The New Blueprint: How Tax-Smart Innovation is Reshaping Investing

ST. LOUIS, MO – August 26, 2026 – In the ever-evolving landscape of global finance, true innovation is not measured by complexity or novelty, but by its tangible impact on improving lives. It’s a principle we often explore in this column: how do strategic changes deliver real, lasting value? This week, that question finds a compelling answer in the work of Longview Research Partners, a St. Louis investment firm that, along with its Chief Investment Officer Matt Zenz, has been named a finalist for the prestigious 2026 ThinkAdvisor Luminaries Awards.

This recognition, which celebrates firms and individuals driving meaningful progress in the financial advisory industry, is more than a simple accolade. It signals a broader shift towards smarter, more efficient financial engineering that prioritizes the investor’s end result. Longview’s nominations—for Best Product or Service Innovation and CIO of the Year—are rooted in a series of strategic moves that challenge long-held industry conventions, particularly in how investment products are created and managed for tax efficiency.

Redefining the Launch with a Tax-Smart Blueprint

At the heart of Longview's firm-level nomination is the groundbreaking launch of its Longview Advantage ETF (Ticker: EBI). The firm didn't just introduce another product into a crowded market; it pioneered a method that established a new blueprint for the industry. By utilizing a Section 351 exchange, Longview enabled the tax-free conversion of existing, highly appreciated portfolios into its new ETF structure. This allowed EBI to launch with a staggering $440 million in assets under management, an industry-leading figure for such a transaction at the time.

For the uninitiated, a Section 351 exchange is a provision in the U.S. tax code that allows assets to be transferred into a corporation in exchange for stock without triggering an immediate taxable event. Think of it like moving a valuable art collection from a private holding into a new, state-of-the-art public gallery—without being forced to sell the art first and pay taxes on its appreciated value. For investors holding securities for years, this is a monumental advantage. It solves a critical problem: the tax friction that often paralyzes investors, preventing them from moving into more modern, efficient, or suitable strategies because of the steep capital gains tax bill they would face.

Longview’s successful execution on this scale has not gone unnoticed. “What they did was create a seamless, tax-efficient on-ramp for a significant pool of assets,” noted one industry analyst. “It’s a win for the investor, who avoids a tax hit, and a win for the firm, which achieves scale from day one. It’s the kind of structural innovation that forces competitors to rethink their own processes.” This move directly enhances investor outcomes, providing a pathway to better portfolio alignment without the punitive cost of transition.

Beyond the Wrapper: A Focus on Evidence and Outcomes

While the structural brilliance of the EBI launch is noteworthy, the firm’s philosophy runs deeper. The nomination of Matt Zenz as CIO of the Year highlights the intellectual engine driving the firm's product design. Longview operates on a principle of “evidence-based investing,” grounding its strategies in academic research and empirical data rather than market noise or speculative forecasting.

As Zenz himself stated, “Innovation for its own sake isn’t the goal. We start with a real investor problem and ask whether there is a better way to solve it.” This problem-first approach is evident in the firm’s flagship products. With EBI, the challenge was not only transitioning assets tax-efficiently but also rethinking portfolio design itself. The ETF is grounded in factor-based investing, a strategy that systematically targets characteristics like value, quality, and momentum that have historically been shown to drive long-term returns.

This same ethos underpins the Longview Advantage Fixed Income ETF (Ticker: LVIG), a rules-based fund designed specifically to improve after-tax outcomes. For many investors, particularly those in higher tax brackets, the income from traditional bonds is heavily taxed, significantly eroding their real return. LVIG addresses this head-on by employing a systematic approach to security selection and management with tax efficiency as a primary goal. In a world where every basis point counts, minimizing tax drag is a powerful, yet often overlooked, source of value.

“We think there are still plenty of accepted industry practices worth questioning, and that’s what makes the work ahead so exciting,” Zenz added. This sentiment captures a restless dissatisfaction with the status quo, a key ingredient for any true innovator.

A Culture of Questioning for Investor Gain

The dual nominations from ThinkAdvisor serve as powerful external validation for a firm that has intentionally focused on excellence over sheer size. As co-founder and partner Matt Hall articulated, “We built Longview around a simple idea: the investment industry can keep getting better. Better products, better structures, better tax outcomes and ultimately better results for investors.”

This mission positions the firm as a quiet disruptor in an industry often resistant to change. By combining sophisticated, evidence-based portfolio construction with elegantly simple structural solutions, Longview is making advanced strategies more accessible and effective for a broader audience. Their work demonstrates that the most profound improvements often come not from chasing the next hot trend, but from methodically deconstructing and rebuilding the foundational elements of wealth management.

Zenz’s individual recognition as a CIO of the Year finalist is particularly telling. It honors the leadership required to challenge convention and maintain rigorous discipline in a field rife with distraction. His work on both EBI and LVIG reflects a holistic view of investor success, where portfolio design, product structure, tax management, and investor behavior are all seen as interconnected parts of a single machine. By focusing on how these elements work together, Longview is engineering a better financial engine for its clients, proving that the most valuable strategies are those that bridge the gap between complex theory and practical, real-world success.