Orion Custom Indexing picked up three heavyweight partners on 1 September. Orion added BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard as model-portfolio strategists on Tailored Allocation Portfolios, bringing the roster to eight alongside Brinker-Main Management, First Trust Advisors, Frontier Asset Management, Janus Henderson and Russell Investments.

What Orion Custom Indexing Adds to the Models

The Orion Custom Indexing offering targets a real tradeoff. Professionally managed models are efficient but generic; fully custom portfolios personalise but do not scale. Advisors pick a strategist whose philosophy matches their own, then run that model through Orion Custom Indexing, which gradually migrates clients holding concentrated positions, legacy holdings or particular tax sensitivities into the model while managing capital gains along the way.

Availability spans Orion Wealth Management, the Orion Investment Portal, Wealth Advisory and Orion OCIO, the last provided by TownSquare Capital.

Who Pays for Orion Custom Indexing Shelf Space

The release disclosures carry the Orion Custom Indexing detail that reframes the announcement. Unaffiliated strategists whose funds appear in the programme pay Orion a fee in exchange for inclusion in the program.

None of that is a scandal. Distribution fees are a decades-old, fully disclosed practice across wealth management, closer to how mutual funds have long paid for placement on brokerage platforms. But it does mean this is not Orion curating the best available models on merit. Adding three of the largest asset managers in the country is a distribution win, and it is a business development story as much as a product one.

Fintechbits analysis

Why Orion Custom Indexing Is Free to Advisors

Here is the half of that arrangement the framing usually omits, and it changes the ethics of it. Tailored Allocation Portfolios carry no additional cost to advisors or investors. The participating asset managers fund the platform.

So the strategist fees are the reason advisors get tax-aware transitions without the out-of-pocket expense normally attached to direct indexing. The shelf-space arrangement is not an alternative to the value proposition, it is what pays for it. That is a defensible model provided the disclosure is prominent, which is a separate question from whether it exists, and one that matters more than the fee structure itself.

Ron Pruitt, president of Orion Wealth Management, framed the goal as letting advisors begin from an investment philosophy they trust while adapting portfolios to each client. Both things can be true: the technology solves a real problem, and the roster reflects who paid to be on it.

What the Orion Custom Indexing Numbers Show

The headline figure deserves better than a static reading. Orion Custom Indexing surpassed $17.1 billion in assets under management as of 31 July, against $211 billion in wealth management assets and $6.6 trillion under administration across more than 8.6 million technology accounts.

Calling that early in the adoption curve undersells the trajectory. Custom Indexing stood at $10.7 billion when Tailored Allocation Portfolios launched in October 2025, after a 278% growth rate in 2024. So the book grew roughly 60% in nine months. It is small relative to Orion’s wider business and compounding quickly, which is a different story from slow uptake.

Demand data supports the case. Cerulli Associates found advisors rank tax harvesting and ETF integration among the most important portfolio construction features, and Broadridge measured RIA model assets rising 5.5% in a single quarter to $883.5 billion. The wealth technology market is moving toward exactly this product.

So check whether the $17.1 billion moves once the three new strategists are live and searchable rather than announced. Growth continuing at the recent pace would suggest the underlying technology is selling itself. Growth that flattens as the roster expands would suggest the shelf matters less than the fees implied.

Fintechbits covers wealth technology, advisor platforms and portfolio management. Nothing here constitutes financial or investment advice. All analysis represents the editorial views of Fintechbits.