Advisor Resources | Betterment for Advisors

How to set up the Milemarker integration

2026's IPO pipeline: What it means for portfolios

2026's IPO pipeline: What it means for portfolios Jul 22, 2026, 9:00:00 AM The mechanics behind mega-cap IPO inclusion—and what advisors and plan sponsors should know before these companies hit the indexes. A wave of high-profile IPOs is coming to market in 2026, and the names involved are unlike anything the market has seen in years. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all targeting public listings this year, with a combined estimated valuation exceeding $3 trillion, though only a portion of that value will initially come to market. How much comes to market, and when, is something each company and its underwriters are managing deliberately. The relevant question isn't whether these companies will dominate headlines. It's how they'll enter the indexes, how much exposure your clients and participants will actually have, and what that means for portfolio construction going forward. How these companies enter the indexes and when When a company goes public, its shares don't automatically land in broad market indexes. There's typically a seasoning period that gives markets time to establish pricing, assess financials, and let float develop. But the scale of the 2026 IPO pipeline has prompted several major index providers to revisit those timelines. The changes vary, and the differences matter. The NASDAQ-100 Index moved first. On May 1, 2026, it introduced a fast-track entry process for mega-cap IPOs, reducing the required trading period from three months to 15 days when certain criteria are met. It also replaced the minimum float requirement with a modified market capitalization test. The practical result: a company like SpaceX could be eligible for inclusion in the NASDAQ-100—and by extension the $500B QQQ ETF—within two weeks of its IPO. CRSP, which powers the Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF (VTI, ~$1.8T AUM), already had a five-day fast-track in place and is keeping it. What changed is the addition of a float-adjusted market cap test that gives large IPOs a clearer path to qualifying even when their public float is limited. SpaceX could appear in VTI within five trading days of going public. FTSE Russell has proposed a fast-entry framework for IPOs expected to rank among the top 500 U.S. companies by market cap, with potential inclusion around five trading days post-listing. Those changes are still subject to final consultation. MSCI has proposed simplifying its early inclusion criteria by introducing transparent size thresholds anchored to its existing Mid Cap market cap levels. Under the proposal, large IPOs would typically be added after the tenth trading day. Also still subject to final consultation. The S&P 500 is the notable exception. Following its own consultation in early June 2026, S&P Dow Jones Indices opted to maintain existing eligibility requirements for the S&P 500, S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600, including the 12-month seasoning requirement and the positive GAAP earnings screen. S&P did introduce a fast-track for its broader Total Market Index and Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, allowing eligible mega-cap IPOs to enter within five business days. But the flagship S&P 500 is holding the line. Float-adjusted weighting: Why the headline valuation isn't the portfolio weight Even for indexes that fast-track these IPOs, the exposure your clients or plan participants will have is likely much smaller than the companies' total valuations suggest. That's because most major indexes weight constituents by float-adjusted market cap, not total market cap, and the 2026 mega-cap IPOs are expected to launch with very limited public float. Take SpaceX: With a targeted valuation approaching $2 trillion and a planned raise of up to $75 billion, only roughly 3–4% of total shares would be publicly trade-able at IPO. The remaining ~96% stays locked up with Musk, employees, and private investors. The NASDAQ-100's updated rules add a 3x float multiplier for weighting