Orion is broadening its push into personalized portfolio implementation by adding investment models from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard to Tailored Allocation Portfolios, strengthening a platform designed to combine outsourced asset allocation with custom indexing and tax-aware portfolio transitions. Announced September 1, the expansion brings three of the largest U.S. asset managers into an offering aimed at financial advisors who want the operational efficiency of model portfolios without forcing every client into an identical set of holdings on the same timetable.

The additions increase the number of strategists available through Tailored Allocation Portfolios to eight. BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard join Brinker-Main Management, First Trust Advisors, Frontier Asset Management, Janus Henderson and Russell Investments. Orion launched the program in October 2025, making the latest expansion a significant increase in manager breadth less than a year after the service entered the market.

The core proposition is particularly relevant to private wealth management. Model portfolios can reduce the amount of time advisors spend building, trading and rebalancing allocations account by account, but high-net-worth investors frequently have portfolios that cannot be efficiently reset to a standard model. Long-held securities may carry large unrealized gains. Corporate executives can arrive with concentrated employer-stock positions. Business owners may hold legacy investments accumulated before a liquidity event, while multigenerational families can have different tax bases across accounts and household members.

Orion’s structure is intended to make the transition itself part of the portfolio-management process. Rather than selling an investor’s entire existing account and immediately purchasing every security in a selected model, the system can use Orion Custom Indexing to move assets gradually toward the target allocation. The transition can take account of realized gains and losses, allowing advisors to manage the amount of taxable gains recognized during a particular calendar year while bringing the portfolio progressively closer to its intended strategy.

That capability changes how model portfolios can be applied in taxable wealth accounts. A conventional model primarily answers an asset-allocation question: what should the investor own? A tax-managed transition adds a second question: how should the investor get there? For affluent households with substantial embedded gains, the path between an existing portfolio and a recommended allocation can have material consequences for after-tax wealth, making implementation decisions almost as important as the strategic target.

Orion says its Tailored Allocation Portfolios can run standard or customized ETF and mutual fund models from participating strategists through its Custom Indexing technology. Advisors can select a third-party investment philosophy that aligns with their own approach or build customized models reflecting their investment views. The technology layer then introduces client-specific implementation considerations rather than treating the manager’s model as a portfolio that must be reproduced identically in every account.

The addition of BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard increases the strategic importance of that architecture. All three firms have extensive distribution relationships with financial advisors, and model portfolios have become an increasingly important way for asset managers to deliver asset allocation to intermediary channels. Instead of competing only fund by fund, managers can package investment products into professionally constructed allocations that advisors can use as a portfolio core and then modify around individual household needs.

Vanguard’s participation also follows its August launch of customizable model portfolios. The asset manager said those models allow advisors to alter selected multi-asset and single-asset-class portfolios based on product preferences, asset-class choices and management styles. Vanguard identified Orion’s Tailored Allocation Portfolios as one of the technology integrations supporting implementation, alongside other wealth-management platforms, with workflows spanning trading, rebalancing and tax management.

The broader market direction reflects an effort to reconcile customization with scale. Personalization was once associated primarily with separately managed accounts or bespoke portfolios requiring more manual investment work. Direct and custom indexing have changed that equation by using portfolio technology to manage securities, tax lots and client restrictions systematically. Model portfolios, meanwhile, offer centralized investment decision-making. Combining the two can allow an advisory firm to standardize its investment philosophy without necessarily standardizing each client account down to the security level.

Tax management is a central reason that combination is gaining attention. Orion’s 2026 Advisor Wealthtech Survey found that seven in 10 advisors already use third-party tax-optimization services, while 52% expect to adopt or expand those services during the next five years. The same survey found that 46% plan to adopt or increase their use of direct indexing. The survey covered 571 financial advisors and was conducted in December 2025.

For wealth firms, those figures point to an operational issue as much as an investment issue. Tax-loss harvesting, gain budgeting and management of individual tax lots can become difficult to execute consistently across hundreds or thousands of households if the process relies heavily on manual portfolio reviews. Technology that embeds those functions inside an existing investment workflow can potentially allow larger advisory firms to offer tax-aware service more broadly rather than reserving it for a narrow group of their largest relationships.

Orion’s growing scale also gives the new manager relationships a substantial potential distribution channel. The company said it serviced $6.6 trillion in assets under administration as of June 30, 2026, along with $211 billion in wealth-management assets. Orion Custom Indexing itself had surpassed $17.1 billion in assets under management as of July 31. Tailored Allocation Portfolios are available through Orion Wealth Management, Orion Investment Portal, Wealth Advisory and Orion OCIO.

For advisors working with high-net-worth households, concentrated positions could be one of the clearest use cases. Selling a large appreciated position immediately can generate a significant capital-gains liability, yet leaving the position untouched can expose the household to excessive single-company risk. A gradual transition can attempt to reduce that concentration over time while coordinating sales with available losses, annual tax budgets, charitable planning or other elements of the client’s financial plan.

