How Rathbones' MPS helps advisers reclaim time to focus on clients

19 December 2025

Discover how Rathbones’ Model Portfolio Service (MPS) is designed to free up advisers’ time and support their approach to meeting Consumer Duty requirements.

Article last updated 19 December 2025.

The role of a financial adviser has shifted away from picking products and investments to providing a more holistic financial planning service that focuses on long-term goals.

Providing this kind of service is demanding, and many advisers no longer have time to spend on building clients’ portfolios and handling mundane admin.

That’s why many advisers are turning to model portfolio services (MPSs) to manage clients’ investments on their behalf.

For over 30 years, we’ve partnered with advisers to deliver tailored investment strategies, and our dedicated multi-asset team brings more than two decades of experience in managing portfolios through changing markets.

Building on this expertise, our enhanced MPS service combines robust investment capabilities with operational efficiencies, designed to produce a better outcome for clients.

Our suite of seven portfolios, which are diversified across a risk spectrum from adventurous to conservative, are accessible through 14 adviser platforms. The pricing structure is designed to be competitive, providing advisers and their clients with a value-focused solution.

Hear how Model Portfolio Services can help financial advisers and their clients

Video transcript

Host — Ian Horne, CityWire:
Hello, I’m Ian Horne from CityWire and I’m joined in the studio today by investment director Andrea Yung and fund manager Will Mcintosh-Whyte, both from Rathbones.

We’re going to be discussing model portfolio services and how they can help financial advisers navigate today’s investment challenges. We’ll also be exploring how Rathbones finds ways to differentiate and add value in a highly competitive MPS space.

Which leads me on to my first question. Andrea, with so many MPS providers in the market, what differentiates your offering from the rest?

Andrea Yung, Investment Director, Rathbones:
When the Rathbones and Invest combination came together, we saw this as a real opportunity to review our MPS offering. The idea here is to bring together the best of both worlds. We’ve applied an asset management lens onto our MPS solution, which has helped us address common platform issues. The main enhancement is the creation of building block funds, specifically for our MPS solution. This broadens the investment universe, enhances returns, and allows us to manage risk more effectively.

From an operational perspective, it’s been a game changer. With an on-platform solution, rebalancing at platform level can mean clients’ assets are out of the market for a day or two. With building blocks, we can trade within these funds, make changes quicker, reduce cash drag for clients, and lower the possibility of potential CGT crystallisations.

Ian Horne:
Will, Rathbones MPS is built using a unique LED framework. How does this work and what makes it different from other frameworks available?

Will Mcintosh-Whyte, Fund Manager, Rathbones:
As Andrea said, rather than a traditional funds framework, we’ve designed and launched three unique funds based on our proprietary LED risk framework. This categorises assets according to how they’re likely to behave, especially in stressed markets.

We look at liquidity assets, equity-type risk assets, and diversifiers. The MPS allocates across these three funds to ensure each strategy has the right amount of risk and diversification.

Liquidity assets include government bonds, high-quality corporate bonds, and cash — the defensive part of the portfolio, highly liquid and likely to have a negative correlation to risk assets in times of stress.

Equity-type risk covers equities and assets highly correlated with equities, like corporate debt, emerging market debt, high yield, or private equity — the engine of growth for the portfolios.

Diversifiers include traditional options like gold and agricultural commodities, as well as structural products to hedge risk or find uncorrelated streams of return. This piece adds genuine diversification to the portfolios.

Ian Horne:
Let’s put ourselves in the position of financial advisers. What are their biggest investment challenges right now, and how are you helping them deal with those?

Will Mcintosh-Whyte:
There are always plenty of challenges, but at the moment, concentration risk stands out. Global equity markets are increasingly dominated by a small number of companies — the infamous MAG 7 make up nearly 20% of global equities now.

If you allocate too passively or even too actively, portfolios can end up with large positions in a handful of stocks. We take a more diversified approach, ensuring no single equity or group of equities has an outsized impact on the portfolios.

Ian Horne:
Andrea, why is it important for an MPS service to offer real value for money, and how does Rathbones help deliver that?

Andrea Yung:
We’ve designed our MPS to be very cost-effective, especially in the active and hybrid space. We offer it at zero DFM fee and an OCF cost cap of 50 basis points. But value goes beyond just lowering costs.

We’ve created a solution focused on long-term returns and effective risk management, thanks to our building block structure.

We also support advisers with enhanced reporting, including full look-through reporting so advisers can see exactly what’s under the bonnet and why. We provide monthly reports, live webinars, and a monthly podcast, so advisers can hear directly from the investment team.

It’s all about giving advisers the support they need to service their clients — not just low cost, but value beyond that.

Ian Horne:
One last question — what’s the most common question you’re getting from financial advisers at the moment?

Andrea Yung:
From my perspective, there’s a lot of uncertainty in the markets and increased volatility. Advisers are looking for solutions they feel comfortable with, knowing we can manage risk effectively and support their clients and their hard-earned money over the long term.

