Key Takeaways

• Syntax Direct: A Dual Investment and Business Solution: A cost-effective, scalable, custom index platform that allows advisors to generate personalized client solutions while supporting business margins.

• Two Paths to Custom Index Construction: Advisors can build a fully custom index either by working through a guided questionnaire or by describing their objectives in natural language to Saidee™, an AI-assistant. Both paths apply the same rules-based configuration options, turning what once took a quant team days to do into a matter of minutes.

• Turnkey delivery in 30 Seconds: An advisor can construct a custom index, then immediately analyze its performance and risk characteristics or take it live. In that time, Syntax Direct generates the full package needed to do either: constituents and weights, an index backtest, sector breakdowns, a compliance-ready rulebook, and a branded factsheet.

• Three Pillars of Differentiation: Syntax Direct is a robust ecosystem enabled by the company's three areas of expertise: the proprietary FIS® industry classification system, its Institutional Index Engine, and its Scalable Technology Platform.

The Dual Value Proposition: An Investment & Business Solution

Syntax Direct supports financial advisors by both providing an investment and business solution. The investment solution, shown in Exhibit 1, highlights the challenges of pooled vehicles, like ETFs and mutual funds, and how these limitations are addressed through the use of separate accounts and their direct ownership feature.

Exhibit 1: Limitations of Pooled Vehicles and Advantages of Separate Accounts

The Business Solution: Margin Support and Client Value

The business value of Syntax Direct is defined by immediate cost efficiencies and a robust feature set that empowers advisors to scale. This impact is further amplified by a strategic development pipeline designed to continuously enhance advisor productivity.

• Cost Efficiency: At a low cost, Syntax Direct can support financial advisor profit margins and/or reduce client fees. For example, saving ten basis points on $100 million of client assets generates fee savings of $100,000. For larger advisors, $1 billion of assets on the platform would generate $1 million in savings assuming 10 basis points in fee savings.

• Existing Product Features: Users can seamlessly construct customized domestic and international equity portfolios independently or via Saidee^TM. The platform instantly generates essential operational outputs, including backtests, factsheets, and compliance documentation to ensure professional, client-ready delivery.
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• Product Development Pipeline: Our roadmap includes the planned introduction of automated quarterly portfolio commentary and detailed performance attribution tools. Additionally, we are expanding our construction capabilities to include fixed income portfolios from a curated list of ETFs, further unifying the advisor's workflow.

While Syntax Direct supports advisor branding on index names, rulebooks, and fact sheets, advisors with sufficient size can also fully white-label the platform. This ensures that the advisor’s brand remains the primary touchpoint for the client, while Syntax provides the robust engine beneath the hood.

A Modern Financial Platform

In the modern wealth management landscape, the term "platform" is frequently misapplied to any software interface or digital dashboard. However, from a strategic business perspective, a platform is not a mere utility; it is a foundational system for growth. While a "tool" helps an advisor perform a specific task, a robust platform creates an ecosystem that systematizes complex processes, turning manual tasks into scalable enterprise activity. Syntax Direct achieves this by unifying three Syntax  pillars into a single, integrated ecosystem:

• FIS® Classification Technology: The data foundation anchored by Syntax’s industry-leading industry classification framework.

• An Institutional Index Engine: The platform’s index construction layer translates advisor ideas and client needs into systematic, rules-based investment strategies.

• Scalable Technology Platform: Syntax’s software development capabilities provide an intuitive user interface to a scalable, enterprise solution.

By integrating these three pillars, Syntax Direct provides a scalable growth architecture that allows advisors to expand their book of business and deliver sophisticated investment solutions without the friction of linear headcount increases.

Exhibit 2: Syntax Direct Integrated Ecosystem Platform

FIS® serves as the structural foundation for Syntax Direct, replacing dated, single-hierarchy legacy systems with a best-in-class multidimensional framework. By utilizing a patented alphanumeric tagging system, FIS® creates detailed company "barcodes" that codify business models across 30+ distinct dimensions. From these granular tags, Syntax maps company revenue streams to a five-level sector hierarchy, as shown in Exhibit 3, as well as dozens of unique thematic groupings.

Exhibit 3: FIS®  Industry and Company Taxonomy Structure

While companies are often identified by their primary business, they don’t just do one thing in practice. FIS® provides a comprehensive way to better understand a company and its underlying business exposures, with a distinguishing feature being its ability to map company revenues down to one of more than 10,000 codified product lines, as illustrated below for Caterpillar.

Exhibit 4: Caterpillar Business Exposure by Sector and Product Line

Key benefits of FIS® to Syntax Direct users:

• Syntax curates and maintains all of the company classification data within Syntax Direct, which supports both the data’s high quality and its granularity.  
• It ensures consistency and control of how companies and industries are identified using our rules-based approach that is designed to remove subjectivity found in other classification systems.
• Our product line detail eliminates “conglomerate blur” associated with companies with numerous products, often in different sectors. For example, our product line data allows us to capture Amazon in both our e-commerce and cloud computing themes.

