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Russell Investments Announces “Tax-Smart” Partnership with LifeYield LLC

By LifeYield | October 15, 2018 | News
Agreement aims to provide financial advisors with new software tools to create tax-smart, multi-account investment and retirement strategies

SEATTLE & BOSTON, October 15, 2018 — Global asset manager Russell Investments announced today a “tax smart” partnership with LifeYield LLC, the industry leader in tax-smart, risk-smart household-level portfolio management software. The agreement aims to make LifeYield’s proprietary Taxficient Score® available to financial advisors who offer Russell Investments’ multi-asset, tax-managed investing solutions to retail investors. The two firms expect to launch their initial offering by early 2019.

This strategic collaboration unites Russell Investments’ tax-aware investing strategies and products with LifeYield’s tax-smart asset location software, marking the first such agreement in the asset management industry. Using LifeYield’s Taxficient Score, advisors will be able to advise their clients on multi-account tax-smart strategies and solutions by providing them with a view of all of their assets, including assets not actively managed by their advisor.

“We have extensive experience and fast-growing interest from advisors for our tax-smart products and strategies designed to help their clients maximize after-tax returns and ultimately achieve desired investment goals,” said Mark Spina, head of North America Advisor & Intermediary Solutions at Russell Investments. “Combining our robust tax-aware insights with LifeYield’s software-development expertise will generate tax savings and increased returns for advisors and their clients.”

“LifeYield and Russell Investments are two tax-smart companies working in different and complementary ways to achieve tax alpha for investors,” said Mark Hoffman, CEO of LifeYield. “We’ve long maintained the most notable new trend in the industry is moving from single-account to multiple-account management, and through this partnership, Russell Investments is able to offer advisors the technology to improve after-tax outcomes.”

LifeYield’s Taxficient Score offers advisors and their clients an easy way to explain the value of tax-smart, multiple-account management in dollars and cents. Similar to a credit score, the Taxficient Score assesses the tax efficiency—often referred to as asset location—of a client’s accounts on a scale of 0-100. The higher the score, the better positioned an investor is to minimize taxes and make and keep more money, as well as achieve retirement goals. In addition, it enables advisors to coordinate and aggregate all accounts in one place to provide a holistic view of an investor’s household portfolio and quantifies the financial benefit of tax-smart coordinated management. Ernst & Young conducted an independent study and found that when multiple household accounts and products are managed in a coordinated and strategic way, investors can improve after-tax returns and income by as much as 33 percent over their lifetime.

About Russell Investments:
With more than 80 years of experience, Russell Investments is a global investment manager, dedicated to helping investors reach their long-term goals. Russell Investments offers investment solutions in 31 countries, manages $290 billion in assets (as of June 30, 2018) and provides consulting services on US$2.3 trillion in assets (as of Dec. 31, 2017). Russell Investments specializes in multi-asset solutions, scouring the globe to deliver the best investment strategies, managers and asset classes to its clients around the world.
Headquartered in Seattle, WA, Russell Investments operates globally with 21 offices, providing investment services in the world’s major financial centers such as New York, London, Tokyo and Shanghai. For more information about how Russell Investments helps to improve financial security for people, visit russellinvestments.com.
About LifeYield
LifeYield (www.lifeyield.com), creators of the Taxficient Score®, is the industry innovator and leader in facilitating tax-smart, risk-smart household portfolio management. LifeYield's Advantage Suite® enables financial advisors to provide a comprehensive, tax-aware view of a client's entire investment and insurance portfolio, including easy-to-use tools to engage clients so they make and keep more money, and achieve their financial goals.
Based in Boston and founded by finance and technology industry leaders, LifeYield believes that by leveraging digitally enhanced advice advisors can improve investor outcomes and enhance the value and experience of support goals-based wealth management strategies.
For more information, please visit www.lifeyield.com.