Last year saw a convergence of elements in the wealth management space that, individually, would disrupt how investment managers and wealthtech providers operate. Together, the growing presence of artificial intelligence, the democratization of alternative investments and the elevated expectations of clients seeking an integrated, personalized and fully digital experience have forced solutions providers to innovate quickly, invest thoughtfully, position themselves to see around corners and anticipate the next iteration of digitally-enabled investment platforms.
In an effort to better gauge where the industry is today and where it’s headed over the next 12 months, Digital Wealth News asked three wealthtech innovators about the significant milestones their firms achieved in personalized portfolio management in 2023 and how collaboration between established wealthtech providers and leading wealth management firms will likely shape the future of personalized portfolio management platforms in 2024 and beyond:
- Robert Battista, CFA®, Senior Vice President of Advisory Solutions and Managing Director, Vestmark, a leading provider of portfolio management/trading solutions and outsourced services for financial institutions and their advisors
- Mark Healy, Chief Executive Officer, FusionIQ, a leader in the delivery of cloud-based wealth management solutions
- James Rockwood, Founder and CEO, CapIntel, a leading financial technology company that improves fund analysis, proposal generation, and day-to-day workflow efficiency for financial services wholesalers and investment advisors
Here’s what they had to say.
Robert Battista, CFA®, Senior Vice President of Advisory Solutions and Managing Director at Vestmark – In 2023, Vestmark achieved significant milestones, with the launch of VAST™ in April standing out as a major accomplishment. VAST is an innovative outsourced portfolio management service focused on personalized investing and tax management at scale. It acts as an enabler, providing firms with opportunities to personalize portfolios with a client’s unique investment preferences and tax circumstances. The platform emphasizes a client-centric approach, making portfolio management simple and intuitive for an enhanced client experience.
Its innovative capabilities include daily optimization across a multi-asset portfolio, extending beyond traditional indexes and ETFs. We believe this is a pivotal achievement, allowing for comprehensive portfolio management, identifying tax harvesting opportunities as they occur, and providing potential time savings for advisors. VAST was designed for Independent advisors but can be flexibly deployed to enterprise wealth and asset management clients, to enable distinctive portfolio solutions based on their own product design principles.
This year, we expect to continue collaborating with leading wealth management firms to enable each to create their own unique version of personalized solutions, leveraging the flexibility and strength of our platform. One notable item on the roadmap for 2024 is optimizing tax benefits at the household level, going beyond the account level. This aligns with the industry trend where advisors increasingly view the entire household for personalized portfolio management. Our plans reflect our commitment to continuous innovation, client collaboration and staying at the forefront of advancements.
Mark Healy, Chief Executive Officer at FusionIQ – In 2023, FusionIQ achieved a breakthrough with the launch of the FusionIQ One wealth management platform. This cloud-native platform brought together FusionIQ’s four wealthtech modules – Hybrid Digital Advice, Self-Directed Investing, Digital Model Marketplace, and finTAMP – into a seamlessly integrated platform with the end-to-end workflows, including onboarding, portfolio management, reporting and process automations financial institutions and advisory firms need to scale for profitable organic growth.
The multi-asset, multi-custodian and multilingual FusionIQ One platform is delivering results across the wealth management industry with seven major partner announcements over the past two quarters with banks, fintechs, asset managers, RIAs, and independent broker-dealers. These announcements recognize the flexibility of FusionIQ One’s cloud-native structure to deliver game-changing innovation, powering a broad range of new initiatives that are creating value beyond conventional approaches in wealth management.
The industry impact has been swift and significant, with more than 10,000 advisors and over 115,000 investors now on FusionIQ One. In all, we have surpassed 1 million completed transactions. In 2024, we anticipate a rapid acceleration of these milestones as we announce new client partnerships in both the United States and in Canada, where we launched an expansion this past fall.
Crucial to our growth strategy in 2024 is our unwavering commitment to simplifying the path for financial advisors and institutions to become digital wealth leaders. Whether it’s our industry-leading client onboarding, white label platform implementation in as little as six weeks or peace-of-mind cybersecurity with SOC 2 Compliance, we’re ready.
James Rockwood, Founder and CEO at CapIntel – In 2023, CapIntel achieved significant milestones in enhancing financial advice tools and improving the digital advisor-client experience. We introduced a self-serve CSV uploader on our platform for portfolio/data files, enabling easier data management. The addition of ESG metrics demonstrated CapIntel’s commitment to values-based investing. The advisor workflow underwent digitization and streamlining, featuring OMNI digital presentations, a flexible proposal builder, embedded compliance guardrails and questionnaires, facilitating adherence to SEC and CFR regulatory requirements for advisors.
Enterprise-level solutions like LINK and co-branded proposals were introduced, allowing wholesalers, asset managers and wealth enterprises to maintain consistency in output branding and information sharing. AI was leveraged with 17 QA models monitoring instrument discrepancies and eliminating bad data.
Looking ahead to 2024, CapIntel aims to strengthen partnerships and enhance its platform further. Collaborations in financial planning, mortgage financing, financial strategy and data richness are being finalized. The focus is on the biggest trends of wealth diversification, digitizing user experiences and building client trust to meet evolving demographics and demands that correspond with the Great Wealth Transfer.
Planned features include an upgraded “income stream” for visualizing recurring deposits and withdrawals, expanded financial product offerings with enhanced visuals/calculations and the launch of OMNI 2.0 with a focus on digital and holistic wealth management – providing a comprehensive and streamlined experience for financial advisors and their clients. These upcoming developments demonstrate CapIntel’s commitment to innovation, collaboration and meeting the evolving needs of the wealth management industry.
Innovation will remain the name of the game throughout 2024
The long-term success of firms and the financial advisors they serve is dependent on their ability to pivot quickly in order to deliver the efficiencies, accuracy, personalization and secure investment platforms investors want. Innovation will continue to drive competition and will separate the winners from the runners up. Investing in the technologies and infrastructure that build scale and enable solutions that resonate with users and help them deliver on their value propositions will be central to capturing wallet share and delivering on goals.
