Tom O'Shea, CFA
Research Director for Managed Accounts

About Tom
Tom has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry. Prior to joining Cerulli, Tom was an Investment Product Manager at Fidelity’s Global Asset Allocation Division, where he played a leadership role in the ongoing development of Fidelity Personalized Portfolios, Fidelity’s Unified Managed Account (UMA) for retail customers. He also led the investment managers in creating the Breckenridge Municipal Portfolio, Fidelity’s first separate account for consumers managed by a third party. Before working on the retail side of Fidelity, Tom built and led the team that developed Fidelity’s Separate Account Network for registered investment advisors (RIAs), and his group partnered with a third party wrap sponsor to create Managed Account Resources, a UMA platform for RIAs.
Tom began his career in high tech, working in sales, business development, and product management at a number of software firms, including Lotus Development Corporation.
Areas of Expertise
- Managed account and wealth advisory platforms
- Asset management product development, promotion, and positioning
- Pricing of wealth management platforms and asset management products
- Strategy for distributing through managed account systems
- Trends in managed account technology
- Marketing and branding for managed account solutions
Recent Project Work
- Counseled a global bank on all aspects of the development of its advisory platform, including programs, pricing, investment vehicles, competitive positioning, and advisor adoption
- Helped a large insurance broker/dealer determine whether its managed account programs were competitively priced
- Advised an asset manager in determining how to position, brand, and promote a new separately managed account (SMA) offering to advisors
- Worked with a large asset management firm to define and promote a new category of SMAs
- Helped an insurance broker/dealer understand the economics of a managed account platform and guided the firm in establishing pricing, developing an approach to third-party vendors, and thinking through the opportunities for revenue sharing with business partners
Learn More about the U.S. Wealth Management Practice
Our Wealth Management practice is split into four distinct areas of coverage—offering top-down and bottom-up insights into the multi-faceted corners of the industry.