Smarter portfolio construction with Unified Managed Accounts
Published October 6, 2026 • 3 min read
- Unified Managed Accounts (UMAs) hold multiple investment strategies—called sleeves—inside a single client account. Advisors can combine models from the Betterment model marketplace with their firm's own custom models in one portfolio.
- Advisors set the asset allocation, and Betterment keeps the mix between model sleeves in line with it. Coordinated rebalancing means a blended portfolio will bring itself back toward the construction the advisor designed once it reaches the custom drift threshold.
- Tax-loss harvesting and gains allowance management reach every sleeve. Gains and losses are coordinated across the whole portfolio instead of managed inside each model sleeve.
- Advisors see performance, holdings, and drift for the entire portfolio in one place, and clients get a single consolidated view of their portfolio.
- Direct Indexing inside UMAs is coming soon, bringing the opportunity for more tax alpha to the clients who stand to benefit most.
Build more personalized, multi-sleeve portfolios with Unified Managed Accounts, combining models from our model marketplace and your firm's custom models in one portfolio.
A great portfolio doesn't always come from a single investment strategy. Sometimes the right approach is to bring together several strategies, each doing what it does best.
With Unified Managed Accounts (UMAs), bring your best strategies together. Combine models from our model marketplace with your own custom models to build multi-sleeve portfolios tailored to each client.
Enjoy more flexibility in portfolio construction without adding the operational complexity of managing multiple strategies separately.
Here's how UMAs help make portfolio construction simple, sophisticated, and scalable.
What is a unified managed account?
A unified managed account holds several investment strategies inside one client account. Each strategy occupies its own sleeve, and the model sleeves are managed together as a single portfolio.
For example, you might pair a U.S. equity growth model with a fixed income strategy and add a high-conviction or values-aligned sleeve of your own.
You set your asset allocation and your custom drift threshold. Once a blended portfolio reaches that threshold, automated rebalancing brings the mix between sleeves back toward the construction you designed.
Tax-loss harvesting and gains allowance management extend across every UMA sleeve, coordinating gains and losses across strategies.
For example, a harvested loss in one sleeve can help offset a gain in another. Rather than managing tax impact sleeve by sleeve, the account is managed with the broader portfolio in mind.
UMAs bring the same automation you use for single-strategy portfolios to multi-strategy ones. You can build sophisticated multi-sleeve portfolios down to the security level while construction, rebalancing, and tax management run through the same system.
That helps deliver more personalized portfolios across your book without adding a new set of operational tasks for every strategy.
Even a sophisticated portfolio should be simple to manage and easy to understand.
With UMAs, you can see performance, holdings, and drift across the entire portfolio in one place. Clients get a single view of their portfolio, even when it includes multiple strategies.
Direct Indexing will soon be available within UMAs, giving you another way to customize portfolios while bringing the opportunity for more tax alpha to the clients who stand to benefit most.
Build the portfolio you want
UMAs give you more freedom to combine the strategies you believe in and build portfolios around each client's needs, while Betterment handles the coordination behind the scenes.
Learn more about UMAs and our full portfolio management suite today.
Dana Karlson oversees content for Betterment at Work and Betterment Advisor Solutions. She joined Betterment in 2021, beginning on the Retail team before expanding her leadership across Betterment at Work and Betterment Advisor Solutions. She brings more than 20 years of experience in journalism and marketing. Previously, she was a senior editor at Condé Nast and British Sky Broadcasting in London, and has worked with finance and consumer brands on content strategy and brand storytelling.
