One Year In: Building a Better Platform for Independent Advisors
- Jay Coulter, CFP®, CIMA®
- 4 days ago
- 10 min read
Updated: 1 day ago
One year ago, on September 1, 2025, Titleist Asset Management announced that I would become the firm’s CEO.
The mandate was straightforward: expand the advisor platform, improve our capabilities, and strengthen Titleist as a long term partner for independent financial advisors.
A year later, I have been thinking about how to measure our progress.
Assets matter. Recruiting matters. Revenue matters. But I do not think any of those measures tell the entire story.
For an advisor platform, I think there is a better question:
What can our advisors do today that they could not do a year ago?
That is the scorecard I care about.
Over the past year, Titleist expanded its independent advisor platform through seven major initiatives: TAM Tax Services, the TAM Investments TAMP, white label direct indexing through SS&C Black Diamond Wealth Solutions, TAM Planning, physical precious metals capabilities through Gold Bullion International, TAM Coaching, and the TAMX affiliation model built around Altruist and Hazel.
Taken together, these additions reflect the direction we are taking Titleist.
I call it independence with infrastructure.
Independence with infrastructure means an advisor retains control of the business while gaining access to institutional capabilities in investment management, financial planning, tax services, technology, operations, specialized investments, and practice management.
Titleist has always been built around advisor independence. Our goal over the past year has been to add capabilities to that foundation without compromising the independence that makes the model work.
Here is what that has looked like.
What Is TAM Tax Services?
TAM Tax Services gives Titleist advisors access to tax preparation and related tax support.
Financial planning, investment management, and tax decisions rarely exist independently in a client’s financial life. Yet they are often handled by professionals operating in completely separate systems.
The launch of TAM Tax Services was designed to help close that gap.
The objective is not to turn financial advisors into accountants.
It is to give advisors access to additional resources when tax issues intersect with the planning and investment work they are already doing.
For an advisor, that can create greater coordination around the client relationship while allowing the advisor to remain focused on advice, relationships, and business development.
This also reflects a larger belief I have about the evolution of the advisory profession.
Clients increasingly expect their financial lives to be coordinated. The firms that can create better connections between investment management, planning, taxes, estate planning, and other financial decisions should be in a stronger position to deliver that experience.
Why Did We Formalize TAM Investments as a TAMP?
TAM Investments gives Titleist advisors access to an outsourced investment management platform that includes research, portfolio construction, models, trading resources, technology, and investment support.
Investment management has always been part of Titleist. What has changed is how intentionally we are building the infrastructure around it.
Over the past year, we formalized TAM Investments around a TAMP structure.
The goal is straightforward.
An independent advisor should not have to recreate an entire investment department inside his or her practice unless that is how the advisor wants to spend time.
Some advisors want to remain deeply involved in portfolio construction and investment management.
Others would rather outsource significant portions of that work so they can spend more time on financial planning, client relationships, business development, and leadership.
A strong independent platform should support both models.
That is what we are trying to accomplish with TAM Investments.
How Does Direct Indexing Expand the Titleist Investment Platform?
Titleist advisors now have access to white label direct indexing capabilities through our relationship with SS&C Black Diamond Wealth Solutions.
Direct indexing allows advisors to build customized portfolios using individually owned securities rather than relying exclusively on pooled investment vehicles.
The Black Diamond platform includes capabilities such as tax aware portfolio management, tax loss harvesting, benchmark customization, client restrictions, and other forms of portfolio personalization.
For Titleist advisors, the strategic importance goes beyond any one investment solution.
Direct indexing gives advisors another tool for clients whose circumstances may call for greater portfolio customization.
That might include managing concentrated positions, incorporating tax considerations, accounting for client restrictions, or creating an investment experience that differs from a traditional model portfolio.
Our goal is not to tell every advisor how to invest.
Our goal is to continue expanding the investment toolkit available to them.
What Is TAM Planning?
TAM Planning is Titleist’s internal financial planning team, designed to give advisors additional planning capacity without requiring them to build an entire planning department inside their own practice.
One of the most significant constraints in an independent advisory business is capacity.
Comprehensive financial planning can create tremendous value for clients, but it also requires time, expertise, technology, data gathering, analysis, and a repeatable process.
