Owings Mill, MD Office

W&S Brokerage Services, Inc. is a dually-registered broker-dealer and SEC-registered investment adviser affiliated with Western & Southern Financial Group. It offers the W&S Wealth Solutions wrap fee asset-allocation program—built from 25 model portfolios invested in affiliated and unaffiliated mutual funds, ETFs and money market funds—and also provides brokerage distribution and insurance-agent services to individuals, trusts, retirement plans and other entities.

The firm uses a model-driven, discretionary allocation process administered with an affiliated sub-adviser, Fort Washington Investment Advisors, that maps clients to one of five risk profiles and five investment objectives (including Socially Conscious, Tax Aware and EnFocus). Portfolios are monitored at least quarterly and rebalanced to target bands (±2.5% generally, ±5% for Tax Aware), and the program includes specific tax-aware practices such as using ETFs to bridge accounts funded late in the year and a client-directed tax-loss harvesting process in November–December.

W&SBS’s structure combines uncommon features for an investment manager: it both sponsors a wrap-fee program and operates in a broker-dealer capacity while its advisors also hold insurance licenses and sell affiliated Touchstone mutual funds, reflecting its ownership by an insurance group. The firm’s use of affiliated sub-advisers and proprietary funds, its compensation and referral arrangements between advisory and brokerage roles, and its operation through an extensive branch network distinguish its business model from many peers.