Nebo Wealth is going enterprise.
The asset allocation and portfolio design technology platform from asset manager Grantham, Mayo, Van Otterloo & Co., better known as GMO, has announced the launch and availability of its Enterprise Solutions Platform.
GMO launched Nebo (short for Needs-Based Optimization), its multiperiod, shortfall optimizer, in 2022 and followed up with the rollout of Nebo Wealth in January 2024.
The latter had that same shortfall optimizer at its core, as well as several new features, including automated trading and rebalancing, performance reporting, billing, advisor and client portals, and back-office support for account opening and administration.
In simplest terms, Nebo is meant to help advisors bridge the gap between financial planning and asset management, a shortcoming many advisory firms have long struggled with.
The enterprise product is meant to be scalable, providing goals-based investing tools that will help firms provide personalized portfolios for all their clients.
New features include a white-label portfolio construction engine, which allows firms to use their own branding and a goals-based model selector.
The Mmodel selector analyzes client-specific inputs including goals, time horizons, cash flows and risk tolerance and will, in turn, recommend the best portfolio from a firm’s existing models.
“Up until a year ago or so we were very focused on the RIA with whom the product was already really resonating but then—and from a variety of different corners of the industry—other players began to pay attention and showing interest in using this capability,” said Martin Tarlie, product lead for Nebo Wealth.
“These larger organizations needed scalable ways to deliver the personalized, goals-based portfolios, the best portfolio to fit the planning they were doing and do it across their advisor networks,” he said.
Asked about the technology challenges involved in building the new enterprise product, Tarlie said the firm had to pull the core functionality out of its web application and build out an application programming interface.
In earlier iterations of Nebo, the lack of an API meant that advisory shops might have to change their front end to accommodate the application. With the enterprise product, this is no longer the case, and advisory firms do not need to pursue extensive internal development.
With Nebo’s open architecture, the application can also work with many portfolio accounting systems and other platforms, such as Advyzon, Orion or SS&C Black Diamond, as well as the most popular financial planning software providers.
“As firms get bigger, or they have acquired other firms and they bring models with them, the struggle has become: ‘how do we deal with this plethora of models?’ and we figured out how to do that in a systemized way and get a handle on this explosion of models and tie it in a compliant and documentable way,” said Tarlie.
“One industry insider said ‘Nebo is the Stripe of portfolio optimization’ and I’ve decided I’m going to use that as my own,” said Tarlie referring to the global payments technology provider known for its embedded finance technology and constant innovation and adaptability with changes in that industry.
Nebo has won numerous industry accolades beginning with a 2022 Industry Disruptor at WealthManagement.com’s annual Industry Awards, followed by wins in 2023 and 2024 for Best Goals-Based Investment Platform, among other recognition.