Mercer Advisors completes Aspen Investing rollout with in-house direct indexing

Mercer Advisors said it has finished rolling out Aspen Investing, a proprietary platform that places the firm's centralized portfolio management with every advisory team in its network, InvestmentNews reported Tuesday. The Denver-based RIA developed the platform with wealth technology provider Orion.

The capability Mercer calls new is direct indexing: its investment team builds and manages portfolios in which clients hold an index's individual stocks rather than a fund that tracks it. Aspen Investing sits inside Aspen, the advisory technology system the firm uses to coordinate planning, tax and estate work, and now serves as that system's investment engine, drawing on what Mercer describes as a centralized investment platform of more than $100 billion.

Advisors can set a capital gains budget for each client, and the platform harvests tax losses daily, according to the firm. It can also work around low-basis legacy holdings, a feature aimed at clients sitting on large unrealized gains and at advisory firms that join Mercer through acquisition.

Portfolios are built in unified managed accounts, which hold strategies from multiple third-party managers in a single account and consolidate reporting. Advisors can align a portfolio with a client's financial plan and add security-level exclusions or additions, values-based screens and alternative investment allocations.

“Aspen Investing was designed to give every client access to the kind of portfolio management typically reserved for endowments and large institutions, delivered in a way that reflects their specific goals and circumstances,” said Donald Calcagni, Mercer's chief investment officer. He leads an investing force of more than 125 professionals, according to the announcement.

Mercer said the platform is meant to lower portfolio costs through strategic relationships with asset managers, but the announcement did not specify fee levels or projected savings.

Aspen Investing works with Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments and Raymond James, so investment management consolidates inside Mercer while the assets remain spread across multiple custodians. Avantos, described in the report as an AI-native operating system for financial services firms, supported development.

President Daniel Gourvitch framed the launch as a break from standardized model portfolios. “We've moved beyond models to create truly customized investment programs, built to reflect each family's unique financial context and preferences,” he said. Mercer also cited proposal generation, reporting with proprietary business intelligence and risk monitoring as platform capabilities.