purposes, so a 4% float is treated as a 12% adjusted float. Applied to SpaceX at its expected IPO size, that translates to an adjusted market cap of roughly $225 billion rather than the full $2 trillion. The result is an estimated index weight likely in the 0.5–1% range for the QQQ. That's still meaningful, but a far cry from what the headline valuation alone would imply. Across indexes, some analysts estimate cumulative passive demand for SpaceX could reach $20 billion in the weeks immediately following its IPO, representing roughly a quarter of its targeted raise absorbed by index funds mechanically, independent of fundamental valuation. That demand dynamic is worth understanding when evaluating post-IPO pricing. What this means for Betterment portfolios For those invested in Betterment's managed portfolios, exposure to these companies will depend on which portfolio they're in—and which underlying ETFs that portfolio uses. The Betterment Core portfolio primarily accesses U.S. large-cap equities through State Street ETFs that track the S&P indexes (including SPYM, which tracks the S&P 500). Given S&P's decision to maintain its 12-month seasoning requirement, Core portfolio investors are unlikely to see SpaceX, OpenAI, or Anthropic appear in their holdings anytime soon following IPO. That eligibility clock starts at listing. Other Betterment managed portfolios, including Value Tilt, Innovative Tech, SRI (Broad, Climate, and Social), and GS SmartBeta, use total market ETFs such as VTI, or actively managed ETFs. Clients and participants in these portfolios have a meaningfully higher likelihood of gaining exposure to these companies shortly after listing, given the faster inclusion timelines at CRSP and other providers. This is a distinction worth surfacing in client and participant conversations, particularly for advisors whose clients hold multiple Betterment portfolios or for plan sponsors whose participants are distributed across portfolio options. Concentration: A broader portfolio consideration Beyond the mechanics of index inclusion, the addition of $3 trillion in primarily tech and tech-adjacent companies has the potential to accelerate an existing trend. Technology and tech-adjacent sectors like Communication Services account for over 40% of the S&P 500. For investors relying on broad market index funds for diversification, it's worth framing this clearly: The indexes will continue to reflect the market as it is—that's the point. But as the market itself becomes more concentrated in a small number of mega-cap names, the diversification benefit of any single broad index fund can erode. This isn't new. The 2026 pipeline would meaningfully accelerate a trend that's been building for years. For advisors, this is a natural conversation to have around asset allocation, particularly for clients who may not realize that their "diversified" index exposure has grown more concentrated over time. For plan sponsors, it's worth considering how participants are distributed across portfolio options and whether the default investment mix reflects the risk profile appropriate for your workforce. For clients who want more customization without giving up automation and tax efficiency, Custom Model Portfolios will offer a new way to build a portfolio using both ETFs and individual stocks. One important note for clients considering direct IPO positions: The concentration of price-insensitive demand from index funds and retail buyers may temporarily support post-IPO prices in the immediate weeks. As lockup periods expire and float expands, those dynamics can shift materially. Sizing and timing relative to the broader portfolio matters. The bottom line The 2026 IPO pipeline is significant, but the implications for managed portfolios are more nuanced than the headlines suggest. Exposure will vary by portfolio, float dynamics will limit initial index weights, and concentration risk is real but manageable with the right asset allocation. For advisors and plan sponsors, the value is in understanding the mechanics well enough to have clear, confident conversations with the people who are counting on you.

