Direct indexing for registered investment advisors

Build your client's entire US-equity sleeve as a direct index.

Ditch the fund fees. Gain the tax alpha.

Index funds, ETFs, single stocks — the whole mix, held as one portfolio of the underlying shares. Existing positions move in on a gains budget you set. Accounts stay at the custodian. Direct indexing works on accounts as low as $50,000.

Any US-equity mixTax-aware transition of existing holdings

Get in touch.

Tell us about your firm. Someone from Accountable will reach out.

Did you know
A representative US-equity sleeve leaves two things on the table.4
16.5 bps
of fund fees, every year.
Held as the underlying shares, that line goes to zero.
64%
of it is not direct-indexable on other platforms, which take only plain broad-market index funds.
That part, in style, size, sector, factor and active funds, stays in wrappers where no lot is harvestable.
Composite direct indexing

Stop indexing one benchmark. Index the blend.

Most platforms direct-index the S&P 500 and stop there. Give the platform the sleeve the way the client holds it — five funds, a growth tilt, a legacy position — and it composes one portfolio of the underlying shares, held in the client's own account at the custodian, that tracks the mix as closely as the solver can get it. No wrappers, no expense ratios.

  • Any mix of US-equity index funds, ETFs and single stocks
  • Tracking measured against your blend, not a house benchmark
  • Do-not-trade lists, position caps and legacy carve-outs per account
Build a sample sleeve
Zephyr Growth Model v25
the blend · 64 accounts

VOO 50%, VUG 15%, VTV 15%, MDY 10%, IWM 10%, held directly as 612 names, with a forecast tracking error of 44 bps a year against the blend.

Tax-aware transition

Embedded gains aren't a wall. They're a schedule.

Bring the book as it is. The platform solves the move into the target under a gains budget you choose — what to keep, sell and carry on day one, what each year after costs, and when the unwind completes — so you can put the paths in front of the client and pick one together.

  • Budgets solved side by side — years to complete, tax due each year
  • Legacy positions kept, carved out or incorporated into the model
  • Tax priced at the household's own rates, per lot, before anything trades
From this, to this, like this6
the tax-aware transition
Go from this.
Four ETFs — a core, a growth tilt, a healthcare tilt, a mid-cap tilt — and one legacy stock. Fund fees on all four. $1.24M of embedded gain nobody wants to realize.
VOO40%Core · S&P 500fee 3 bps / yrQQQ20%Growth tiltfee 20 bps / yrXLV15%Healthcare tiltfee 8 bps / yrMDY15%Mid-cap tiltfee 23 bps / yrAAPL10%Single stocklarge embedded gainFees 10 bps/yr · embedded gain $1.24M · tax if sold today $410k
Try it now · no account needed

Build a sample sleeve. Watch what compounds.

Pick the funds a client actually holds. The page shows the composite, and what five years of fee savings and tax management could add at assumptions you control.

Start from a preset
The sleeve
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%
%
%
%
Account size
$
Assumptions
Expected market return6.0%/yr
Assumed annual tax alpha81.4%/yr
The market return is your assumption. The tax-alpha start is Accountable's backtested figure; move it to test your own.
The composite
Modeled · hypothetical7

This sleeve, held directly as ~500+ individual stocks.

One portfolio of the underlying shares, tracking 50% VOO · 15% VUG · 15% VTV · 10% MDY · 10% IWM.

Fund fees avoided
0.07%/yr
≈ $330/yr at this account size, deducted from the ETF path
Difference after 5 years
+$47,400
hypothetical, at your assumptions
$500K$550K$600K$650K$700KTodayYear 1Year 2Year 3Year 4Year 5Direct-indexed$714,482ETF portfolio$667,032
Questions

Questions advisors ask.

What is direct indexing, and how is it different from an index fund or ETF?

The advisor holds the individual stocks in the client's own account instead of a fund that holds them. Accountable automates the work: it turns the advisor's whole US-equity model — index funds, ETFs and single stocks — into one portfolio of the underlying shares that tracks the blend, and keeps it harvested and rebalanced. The advisor is still the one doing it; the platform does the arithmetic and the paperwork.

Is Accountable a sub-adviser or a technology platform? Who holds discretion?

A technology platform. Accountable Finance is not a registered investment adviser and does not make investment decisions. The advisor holds discretion over every account; the platform coordinates trades with the custodian on the advisor's behalf, under the model the advisor creates.

Which custodians, and can I keep mine?

Schwab, Fidelity and Pershing today. Accounts stay where they are; nothing moves.

What can go into a sleeve, and which benchmarks can be tracked?

Any mix of US-equity index funds, ETFs, mutual funds and single stocks, in the weights the advisor sets. Funds are looked through to their holdings, and tracking is measured against that blend, not a house benchmark.

How does onboarding work, and how long does it take?

Set up a few items at your custodian. You can be up and running in as little as a week.