As an advisor grows, that workload can become a bottleneck.
TAM Planning was built to create leverage.
When a Titleist advisor wants additional support around financial planning, our internal planning team can complement the work the advisor is already doing with clients.
The broader idea is important.
Independence should not mean that an advisor has to personally build every capability required to run a modern advisory firm.
The advisor should decide where his or her time creates the greatest value.
For many advisors, that means spending less time assembling planning infrastructure and more time understanding clients, providing advice, strengthening relationships, and growing the business.
Why Did Titleist Partner With Gold Bullion International?
Our relationship with GBI, originally founded as Gold Bullion International, gives Titleist advisors access to institutional infrastructure for clients seeking physical precious metals exposure.
GBI provides infrastructure for wealth managers and financial institutions that includes services related to purchasing, custody, storage, liquidity, and logistics for physical precious metals.
This gives Titleist advisors another specialized resource for clients who want direct exposure to physical precious metals.
The relationship also illustrates an important part of how we think about platform development.
We do not believe every advisor has to use every resource.
We believe advisors should have access to a broad enough platform that they can choose the resources that make sense for their clients and their businesses.
That is a very different philosophy from building a platform around mandates.
Our job is to expand the menu while allowing the advisor to decide what belongs on the plate.
What Is TAM Coaching?
TAM Coaching is Titleist’s internal practice management and advisor coaching program, built from the Resilient Advisor consulting and coaching system I spent more than a decade developing and testing with financial advisors in the field.
This initiative is particularly meaningful to me.
Long before I became CEO of Titleist, I worked with advisors on many of the same challenges advisory firms continue to face today.
How do you grow without allowing service to deteriorate?
How do you create capacity?
How should an advisor spend his or her time?
How do you improve the client experience?
How do you build better processes?
How do you develop a team?
How do you turn a successful advisory practice into a stronger business?
Those questions became the foundation of the work I built through Resilient Advisor.
For more than a decade, the consulting and coaching frameworks were tested and refined through work with financial advisors trying to improve and transform their businesses.
TAM Coaching brings that legacy program inside Titleist.
Rather than simply saying that we want our advisors to grow, we can provide them with an internal resource specifically focused on the business of being a financial advisor.
I think that distinction matters.
Technology can make an advisor more efficient.
Investment resources can expand what an advisor can deliver.
Operations can remove friction.
But none of those things automatically create a great advisory business.
Advisors still have to make decisions about growth, capacity, people, processes, client experience, leadership, productivity, and where they should spend their time.
That is the role TAM Coaching is designed to support.
For me personally, it also represents an important bridge between the work I spent years building through Resilient Advisor and the platform we are building today at Titleist.
The objective has not changed:
Help financial advisors build better businesses.
What has changed is our ability to deliver that work as part of a broader advisor platform.
What Is TAMX?
TAMX is a Titleist affiliation model built around Altruist and Hazel that is designed to combine modern advisor technology with the independence of the Titleist platform.
Perhaps the largest new initiative of the year has been the launch of TAMX.
Hazel is Altruist’s artificial intelligence platform for wealth management firms. It is designed to work across advisor workflows and information sources, including meetings, email, documents, CRM information, and custodial data.
TAMX represents an important strategic idea for us.
Advisors should not have to choose between modern technology and independence.
I believe artificial intelligence will increasingly become embedded in the operating systems advisors use every day.
The question will not simply be whether advisors use AI.
The more important question will be how deeply AI can be incorporated into advisor workflows while maintaining the ownership, control, and flexibility that independent advisors value.
TAMX is our answer to that question.
It gives advisors another way to affiliate with Titleist through an integrated Altruist and Hazel experience while maintaining the independence of their business.
Our first advisor to affiliate through TAMX was Tom Moore, CFP®, marking an important milestone for the new affiliation model.
His arrival represented more than the addition of another advisor.
It represented the beginning of a second affiliation path within Titleist for advisors who want to build their businesses around a deeply integrated technology experience.
The Most Important Part of the Story Is Our Advisors
None of these initiatives matter without the advisors who use them.
Over the past year, new advisors have chosen to build their businesses with Titleist.
At the same time, advisors who were already part of Titleist have continued to trust us as their partner.
