Constructing a portfolio "personalised to an individual's financial needs" over time is a relatively new service concept, as companies try to differentiate their services and compete for the management of all an individual's wealth. Most say they do it, few actually do. For the most part, the more sophisticated management of the relationship between the size and timing of financial demands on a portfolio and the structure of the portfolio over time has been the preserve of pension fund management. Even here you could not apply pension fund management techniques, "as is", to personal financial needs. At the individual level, the personalisation of portfolio structure to financial needs has historically been restricted to short time periods (how much do you need to spend this year and/or next year) and simple requirements (I need so many thousand dollars a year of income) because of the complex nature of structuring portfolios to meet financial needs over time. Without computers and the necessary software, the literally thousands of calculations needed to construct a portfolio to meet both short and long term financial needs are impossible to perform.
Traditionally, most portfolios were structured to provide either a simple yield (so much income a year) or a simple return requirement. Any planning for financial needs was limited to a short term horizon of between 1 and 3 years.  This limited the ability to structure portfolios to meet longer term needs and manage risks to the ability of assets to meet these needs over time.
Even at a relatively simple level, the complexity of running truly personalised and personally managed portfolios became unprofitable for a large number of private client firms. Today most asset management expertise focuses primarily on the more lucrative institutional business and mutual fund industry and the very high net worth individual. Even at the very high net worth individual, the actual planning of the allocation between financial demands and assets over time is fairly simple. The industry was still left with the problem of how to deliver asset management expertise to the private investor given that it was inefficient to have portfolios personally managed by those with asset management expertise and that there was a scarcity of such expertise. In order to deliver asset management expertise to the private investor the industry has, in the main, developed simple software systems that bypass the problem of personalising portfolios to personal financial needs over time. The problem with these systems is that they do not relate the structure, planning or management of the assets to the actual size and timing of the client’s financial needs. They also separate the asset management expertise from the management of the portfolio and have removed responsibility from the portfolio management decision. The portfolio problem remains, how to deliver asset management expertise efficiently and productively to meet the personal financial needs of the client over time. Most asset managers still focus on the management of risk and return at a point in time, whereas investors have financial needs both at a point in time and over time. There is to date no universally accepted methodology for constructing, planning and managing portfolios to manage assets and financial needs over time. Yet, there is a fundamental rationale and natural structure in which the complex relationship between financial needs over time and the management of assets can be integrated, simply and effectively. This is TAMRIS's Vision. Please see the Newsletters, News and Technical section for more information on the Portfolio Problem and frameworks that manage the relationship between financial needs and financial assets over time. | 
