Orion To Offer Tax Overlay to Household Client Management
Orion is close to launching a new tax overlay technology that can address tax hazards or opportunities across households.
The wealthtech provider highlighted the effort at its annual Orion Ascent conference in San Diego on Thursday, stressing the need advisors have to offer “personalized, household-level guidance for clients.”
The new offering, part of Orion’s “unified managed household” strategy roadmap, will enable tax-efficient trading on its platform that goes beyond its current custom indexing and trading tools.
“UMH helps advisors provide more personalized advice focused on after-tax outcomes, and greater confidence that every decision supports a family’s long-term goals,” said Ron Pruitt, Orion’s president of wealth management.
Orion’s proprietary setup will use AI-generated custodian statement analysis, along with AI-generated proposals with tax overlays. It will also work across both taxable and non-taxable accounts.
Pruitt said on the sidelines of the conference that it’s part of the movement toward advisors providing holistic advice to clients.
“We tend to be very insular, thinking that you set up an account, you set up the model, here’s what you trade, here’s what you do—and clients say, ‘here’s what I’m trying to accomplish. Here are my goals,” he said. “That’s why our investments and our household capabilities and customization are critical.”
Some of the larger RIAs have been leaning into tax investment strategies and even tax accounting in recent years. Carson Group, Prime Capital and Merit Financial all announced larger and more dedicated tax-focused advice last year, to name a few. In October, Fuse Research Network published a study saying that advisors across all channels expect tax harvesting to become the most in-demand customization feature in portfolio construction.
In addition, earlier this month, Altruist announced the launch of its AI-powered tax planning feature within its Hazel platform. That news caused a stock market selloff among traditional wealth management firms, including Raymond James, Charles Schwab and LPL Financial.
According to Orion’s annual wealthtech survey released Wednesday, seven out of 10 advisors use third-party tax optimization services for clients, and over half (52%) plan to either expand or adopt tax optimization over the next five years. The survey, which polled 571 advisors at the end of 2025, also found that 42% of advisors plan to adopt or expand unified managed household services.
The survey also made it clear, however, that advisors are often struggling to integrate the wealthtech they already have. According to the survey, advisors use only 60% of their tech stack, and only 3% say they have fully unified data across systems.
Pruitt said the unified household offering and its further iterations will be a draw, partly for time-saving and efficiency gains in administrative tasks or preparation, allowing advisors to focus more on clients.
“We have a lot of ways that we can give advisors leverage to grow more effectively,” Pruitt said. “That’s why we use our wealthtech survey to lean in and understand where advisors feel they need to be, where they are going to get growth, and how they are going to get leverage in the business …. the UMH or household level capabilities are a result of that.”