From weeks to 48 hours: the tactical asset allocation project behind Specialised Private Capital's IMAP Innovation Award

Specialised Private Capital has won the Innovation Award at the 2026 IMAP Managed Account Awards for a Tactical Asset Allocation (TAA) project three years in the making, developed in partnership with J.P. Morgan Asset Management.

A structural constraint, not an operational one

Retail managed accounts have long lacked the implementation tools that institutional portfolios take for granted. An Investment Committee's decision must travel through physical fund and asset trading across every underlying account. That process is measured in weeks, burdened by transaction costs at every step, and blunt in what it can express. The tools that give institutional managers their precision have long been unavailable at retail scale: FX hedging, derivative overlays, the ability to express a specific view rather than a directional one.

Matt Waugh, Head of Research at Specialised Private Capital, frames it as the defining gap in how managed accounts have operated in practice: the distance between what an Investment Committee decides and what a client actually experiences in their portfolio.

Rebuilding the mechanism, not the workaround

Specialised Private Capital's investment team, working with J.P. Morgan Asset Management, closed that gap by rebuilding the mechanism itself. Two purpose-built Australian unit trusts now sit inside the retail MDA structure and give the Investment Committee institutional-grade implementation capability directly. Attribution and governance were engineered in from the outset, not layered on after the fact.

The effect is structural rather than incremental. Reallocations that once took weeks now reach every account within 48 hours, at a fraction of the previous cost. Because implementation sits at the trust level, the Investment Committee can express a precise tactical view, whether a duration call, a sector tilt, or a currency hedge, without disturbing the manager panel or the client’s day-to-day portfolio. “The precision to express a specific view rather than a broad approximation,” as Waugh puts it, is what separates this from a faster version of the old process. FX hedging and derivative overlays, once out of reach for accounts of this kind, are now standard tools in how Specialised Private Capital implements tactical views for advisers and their clients.

Mark Carlile, Managing Director and Head of Wholesale - Australia and New Zealand at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, sees the project as a marker of what the two firms can build together:

"This collaboration reflects what happens when two progressive businesses bring their best thinking to a shared problem. Working alongside the team at Specialised Private Capital, we set out to address real limitations in how managed accounts operate in the Australian market — and the result showcases the breadth of capability J.P. Morgan Asset Management brings to this space, at both a local and global level. For an institution like ours, initiatives like this matter beyond a single partnership: they demonstrate how global scale and local expertise can combine to solve problems for advisers, clients and advisory firms alike. We see this as a new precedent for what's possible in the Australian managed accounts market, and one we're proud to have built together with Specialised Private Capital".

Three years, recognised

Kieran Canavan, Chief Investment Officer at Specialised Private Capital, accepted the Innovation Award alongside Gabriel Neacsu, Senior Research Manager. Canavan describes the result as a new benchmark for the industry, built, he notes, on “a shared commitment to solving complex institutional and investor problems” between two organisations willing to challenge how managed accounts have traditionally worked. He credits the achievement to the investment team’s persistence over three years: “This award belongs to the entire team at Specialised Private Capital".

About the IMAP Awards

The IMAP Awards are recognised as the leading awards program for the managed accounts sector, a $300 billion segment of financial services, honouring best practice in advice and portfolio management. The awards span single sector and multi asset class programs, delivered as either MDA portfolios or platform-based SMAs, and include dedicated categories for Licensee and Boutique Licensee programs integrated into advice practices, alongside Responsible Investing, Retirement and Innovation. Winners are determined through a combination of quantitative analysis and qualitative judgement, adjudicated by a panel of independent researchers and specialists.

_{Kieran Canavan - Chief Investment Officer and Gabriel Neacsu - Senior Research Manager accepting the Innovation Award on behalf of Specialised Private Capital at the 2026 IMAP Managed Account Awards.}