Both groups matter.
To every advisor who joined us this year, thank you for trusting us.
And to the advisors who were here before I became CEO and continue to choose Titleist, thank you as well.
That second group deserves particular recognition.
It is relatively easy for a company to talk about the new people coming through the door.
Long term partnerships are built by continuing to earn the confidence of the people who are already inside.
Our responsibility is to make Titleist more valuable to our advisors every year.
What Does Independence With Infrastructure Mean?
Independence with infrastructure means giving financial advisors the freedom to control their businesses while providing the resources they need to operate, grow, and serve clients at a high level.
That may be my biggest takeaway from the first year.
Independence by itself is not enough.
An advisor can own a business and still be constrained by poor technology, insufficient operational support, limited investment resources, disconnected planning capabilities, or a platform that cannot evolve with the practice.
The model we are trying to build is different.
The advisor should control the business.
The platform should make that business easier to operate, easier to scale, and more capable of serving clients.
That is why TAM Tax Services matters.
That is why TAM Investments matters.
That is why direct indexing matters.
That is why TAM Planning matters.
That is why GBI matters.
That is why TAM Coaching matters.
That is why TAMX matters.
Taken individually, each solves a different problem.
Taken together, they represent the platform we are trying to build.
Tax services. Investment management. Direct indexing. Financial planning. Precious metals capabilities. Coaching. Technology.
An independent advisor should not have to recreate all of that infrastructure alone.
Our responsibility is to continue building it while allowing the advisor to remain in control of the business.
Each initiative expands what an independent advisor can do without requiring that advisor to give up ownership, flexibility, or the ability to build the practice he or she wants.
The Question for Year Two
One year into this role, the standard I want us to use remains remarkably simple.
Not how many things we launched.
Not how much technology we can put on a presentation.
Not how long the list of platform capabilities becomes.
The question is:
Are we helping advisors build better businesses?
If the answer keeps becoming more clearly yes, we are moving in the right direction.
There is still a lot of work ahead of us.
That is what makes year two exciting.
If you are an advisor evaluating independence or looking for a stronger platform for an existing independent practice, I invite you to learn more about the Titleist Advisor Network and our affiliation options.
Frequently Asked Questions
What services does Titleist Advisor Network provide independent financial advisors?
Titleist provides affiliated advisors with access to a broader operating platform that includes investment management through TAM Investments, tax support through TAM Tax Services, financial planning through TAM Planning, practice management support through TAM Coaching, direct indexing, physical precious metals capabilities, technology, operations, and multiple affiliation options.
What is the difference between TAM360 and TAMX?
TAM360 is Titleist’s broader technology and support platform for independent financial advisors. TAMX is an additional affiliation model built around an integrated Altruist and Hazel experience for advisors who want to build their practices around that technology ecosystem.
Does Titleist provide financial planning support?
Yes. TAM Planning is Titleist’s internal financial planning team. It was created to provide affiliated advisors with additional planning resources and capacity without requiring every advisor to hire and build a dedicated planning department.
Does Titleist provide coaching for financial advisors?
Yes. TAM Coaching is Titleist’s internal advisor coaching and practice management program. It is based on the Resilient Advisor consulting and coaching system developed and field tested over more than a decade with financial advisors.
What does independence with infrastructure mean?
Independence with infrastructure is the idea that advisors should retain control of their businesses while gaining access to the technology, operations, investments, planning, tax resources, coaching, and specialized capabilities needed to build a modern advisory firm.
What affiliation options does Titleist Advisor Network offer?
Titleist offers multiple paths for independent advisors, including its traditional supported independence model and TAMX, its Altruist and Hazel centered affiliation model.
Titleist Asset Management, LLC (“TAM”) is registered with the SEC as an investment adviser. TAM’s affiliate, Titleist Capital, LLC (“Titleist Capital”), is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) as a Broker-Dealer and is a member of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (“FINRA”) and the Securities Investor Protection Corporation. TAM does not offer or provide legal or tax advice. Please consult your attorney and/or tax advisor for such services
Titleist Advisor Network is affiliated with Titleist Asset Management, LLC and Titleist Capital, LLC. for advisor recruitment.
Comments