None of that is client-facing. All of it is mandatory. In a firm of three people it usually lands on the founder.
Control over implementation, and some flexibility. A platform runs a defined set of strategies in a defined way. If your value to clients is bespoke security selection, a TAMP works against you rather than for you.
You also add a counterparty. That is a real dependency and worth diligence.
Typically a percentage of assets on the platform, sometimes tiered, sometimes with a separate strategist fee layered on top. The layering is where the cost becomes hard to compare between providers — one headline number can contain a different set of components than another.
Not "is the fee worth it" in the abstract. The question is what the same work costs you today in staff time, software, and founder attention, and whether you would spend that budget the same way if you were starting over.
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