How can advisers benefit from using Rathbones’ MPS?

Our solution is designed to help deliver suitable outcomes for your clients, while freeing up valuable time for you to focus on the financial planning conversations that matter. We aim to provide a partnership that lets you focus on what advisers do best – building lasting client relationships – while we handle the investment complexity.

But you and your clients won’t feel out of the loop. We provide a comprehensive suite of client-ready materials, such as monthly factsheets and full holding lists. These resources help you maintain clear and consistent client communication and support alignment with Consumer Duty principles.

We also have a dedicated MPS support team available to assist with any investment or platform-related queries, ensuring you receive the guidance and support you need.

Cost is also an important factor for us, and we strive to ensure our MPS is competitively priced.

That’s why we offer our actively managed portfolios with:

A 0% discretionary fund manager fee
An all-in ongoing charges figure capped at 0.50%

As an active investment house, our pricing is among the most competitive available in the active MPS market.

What makes Rathbones’ investment approach unique?

Unlike many MPS solutions, we take a direct and truly active approach to investing, which provides us with greater flexibility and control over where we are allocating our capital and how we want to manage risk.

Being active allows us to buy the specific companies we want, targeting those with the structural tailwinds we like, strong balance sheets, quality management and paying what we determine to be the right price for a stock to drive the returns of the strategies.

We have specifically designed our MPS proposition to provide your clients with a more efficient investment outcome, and each portfolio is risk-targeted and designed to stay within defined volatility parameters.

Rather than being a traditional fund-of-funds offering, our MPS invests in three unique funds that have been designed and launched specifically for the MPS service.

Each model portfolio is built using three funds managed by Rathbones Asset Management. Together, they form the core building blocks of our risk framework: LED – liquidity, equity-type risk and diversifiers.

These funds are based on our proprietary risk framework, which aims to categorise assets into how they are likely to behave, particularly in times of stress.

The MPS then allocates to these funds with the aim of aligning your client portfolios to their risk profile, while seeking to manage risk through diversification.

It is designed to take account of factors such as lifestyle and time-horizon considerations within the chosen strategy. By managing assets through our LED framework, we aim to achieve broad diversification.

There are also significant benefits for clients and advisers from an operational perspective with using our building block approach. By executing trades within the underlying fund structure, we can adjust portfolio positioning without triggering changes at the individual account or platform level.

This enables us to:

Reflect our investment views more swiftly
Minimise cash drag
Reduce the likelihood of capital gains tax crystallisation events

The three unique funds

The Rathbones LED (L) Global Fixed Income Fund

This represents the liquidity element of the portfolios. This isn’t just cash – it includes government bonds and high-quality investment grade credit, which are designed to remain liquid, even in times of market stress.

These assets typically show low correlation to equities, making them an effective source of stability when markets become volatile. You would expect to see higher weightings to this fund in the lower risk strategies.

The Rathbones LED (E) Global Equity-Type Risk Fund

This fund invests in assets that are there to drive the growth of the portfolios, including equities and other securities with a high correlation to equity markets, such as lower-rated corporate and high yield bonds, private equity and emerging market debt.

You would expect to see higher weightings to this fund in the higher risk strategies.

The Rathbones LED (D) Global Diversifiers Fund

This invests in those assets which can be used to both hedge specific risks as well as provide sources of return that don’t depend on the direction of equity or bond markets, such as gold and agricultural commodities, but also structured products with a low or negative correlation to equities.

This component is where the LED framework shows its real strength, providing genuine diversification to the portfolios and managing risk in a more targeted and resilient way.

At Rathbones, our differentiated approach to MPS aims to provide advisers with greater clarity, transparency and support. Available across leading investment platforms and compatible with major risk profilers, it offers a simple, scalable way to deliver discretionary investment management to your clients.

The value of investments can go down as well as up and your client could get back less than they invested.

The Rathbones Model Portfolio Service is managed by Rathbones Investment Management Limited, while Rathbones Asset Management is responsible for managing the underlying building block funds. Both companies are part of Rathbones Group plc.

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The value of your investments and the income from them may go down as well as up, and you could get back less than you invested.

How Rathbones' MPS helps advisers reclaim time to focus on clients

Hear how Model Portfolio Services can help financial advisers and their clients

How can advisers benefit from using Rathbones’ MPS?

What makes Rathbones’ investment approach unique?

The three unique funds

The Rathbones LED (L) Global Fixed Income Fund

The Rathbones LED (E) Global Equity-Type Risk Fund

The Rathbones LED (D) Global Diversifiers Fund

Take the next step

Want to speak to someone?

More MPS insights

The Model Portfolio Service that loves to say no - Webinar recording

Reclaiming time: How a Model Portfolio Service (MPS) helps advisers refocus on planning and growth

Why Model Portfolio Service and why now?

Managing Capital Gains Tax more effectively with Rathbones Model Portfolio Service

Let's talk

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