Welcome to FinTech TV.
I'm Remy Blaire.
Navigating the tax code is becoming increasingly complex for the average investor and a significant operational burden for the advisors managing their wealth.
Now with regulations shifting constantly, the manual work required to stay tax efficient has reached a critical point.
55 IP.
Facing this challenge of automation that transforms complex tax decisions into a seamless tax smart process.
Well, I'm joined by Gautam Sachdev, who's the CEO of 55 IP here at the New York Stock Exchange.
Gautam, great to have you here.
Thank you so much for joining me.
Thank you for having me.
Uh, I'm quite excited to be here.
Uh, this is a very cool setup you guys have.
This is my first time on the floor.
Uh, so just to kind of describe what 55B is.
Uh, Essentially, 55% is a tax smart investment management platform that helps advisors, uh, personalize their client accounts at scale.
Which means that advisors can use our platforms to implement ongoing tax force harvesting, uh, tax transition, uh, automated rebalancing, and tax smart withdrawals for their clients.
Uh, today we do this on model portfolios, SMAs, and, uh, UMAs, which also means that we help, um, asset managers increase adoption in these products by eliminating the frictions that taxes cost.
Uh, 55 IP was launched roughly 10 years ago.
And 5 years ago we were acquired by JPMorgan Asset Management.
Assets in these 5 years have grown 75 times.
Uh, and today, we continue to be an independent platform, and we have the privilege of working with some of the largest asset managers, custodians, and wealth management firms in the industry.
And you highlighted some key points there, and we are just kicking off a new year 2026.
So I do want to get your take on 2025 milestones and how you have evolved.
Yeah, so two things come to mind, right?
One is tax transition.
So over the past few years, we've seen a large number of advisors move forward, uh, to understand what was happening, we actually commissioned a, uh, research in partnership with Cerullie.
And what we learned was this trend is only going to continue as advisors look for better, for a better operating platform, or they simply look to cash out on the business value that they've created.
However, we also learned that these transitions are extremely hard and complex.
Advisers lose anywhere between 10 to 20% of their client assets when making these moves, and this is because of the potential taxes that clients face when moving their accounts from Platform A to Platform B.
And to solve for this, we launched our Transition Services, which is built on a tax transition technology that helps control the taxes when accounts move and in turn also helps advisers retain almost all, if not all, of their accounts.
The second piece is our software as a service business.
So there are 3 ways in which we serve advisors.
One is we do it for them, that is, we act as a service advisor.
Second is we do it with them, that is, we act as a trailless delivery provider.
And third is we let them do it themselves by providing our APIs as a SAS model.
Uh, in 2026, we doubled down on our SAS business where we did broader rollouts with a large national broker dealer and a large wealth management firm, thereby their advisors accessing our technology through the existing tech stack and not changing the existing workflows at all.
And for viewers out there who might not be as familiar with the technology, can you actually walk us through this?
So, If you think about it right, today we are, we are surrounded by choice, right from building your salad at a salad bar to configuring your next car.
There's choices everywhere.
So similarly, advisor or investors are asking for personalization in their financial accounts, whether their investments reflect their.
Their current situation or their goals or simply their values, they want their investments to be personalized or tailored to their tastes, and there's nothing more personal than taxes, and it's not just H&Is across the spectrum.
Investors want active tax management on their on their investment portfolios, and it's not just a point in time solution.
They want their investments.
To be tax managed right from when they're allocating to their strategic portfolio to when they're raising cash for spending in their later years.
And for viewers out there who are wondering, looking ahead, what should they be watching for from 55 IP.
So over the next 4 to 5 years, we'll be doubling down on our platform, but more specifically over the next 12 to 24 months, uh, three things.
One is we'll be extending our tax capabilities on the ability to do a SMA or direct index or an alternate alternative investment in a model, model portfolio.
Which means giving investors more choices.
Second is we'll be doing a broader launch of our householding capabilities, which means tax managing all the accounts in the household and not just one single individual account.
And third is we'll be deepening our integrations with wealth managers and national broker dealers.
And of course I understand you recently wrote about how fintechs can stay relevant as they strive to become the industry standard, but what is the one lesson from that piece that fintech leaders actually need to internalize right now and want?
So, I'm, I'm a firm believer that culture eats strategy for breakfast.
Uh, and as a fintech, resources are more often limited.
So I think it's very key for FinTech to kind of build a culture that encourages collaboration and a can-do attitude, because innovation is not born in isolation.
Innovation happens when a group of people come together to solve that one single problem, and this is not to undermine credibility or competence, but more often a can-do attitude and the ability to fail fast leads to successful outcomes.
And of course as we head into the rest of 2026, can you tell us what the one thing you want advisors as well as fintech leaders to be thinking differently about, and can you walk us through this?
So I believe that personalization at scale has become table stakes, you know, as we discussed, investors are looking for a personalized or customized investment solution.
But simultaneously advisor advisers are looking to scale their practice, like how can they spend more time in deepening client relationships by outsourcing their day to day management of these accounts.
So I think uh advisers should at least look for platforms that give them personalization at scale to help, help them take the business to the next level.
Well, thank you so much for joining me, Gautam here at the New York Stock Exchange, and thank you so much for sharing all of your insights as well as your perspective and thank you for having me, Remy.
My pleasure.
Thank you.