How does tax-loss harvesting work, and how are wash sales handled?

The platform looks for harvestable losses continuously, at the lot level, in any model state including mid-transition, and proposes the trades; each harvest's proceeds re-enter at the target model. Every buy is checked against the account's own lot history under the 30-day wash-sale rule before it is proposed.

What are the account minimums?

No account minimum. Direct indexing works on accounts as low as $50,000.

Can clients customize their portfolios?

Yes. Do-not-trade lists, position caps, industry exclusions, declared factor tilts, and legacy positions kept, carved out or folded into the model, per account.

How does pricing work?

Accountable charges an annual platform technology fee based on the assets serviced by the platform.

Does it work alongside my existing portfolio management system?

Yes. Accountable runs alongside any portfolio management system. It is not an SMA: the accounts stay the advisor's, at the custodian.

How do I show clients the tax value?

The transition report and the client report show, in dollars and in after-tax return, what harvesting and the transition did in the client's own account, against the index fund the client could have bought instead.

How is tracking error controlled?

An in-house risk model forecasts tracking error against the advisor's blend, and the optimizer keeps the portfolio inside the tracking budget the advisor sets while it harvests.

Bring the whole sleeve. Bring the whole book.

Tell us about your firm and someone from Accountable will reach out.

Disclosures
  1. 1. Accountable Finance, Inc. is a technology provider. It is not an investment adviser, broker-dealer, or custodian, and does not provide investment, legal, tax, or accounting advice; consult a tax professional about your own situation. Advisory services are provided solely by the investment advisory firms that use the platform, which hold investment discretion over every account; the platform coordinates trades with the custodian on the advisor's behalf, under the model the advisor creates, and the accounts are held at the custodian. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, any security or advisory service. Investing involves risk, including the possible loss of principal. Illustrations on this site are hypothetical, for informational purposes only, and are not investment advice, a recommendation, or an offer of advisory services.
  2. 2. Past performance, actual or backtested, does not guarantee future results. Backtested results are produced with the benefit of hindsight, do not reflect actual trading, and may not account for every material economic or market factor.
  3. 3. Direct indexing and tax-loss harvesting are not suitable for every client. The benefit depends on the client's tax rates, other gains and losses, holding periods, account size, and future tax law. Harvesting defers tax rather than removing it: a sold lot's lower basis is carried forward, and a loss can be disallowed under the wash-sale rule when the same or a substantially identical security is bought within 30 days.
  4. 4. The US-equity sleeve of BlackRock's Target Allocation ETF 60/40 Model as published for Q2 2026, holdings as of May 28, 2026 (seven funds, % of the model: IVV 16, IVW 7, DYNF 6.5, IVE 6.5, BLCR 3, MTUM 3, THRO 2; 44 in all), at the funds' published expense ratios as of October 29, 2026. BlackRock is the largest US model-portfolio provider, with $308 billion, a third of third-party model assets (Morningstar, 2026 US Model Portfolio Landscape, March 31, 2026). Illustrative, not a recommendation.
  5. 5. Illustrative product view — not client data, not a recommendation. The tracking error shown is a forecast from Accountable's risk model, not a realized figure.
  6. 6. Illustrative — not client data, not a recommendation. The book, the embedded gain and the tax figures come from a sample account: a $2,404,250 book with $1,237,420 of embedded gain; $409,680 is the tax if everything were sold today at 40.8% short-term, 23.8% long-term and 9.0% state rates; $144,213 is the tax paid over the plan's transition at a $291,000-a-year gains budget. The years after today are projected, not realized.
  7. 7. Hypothetical illustration with constant annual assumptions you control in the calculator — not a projection or guarantee of performance. Tax-loss-harvesting outcomes depend on market conditions, funding pattern, and each client's tax situation. The direct-indexed path tracks the blend with a tracking error that varies with the mix; the ETF path pays each fund's published expense ratio and the direct-indexed path none; advisory fees and trading costs are not modeled on either path. Illustrative — not a recommendation.
  8. 8. Starts at 1.4%/yr, the average of three Accountable backtests of the sample model drawn on this page (VOO 50%, VUG 15%, VTV 15%, MDY 10%, IWM 10%): $500,000 invested in October 2016, October 2018 and October 2020 and run to October 2026 at top federal tax rates, tax alpha as the industry reports it (after-tax active return minus pre-tax active return against the index funds), no advisory fees or trading costs; the three runs measured 1.0%, 1.9% and 1.2% a year. A hypothetical backtest, not a forecast or a guarantee; a client's result depends on market conditions, funding pattern and tax situation.
  9. 9. Information on this site is current as of its publication date and may change without notice. Fund names and tickers are the property of their issuers; Accountable is not affiliated with or endorsed by any fund issuer, index provider or custodian named on this site. Fund constituent and price data are supplied by FactSet.