Custom model portfolios are booming, and a new partnership shows how asset managers and technology providers are racing to serve them. Vestmark and Allspring are teaming up so RIAs can build personalized, tax aware portfolios that blend Allspring's active strategies with other managers' holdings. The roles are split cleanly: the asset manager supplies strategies and construction support, while the platform handles trading, rebalancing and tax management behind the scenes. Advisors keep control of the asset allocation while offloading the operational heavy lifting, all inside a single managed account. The demand is clear, as third party models have grown fast and custom models are growing even faster. Industry consolidation adds another twist, with Vestmark itself being acquired by a rival in the same space. For advisors, the trend means more choice, more customization and more questions about who really supplies the technology. 

Finsum: Customization is becoming the price of admission in model portfolios, and the advisors who benefit most will be those who use it to sharpen their own point of view, not just to add more menu items.