Legacy portfolios represent a related challenge. New clients rarely arrive holding exactly the securities an advisor would choose for a new account. They may own old mutual funds, individual stocks or strategies established under previous advisors. A firm that requires a complete liquidation before implementing its own models risks imposing an immediate tax cost that can offset some of the benefits of the new strategy. Tax-aware model implementation gives advisors another way to evaluate whether inherited holdings should be retained temporarily, replaced opportunistically or transitioned according to predetermined gain limits.

The approach can also be relevant to family offices and advisors managing portfolios across generations, where taxable accounts may contain substantially different cost bases even when households share similar investment objectives. Centralized model portfolios can provide a common investment framework, while account-level implementation can recognize that one family member may be able to rebalance immediately and another may need a multi-year transition because of embedded gains.

The growth of personalized models does not eliminate tradeoffs. Orion notes that custom indexing can cause a portfolio’s performance to differ materially from the index or model it is intended to resemble, and greater customization can increase tracking differences. Deferring sales for tax reasons can also leave a portfolio temporarily overweight securities that the target model would not otherwise hold. Advisors therefore must weigh tax considerations against diversification, risk management and the cost of remaining outside the preferred strategic allocation.

Tax-loss harvesting similarly does not create a guaranteed economic benefit. Selling a security at a loss can generate a realized loss that may offset eligible gains, but the proceeds generally must be reinvested appropriately if the investor is to maintain desired market exposure. Tax rules, replacement-security choices and the investor’s broader tax circumstances can influence the result. Orion states that its materials are general in nature and are not tax advice, leaving advisors and clients to coordinate with tax professionals where necessary.

The economics of the Tailored Allocation Portfolios program also warrant attention. Orion says clients are not charged an additional direct-indexing fee specifically for the program because participating unaffiliated strategists whose mutual funds or ETFs are used in the portfolios pay Orion for inclusion. However, the advisory fee established by the advisor, Orion platform fees and any applicable custodian or underlying investment-product expenses can still apply. That structure means advisors evaluating the service must consider the full cost stack rather than viewing the absence of an incremental custom-indexing charge as the complete cost of implementation.

Manager participation can also raise due-diligence considerations. The presence of major brands does not itself establish that a particular model is appropriate for a client. Asset allocation, fund expenses, active versus passive exposure, risk profile and expected tracking characteristics remain important. Orion’s model infrastructure is an implementation mechanism; responsibility for determining which strategy fits a household remains with the financial professional overseeing the relationship.

For asset managers, the Orion expansion illustrates how model distribution is becoming more tightly connected to advisor technology. A manager increasingly needs not only an attractive set of funds or portfolio recommendations, but also the ability to fit those strategies into the software systems where advisors trade, rebalance, report and manage taxes. Distribution through integrated wealth platforms can place investment models closer to the point at which advisors make household-level portfolio decisions.

That trend may intensify competition among large asset managers. BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard all have broad fund lineups and significant intermediary businesses, but model portfolios give each firm another way to shape asset allocation and capture flows. Wealthtech platforms can simultaneously preserve open architecture by giving advisors multiple strategists to choose from. Orion’s increase from five to eight managers therefore broadens advisor choice while also making its platform a more important distribution venue for model providers.

The expansion is also consistent with a wider change in the advisor value proposition. As model providers and technology systems take on more security selection, trading and rebalancing work, advisors can devote additional time to planning, taxes, estate coordination, behavioral coaching and client acquisition. Vanguard said in August that its research indicates using model portfolios for core portfolio construction can reduce advisor portfolio-management time by about two-thirds, although the actual benefit will vary by firm and workflow.

For clients, the practical value will depend less on the number of available models than on whether advisors use the technology to solve specific portfolio problems. A household with a concentrated equity position may need a different transition schedule from one holding broadly diversified legacy mutual funds. Another investor may prioritize minimizing current-year gains, while a client expecting future charitable gifts or a change in tax circumstances could have a different optimal path. The technology creates the ability to manage those differences systematically, but it does not remove the need for financial judgment.

Orion’s latest additions therefore highlight a shift in wealth management from choosing between standardized portfolios and bespoke implementation toward combining elements of both. BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard supply recognizable institutional investment frameworks; Orion supplies the account-level technology intended to adapt implementation around taxes and existing holdings. For advisory firms seeking to expand personalized service without recreating portfolios manually for every client, that combination is becoming an increasingly important part of the wealth-management technology stack.

The next test will be adoption. Orion has demonstrated that major asset managers are willing to distribute through the program and that its custom-indexing business has reached meaningful scale. The longer-term question is whether advisors use the platform primarily as another model marketplace or make tax-aware transitions a routine part of onboarding and portfolio management. If the latter occurs, model portfolios could increasingly function as strategic destinations rather than rigid sets of securities, with technology determining the client-specific path used to reach them.