An Institutional Index Construction Engine

Syntax Direct leverages Syntax’s wealth of experience in creating institutional -caliber indices. Syntax operates a robust index development and calculation infrastructure capable of managing the entire lifecycle of a financial product, from conceptual design and backtesting to live production. This includes Index Design, Development, Production, and Distribution, as well as Post-Launch Support, as shown in the Index Lifecycle in Exhibit 5. This process is underpinned by a security master covering over 20,000 global stocks across 25 years of data.

Exhibit 5: Syntax’s Institutional Index Process

Syntax currently calculates over 800 indices that spans a wide array of investment strategies. These include global benchmarks, sector and industry, factor, thematic, sustainability, defined volatility, and custom builds. These indices are deployed in a variety of wrappers, including ETFs, Mutual Funds, UITs, and SMAs. This indexing expertise flows directly into Syntax Direct and the scalable, rules‑based investment strategies it creates.

A Scalable Technology Platform: Bridging the Gap Between Investment Advice and Technology

Technology and investment advice have become so integrated into direct indexing that they are now functionally inseparable. The work of financial advisors is evolving from periodic meetings and portfolio reviews to a more technology-based solution driven by continuously increasing levels of  customization. Syntax Direct leverages the firm’s software development expertise to deliver a practical, accessible solution that empowers advisors to deliver high-touch, personalized results at scale. This provides financial advisors with capabilities that, not long ago, were limited to institutional quant managers.

As illustrated in Exhibit 6, Syntax Direct simplifies complex financial engineering into a streamlined, three-step workflow: Configure, Review, and Deploy.

Exhibit 6: Syntax Direct Build a Custom Index In three Steps

The simplicity of the three-step deployment process belies the underlying power of the platform’s configuration levers, which offer advisors the flexibility to fine-tune each aspect of the index. Advisors can adjust fundamental parameters, such as weighting methodologies, constituent counts, and rebalancing frequencies. Beyond structural controls, the platform supports highly customized strategies—allowing you to build indices around style factors (like growth, momentum, or quality), micro and macro themes, or impact-based criteria.

Meet Saidee™: Syntax Direct’s AI Portfolio Agent

Syntax Direct bridges the gap between intent and implementation by offering advisors two distinct paths: user controlled index construction via the index builder, or AI-assisted generation through Saidee^TM. As Exhibit 7 shows below, once a prompt is provided, Saidee creates an index aligned with the advisor’s stated objectives using the same rules-based configuration options that advisors can use themselves.

Exhibit 7: Sample Saidee™ Prompt

Saidee^TM is a powerful tool. Consider its possibilities: having a client come in and, moments later, leave the room with a custom index built, backtested, and explained.

Turnkey Compliance Output

A platform is only efficient if it solves for the "last mile" documentation. Syntax Direct represents a turnkey solution by automating the most time-consuming administrative tasks:

• Compliance-Ready Rulebooks: Every custom index is accompanied by a transparent, documented rulebook that explains how the index is constructed and calculated.

• Instant Backtests: Syntax Direct calculates the historical performance and risk metrics of a new strategy immediately.

• Factsheets: The platform generates high-quality, easily digestible summary materials, which advisors can brand using their logo and colors.

The platform’s true power lies in its high-velocity delivery; Syntax Direct generates comprehensive, institutional-grade outputs in seconds, as detailed in the methodology and reporting highlights of Exhibit 8.

Exhibit 8: Syntax Direct Output

Conclusion: Scaling the Future of Wealth Management

Syntax Direct is more than a digital interface, it is a fundamental shift in how investment strategies are built and maintained. By unifying a rigorous data foundation with an automated construction engine and a scalable technology platform, Syntax Direct empowers advisors to deliver sophisticated, institutional-grade solutions without the traditional overhead.

As the platform continues to evolve through 2026, introducing automated commentary and detailed performance attribution, it ensures that growth is driven by strategy rather than headcount. Ultimately, the automation embedded in Syntax Direct frees advisors to redirect their focus towards high-impact, differentiated advice that is becoming the characteristic of the modern wealth management experience. For more information, contact sgrieco@syntaxdata.com and visit https://www.syntaxdata.com/direct

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Disclaimers

This report is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be, nor should it be construed or used as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of any offer to buy, any security or investment vehicle. Additionally, the information herein is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, legal advice, tax advice, financial advice, or investment advice. You should make an independent investigation of the matters described herein, including consulting your own advisors on the matters discussed herein. In addition, certain information contained in this report has been obtained from published and non-published sources prepared by other parties, which in certain cases have not been updated through the date hereof. While such information is believed to be reliable for the purpose used in this report, such information has not been independently verified by Syntax and Syntax does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of such information. Charts and graphs are provided for illustrative purposes only. Syntax LLC, its affiliates and their independent providers are not liable for any informational or technical errors, incompleteness, or delays, or for any actions taken in reliance on information contained herein. Syntax Direct is a platform solely for use by registered investment advisers, broker-dealers and other regulated financial entities under license with Syntax. Distribution of Syntax data and the use of Syntax indices, data, software, or technology to create financial products require a license with Syntax and/or its licensors. Investments are not FDIC insured, may lose value and have no bank guarantee.

Syntax®, FIS®, and Saidee™ are trademarks or registered trademarks of Syntax, LLC and/or its affiliates.

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