In the US as a frontier market for financial services, Direct Indexing has become indispensable to advisors. Now it is coming to Europe.
Did you know that in the US around 76% of IFAs are already using direct indexing?
74% say direct indexing has become indispensable for serving high-net-worth clients. As a result, all major advisor networks have adapted direct indexing into their offering.
Source: London Stock Exchange Group plc (LSEG), "Financial advisors view direct indexing as “essential” to remain competitive in wealth market" published on Oct. 7th, 2025 on their website Here
In Europe, structural hurdles have prevented this business until now. Realist is changing what is possible in financial advisory with a solution purpose-built and localized for Germany.
Flexible DPM workflows that fit your working style. Support for passive index trackers, active overlays, and fully custom strategies.
Sampling, optimizing, rebalancing, reconstituting, tax-loss harvesting, gains-harvesting, smart reinvestments, and smart withdrawals.
Broad coverage enabling true personalization, tracking precision, and low minimums.
Ability to deeply personalize portfolios on the individual account level.
Sophisticated tax optimizations, localized for private and corporate German tax payers.
All-in pricing often below traditional custody and execution deals.
The Situation: Barbara has been receiving share packages for years and has accumulated a considerable holding of MSFT shares she cannot or does not want to sell. She wants to invest her savings long-term and broadly diversified, but does not want to increase concentration risk in Microsoft or the software industry.
The Problem: Her advisor has had a hard time picking funds and ETFs to work around the sector restriction. Her liquid assets of EUR 2m are not high enough to support the costs of a private fund mandate or traditional SMA.
The Solution: With direct indexing, her advisor can exclude Microsoft from the desired strategy, avoid or underweight technology, and do so at no extra cost versus common index trackers.
The Situation: Christian has no confidence in the US market or the US dollar. He wants to remain broadly diversified, but with a focus on euro-denominated assets and low US dependence.
The Solution: His advisor can define a custom SMA or use a global tracker with regional tilts underweight US and overweight EU. This keeps the strategy low-cost, rules-based, and adaptable if his view changes.
The Situation: Thomas has been investing in ETFs (SPY, MSCI World), but he is afraid that an AI bubble will hurt him. In 2026 he wants to reduce hyperscaler concentration risk.
The Solution: His advisor shifts concentrated ETF exposure into direct indexed accounts, sets underweights or exclusions for hyperscalers, and enables automated tax-loss harvesting at single-asset level before rolling more ETF positions into DI.
The Situation: Her portfolio stands at EUR 200,000. Her investment income exceeds tax-free allowances every year. The excess returns are taxed at ~28%, reducing Regine's ability to compound gains long term.
The Solution: Her advisor configures granular position-level loss harvesting so she pays less tax across rebalancing, reconstitution, partial withdrawals, and reallocations. More capital stays invested for longer. Compounding effects benefit Regine's long term investment results.
The Situation: Elias does not consistently use his full tax-free allowance, so tax-free income is forfeited every year.
The Solution: Realist direct indexing helps his advisor systematically maximize annual tax allowances whenever possible, reducing long-term tax drag and improving real returns.
Realist is a Berlin-based company. The founding team has close to 100 years of combined industry experience in both banking and investment management.
We will begin operations after we have achieved status as a regulated Financial Portfolio Manager by German authorities BaFin and Bundesbank.
Realist was built to serve demanding professional customers. Critical services such as cash management and securities custody are outsourced to banks with strong quality and reputation standards.
Jump-start your journey with us using our Advisor Portal, a web-based application that runs directly in your browser.
If you have your own software suite, tap into our institutional API for seamless integration with your existing user interface.
