Why I Built Rubric

A meaningful share of the “active management” sold by large institutions to wealth management clients delivers something that, after fees, looks a lot like an index. When a client pays well over one percent for that, the fee is no longer compensation for skill. It’s compensation for distribution. Clients deserve to know what they’re paying for, and they deserve a process where the price tag matches the effort and expertise.

Many institutions charge an advisory fee at the top of the relationship, and then invest those same client assets into the firm’s own proprietary funds, which charge a second layer of fees underneath. The client sees one fee on the statement. The firm captures two. That’s not a service model. It’s a distribution model dressed up as advice.

At Rubric, we charge one transparent fee. We don’t put clients into affiliated or proprietary funds that quietly stack a second layer of fees on top of your advisory fee. We don’t take commissions or referral compensation from product issuers. One fee. The advisory fee you see is the advisory fee you pay. Fund expenses and custody costs are separate and listed on our fees page. Read more on how fee laddering works.

Portfolio construction. Direct indexing. Tax-loss harvesting. Options overlays for income and downside risk management. Access to private markets. I worked on strategies like these for large institutional clients. For most of my career, they sat behind institutional minimums of twenty-five million, fifty million, or more.

That’s no longer a necessity. The infrastructure has matured. Technology stack has matured. Custody platforms have matured. The barrier today is mostly business-model preference. Many firms still keep these gates in place.

We don’t. Rubric brings institutional-grade portfolio construction to clients starting at much lower thresholds than the firms I came from, with transparent, published pricing. Private markets remain limited to qualified clients, but at thresholds well below the institutional minimums I came from.

These strategies carry risks and may not be appropriate for every investor. Options involve significant risk, including losses that can exceed the amount invested. Tax-loss harvesting benefits depend on market conditions and are not guaranteed. Private investments are illiquid and can lose their entire value.