The financial advisor’s Claude AI playbook

The financial advisor’s Claude AI playbook Jul 21, 2026, 2:49:51 PM A practical guide for financial advisors: which workflows to encode as AI skills, where the failure modes hide, and how skill libraries compound into real value. An analysis: In the first piece in this series, I argued that AI middleware is being commoditized while durable value lives one layer down, in regulated execution. The natural next question is how to actually build on that frame. This piece is for the firms ready to answer it. Not a how-to-install. A thinking guide: Which workflows to encode, what good output looks like, where the failure modes hide, and how the work compounds as a strategic asset rather than a tooling expense. Less code, more practice design. AI for financial advisors is a workflow design problem Stop thinking like a buyer. Most advisors evaluate AI as a buying decision: Which platform, what features, what price. That’s the right frame for a CRM, but the wrong one for an AI operating layer. The right frame is practice design. What work in your firm is repeatable, document-heavy, pattern-driven, knowledge-dependent? What do you do every week with the same shape but different inputs? What do you delegate poorly because there’s no one to delegate to? Skills are not features. They are encoded versions of the firm’s existing processes. The advisors who get the most out of this aren’t the ones who buy the most plugins. They’re the ones who can describe their workflows clearly enough to encode them. Five categories of advisor work that map to this Category What it means Synthesis Pulling information from many sources into one coherent picture. Pre-meeting briefs, quarterly review packets, onboarding fact-finders. Anywhere the answer exists across systems but no one has time to assemble it. Drafting First-pass written work that a human refines. Client emails, plan summaries, investment proposals, meeting follow-ups. The skill produces version one; the advisor produces version two. Pattern recognition Surfacing things that need attention without telling the advisor what to do. Portfolio drift, tax-loss candidates, plan gaps, clients who haven’t been contacted in N days. The skill flags; the advisor decides. Routing and triage Daily prioritization. Which clients need a call. Which tasks should escalate. Which prospects deserve attention. Memory Turning the firm’s accumulated experience into something queryable. What is our position on annuities? What did Mrs. Lee’s last plan say about Roth conversions? Ask-the-firm as a real internal product. These five share clean inputs, reviewable outputs, and a recognizable “good enough” bar. Workflows that don’t fall cleanly into one of these usually aren’t good first skills. What AI workflows work for financial advisors—and what fails Skills that work have clean structured inputs, reviewable outputs, and a review loop where corrections fold back into the skill file. Skills that fail depend on judgment the model can’t make, have no review step, or pull from stale data. Language matters more than it looks. A tax skill should not say “Recommend a Roth conversion.” It should say “Identify facts that may warrant advisor review, summarize assumptions, list open questions, and draft a client-facing explanation for professional review.” A portfolio skill should not say “Execute a rebalance.” It should say “Identify drift, tax considerations, restrictions, cash needs, and questions for the advisor; then prepare a review packet.” That distinction is the line between intelligence and execution. A day in the life Imagine an advisor at a five-person RIA, two months into running a basic Claude stack. Morning: The daily briefing skill has already run. Three meetings today—for each, client context, recent emails, last quarter’s review notes, current portfolio state, two planning observations, a draft agenda. The advisor scans, edits, notes the second client just had a liquidity event. The agenda updates. Late morning: The meeting runs. Afterward, the meeting-notes skill turns rough notes into action items, a draft follow-up email, and three flagged items for the next planning review. The advisor reviews, removes one misread item, sends the email. Afternoon: A Roth-conversion question. The tax-review skill produces facts, assumptions, open questions, and drafts a client-facing explanation that’s marked for professional review. The advisor refines and routes to the firm’s tax specialist before anything goes to the client. Nothing here is unfamiliar advisor work. What’s different is cycle time, consistency across advisors, and the firm’s own knowledge—encoded in skill files—doing the heavy lifting on the repeatable parts. The maturity curve Stage What it looks like 1 Single-use One advisor, one workflow. Learning what good output looks like. 2 Team Same skill, deployed across all advisors. House style lives in a file. 3 Connected Skills call other skills. Output of one becomes input to the next. 4 Agentic Multi-step automation with human review at each gate. 5 Firm-as-product Skill library as part of the firm’s value prop. Most firms should plan to spend the first six months in Stages 1 and 2. Trying to build Stage 4 before Stage 1 produces fragile automation nobody trusts. Two prerequisites: data and governance The plugins don’t enforce either. They’re your work. Data. A skill is only as good as the data it can see. A meeting-prep skill pulling from a half-empty CRM produces half-empty briefs. The work of getting your data into a state skills can rely on is bigger than the work of building the skills. CRM hygiene, document organization, authoritative sources—unglamorous but prerequisite. The good news: This work has value even if the AI strategy never materializes. Governance. A skill file can tell the model to escalate. It can’t make that happen at runtime. Approval gates, audit logs, separation of duties, and reviewer sign-off have to be built around the model, not inside the prompt. A firm deploying these without checkpoints is taking on real liability. The compliance officer’s job doesn’t get easier, but it does evolve. Skills are intellectual property A SKILL.md file is a process document with teeth. Read end to end, a firm’s skill library is a fingerprint of how that firm operates. There are two main implications. Skill libraries grow—each correction is permanent; improvements depend on firm discipline rather than vendor roadmap. And skill libraries become acquisition assets: A mature library means a portable operating model. Faster ramp for new advisors. Cleaner integration of acquired firms. Higher capacity per advisor. It changes the firm’s value as an operating business. A minimum viable advisor-AI stack Component Purpose Claude financial-services plugins Baseline finance and workflow skills Wealth-management skills Reviews, plans, reports, proposals, rebalancing, TLH Microsoft 365 integration or Google Workspace Workflows inside Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint or the Google equivalent CRM connector Client records, tasks, notes, service model Email / calendar connector Meeting context and follow-up workflow Document connector Tax docs, statements, plans, agreements, prior notes Portfolio / custodial data feed Holdings, balances, tax lots, account models Firm-specific skills Investment philosophy, tax process, tone, templates Approval workflow Human review before client-facing or regulated action Audit log Source data, prompts, outputs, edits, approvals It’s not an afternoon project, but it’s also no longer a multi-year build. The takeaway The advisor who treats AI as a tooling decision will get tooling: useful, fungible, increasingly cheap. The advisor who treats AI as a practice-design exercise will get an operating system: slower to build, harder to copy, integrated with how the firm actually serves clients. The first article argued the intelligence layer is becoming a foundation-model utility. This one is about how to build inside that reality. More to come.

