
Summary
Ignites, the Financial Times publication that covers the asset management industry, reported on our new partnership with ExchangiFi, the marketplace built for Section 351 exchange ETFs.
The article, "Defiance Analytics, ExchangiFi Partner to Push 351 ETFs" by Brian Ponte, ran on June 29, 2026.
The collaboration pairs ExchangiFi's proprietary lists and data for Section 351 exchanges with Odyssey, our AI-driven advisor attribution engine, to reach the advisors most likely to back a fund during its launch window. As Ignites notes, the combined platform aggregates eight to nine digital touchpoints, including web traffic, PDF engagement, and email opens, to score advisor intent and route high-intent advisors to a matching pre-launch ETF.
Under Section 351 of the Internal Revenue Code, investors can transfer appreciated securities into a newly formed ETF in exchange for fund shares without triggering an immediate taxable event. The strategy has grown quickly among wealth managers looking to move concentrated or "locked-up" positions into ETF wrappers. The catch is timing. Issuers typically face a compressed three-to-four-month open window between an effective SEC registration and the fund's first day of trading, and once live trading begins, the tax-advantaged contribution window closes for good.


That short runway is the problem the partnership is built to solve.
“A 351 exchange launch is typically just a few months and fund sponsors need a highly targeted solution to find the right advisors”
ExchangiFi founder and CEO Matt Bucklin said in the release.
When a boutique issuer launches a 351 exchange ETF, our outreach educates advisors on how the conversion works as a tax shield for wealthy clients, then shows them how the mechanism lets them capture unmanaged or "held-away" concentrated stock that clients previously refused to touch because of the tax cost. As our founder and CEO Jacob Ingram explained to Ignites, when the engine surfaces a high-intent advisor, it cross-references that advisor's specific stock holdings to recommend a matching pre-launch ETF.
Want to see how Odyssey scores advisor intent and times your outreach to the launch window?