Joe Mallen Displays Modelist Behavior at Exchange

At Exchange earlier this year, Modelist CEO and Founder Joe Mallen discussed his firm’s investment philosophy (IP) and the value of the Exchange conference. “At Modelist, our investment philosophy is, really, no one advisor is the same,” Mallen said.

Modelist Caters Solutions to Specific Advisors

“We’re trying to harness a lot of the investment strategies that other third-party managers, investment strategists offer to clients, often in a really expensive structure like an SMA or mutual fund,” Mallen noted. His firm looks to bring that IP directly to the advisor in a transparent way. They aim to meet the needs of that individual advisor’s practice. “We’re not trying to sell things to advisors. We’re trying to build what’s best for them,” he added.

Standing Out by Standing Up for Advisors

Speaking to what makes Modelist unique, Mallen was quick to point out that Modelist doesn’t own any products and can really put themselves in an individual advisor’s shoes as they contemplate a solution. He said, “I think we’re different in our space because there are a lot of people doing models. But many of them come from the asset management position. So they are biased in terms of what they include in their model portfolios.” Mallen stressed the importance of being unbiased.

He also noted the advisor’s individual brand is important. Modelist’s unbiased approach allows them to dip into any corner of the market to express a market view for the advisor. “We try to highlight their identity, do all of their marketing content for them, do all of the model updates, do market updates. But all of that is white-labeled under their brand,” he said. “We don’t want them selling somebody else. We want them selling themselves,” Mallen added.

Why Exchange Is a Model Conference

Mallen has been an Exchange mainstay since the conference’s first iteration. He praised the conference for its opportunities to catch up with colleagues. “[Exchange] is about finding out what’s going on in the industry and what new products are out there,” he shared.

Mallen also praised Exchange for the many opportunities it allows for meeting people. He pointed to an event SSGA hosted at the Sphere as a terrific meeting point that, though technically off conference grounds, was enabled by the conference bringing the industry together.

“It’s really the who’s who of ETFs and all of the senior leadership and the ability to get together with all of them in one location and have back-to-back meetings.” Accordingly, Mallen noted that seeing these industry leaders would be challenging outside the Exchange context. It would require travel to multiple locations and significantly more expense. “Here we can all come to Vegas over a few days and have meaningful conversations.”

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