Custom model portfolios for advisors: FAQ

Why breakaway advisors are looking past legacy custodians as launch partners

The 401(k) security briefing your plan sponsors need

The 401(k) security briefing your plan sponsors need Jul 2, 2026, 12:34:37 PM AI-enabled fraud is targeting retirement plans. Here's how advisors can help sponsors. Retirement plans are a high-value, low-vigilance target: big balances, infrequent logins, and multiple service provider touchpoints. AI has made the fraud landscape meaningfully worse in the last 18 months. This is the security briefing your plan sponsor clients probably haven't gotten yet. Why 401(k) plans are uniquely exposed Retirement assets sit at the intersection of everything fraudsters look for: They're often a participant's second-largest asset after their home, logins are infrequent enough that losses can go unnoticed for weeks, and money moves through a chain—advisor, sponsor, recordkeeper, TPA. Fraudsters may use publicly available information to target participants, plan sponsors, and advisors. Here are 7 steps you can take to help protect your clients' security. The 2026 threat landscape The human verification layer that we’ve relied on for so long is no longer reliable. As AI capabilities increase, fraudsters are finding ways to target retirement plans. One type of attack involves voice-based phone calls, where a fraudster convincingly imitates a person's voice using AI, a technique known as a deepfake. Fraudsters are also using deepfake video and increasingly targeted social engineering, where attackers research their victims in advance to make impersonation attempts more convincing. Worryingly, deepfake identity fraud is on track to surge nearly 500% over the course of 2026. What regulators now expect The Department of Labor has issued cybersecurity guidance for ERISA plans that sets a clear bar for what plan sponsors should look for from providers. Key requirements include a documented security program, controls that match today's threat environment—multi-factor authentication (MFA), active monitoring, encryption—diligence on third-party vendors, and an incident response plan that's actually been tested, not just written down and filed away. You can learn more about the DOL guidance and how Betterment addresses it here. Your plan sponsor clients may not know this guidance exists. That's an opening: Cyber diligence is now part of what it means to select a prudent provider, and advisors who can walk sponsors through that checklist are delivering real value. Practical protection for participants Most retirement-plan fraud doesn't come from databases getting breached. It comes from people getting tricked—a convincing phone call, a fake login page, a weeks-long relationship that turns out to be a scam. The basics go a long way: Turn on MFA—app-based, not just SMS. Use a password manager. Add a trusted contact to the account. Check the account balance and activity once a quarter. None of these are complicated, but few participants have done all four. If a participant's email gets compromised, here's the playbook to walk them through: Lock down access. Help them reset credentials to their email account, the plan portal, and any other financial institutions. Force a logout of all active sessions. Re-enroll MFA from a different device. If the attacker had access to the phone or computer the client normally uses, that device may still be compromised—and any new MFA factors enrolled on it could be captured too. Use a phone, tablet, or computer the attacker hasn't touched. Brand-new isn't required; just different. Audit the last 30–90 days. Look at distributions, loans, beneficiary designations, and address changes. Watch for rollover requests. They're the most common follow-on to an account takeover — flag anything that comes in shortly after. Document everything and notify the recordkeeper and the plan sponsor. The paper trail matters. How sponsor-level controls work A key control in managing a retirement plan is the application of access controls to ensure that high-risk activities are restricted to authorized parties. Roles such as advisors or plan sponsors may be established with some plan administration capabilities; however, transactions such as distributions, signer changes, plan amendments, and payroll-related changes require authentication directly from the plan sponsor. A forwarded email, even one that looks completely legitimate, does not authenticate a transaction. The reason the line is drawn there is to make social engineering hard. Fraudsters try to impersonate advisors, plan sponsors, and service providers. How to use this in your practice Security is a natural way to reopen a conversation with plan sponsors who haven't reviewed their provider in a while. The entry point isn't "you should switch providers"—it's "when was the last time anyone walked you through the cyber-diligence side of your plan?" Betterment's Trust Portal and the 401(k) security brochure give sponsors something concrete to work from. Both are available through your Client Success Manager or at trust.betterment.com. Ready to bring a sponsor into the conversation? If you already have an account with Betterment Advisor Solutions, use the Request a Proposal button in your advisor dashboard—it reaches the right team within one business day. If you or a plan sponsor that you support would like to access documentation to support due diligence activities, the Betterment trust portal can be used to access independent SOC audit reports, key policies, and other supporting documentation. If you're exploring offering a 401(k) with Betterment for the first time, learn more here.