CEO Note: 2022 In Review

Throughout this year, the Archer team and I have had the opportunity to spend time with asset managers, industry experts, consultants, and technologists, learning about their experiences amid the changing investment management landscape. One key theme was change; in 2022, it seemed that no two days were the same.

As an industry, we faced our share of challenges – market volatility, rising inflation, interest rate hikes, changing regulatory rules, and a rapidly evolving job market – leading many of our clients to shift focus, navigate client expectations, and find opportunities to minimize losses. At Archer, we found that activity overall was very high, demonstrating that we are all hard at work to help our clients survive the ups and downs that the year presented. In fact, our team saw tax loss harvesting requests more than double the prior year’s as asset managers worked to find some silver lining in the challenging market.

Opportunities also presented themselves for those who knew where to look. For example, as investors continue to seek increased customization, particularly tax management, some asset managers found success developing customizable SMAs and direct indexing investments, and many institutional managers found appetite for their investment strategies across multiple channels. Others found that outsourcing operations was a good way to keep costs more predictable.

At Archer, we focused on evolving our solutions to meet all of these needs. We continued to enhance our technology platform and brought on some great talent at all levels, including our Service Delivery team, Client Experience team and our Board of Directors. We remained committed to living out our core values, our companywide guidelines that help define the way we work with one another and with our clients. By holding ourselves and each other accountable to each of these values, we were able to deepen our relationships across the industry and deliver the level of service that our clients need to succeed.

Looking back on the year, the highlight for our team was getting to spend time with all of you. Industry events were back in full swing, and our team had a great time seeing clients, peers, and friends at the conferences, out on the golf course, and coming together to support an important cause with Expect Miracles. A personal highlight was seeing so many of you at our cocktail party at the MMI Annual Conference in October – it was great to be reunited with familiar faces and meet some of our newer Archer clients!

On behalf of the entire Archer team, I wish you a healthy and happy 2023. We look forward to seeing what the year ahead brings, and to working with so many of you.

All my best,
Bryan