Summer is winding down, but the wealthtech news feels like it’s winding up.
2024 may go down as the year without a summer news doldrum. Perhaps it’s the hot geopolitical situation in other parts of the world, perhaps it’s the election year bustle spilling over into economy, finance and technology. Maybe it’s the physical and cultural energy that comes with a summer Olympic Games.
Or maybe it’s something in the water. Whatever it is, there’s been a lot of news to cover in advisor technology over the past eight weeks and it doesn’t seem to be letting up.
Mind you, there hasn’t been much of an earth-shattering headline to report in the wealthtech world, except, perhaps, Envestnet’s widely anticipated go-private announcement. It’s the volume that stands out.
Even in this typically slow period in early August—when the southern U.S. is already in back-to-school mode and many northerners are only now wrapping up their vacation travel—we have a good number of items this week to share with you, including news from Advisor360, Wealthbox, SMArtX, Advyzon, and iCapital.
What’s more, back-to-school season is typically when technology and finance news start to ramp up again. The fall industry conference season is only a few weeks away to inject another flurry of activity for us to cover.
And we look forward to covering all of the news—big and small—for you.
Let’s get to some headlines.
Advisor360
Advisor360°, a provider of integrated technology for enterprise wealth management firms, announced the appointment of Milind Mehere, founder and former CEO of YieldStreet, to its Board of Directors. An award-winning entrepreneur, Mehere has a track record of building large, scalable businesses and creating new product categories.
Mehere most recently served as CEO of the digital investment platform YieldStreet for nine years, growing it to a fintech unicorn with 500,000 members and over $5 billion in investments. He also co-founded Yodle, an ad technology platform for small- and medium-sized businesses, scaling it to more than $200 million in revenue and 1,400 employees, which led to its $342 million acquisition by Web.com in 2016. Mehere’s strategic vision has earned him numerous accolades, including being named a Finalist in 2023 for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year. He is also an Innovation Fellow at Columbia University and an international keynote speaker.
Mehere’s appointment comes at a time of robust growth at Advisor360°. In addition to Mike Fanning assuming the role of CEO earlier this year, the company recently brought onboard Bank of America veteran Abbe Gálvez Cordón as Senior Vice President of Strategy & Corporate Development while continuing to evolve its award-winning Digital Onboarding platform and grow its client roster.
Advyzon
Innovayte, a custody and clearing firm that supports entrepreneurial registered investment advisors (RIAs) and wealth managers, and Advyzon, a comprehensive technology platform and portfolio management solution for financial advisors and investment managers, announced the launch of their platform and model marketplace.
For Innovayte, Advyzon has created its first and only custodial back-end platform. The technology offers advisors a unique solution combining a separately managed account (SMA) and model marketplace with access to third-party asset managers – offered by Advyzon Investment Management (AIM), the turnkey asset management program under the Advyzon umbrella – all built from a unified managed account (UMA) framework.
Advyzon’s intuitive, cloud-based technology platform offers a single solution that combines portfolio management, customizable performance reporting, trading and rebalancing, client web portals, CRM, client billing, and SEC-compliant document storage, customized mobile app and portal, as well as the model marketplace and investment management from Innovayte’s UMA/SMA platform via Advyzon Investment Management.
Diversify Advisor Network
Diversify Advisor Network (“Diversify”), the advisor-founded and advisor-led wealth management firm, announced the appointments of Jordan Hammer as VP of Advisor Solutions and Trevor Lambert as Director of FinTech.
Hammer joins Diversify after an eight-year tenure at John Hancock, where he served as VP, Regional Business Consultant in the Dallas/Fort Worth region. As VP of Advisor Solutions, Hammer will partner directly with Diversify advisors to capitalize on organic growth opportunities and enhance client experiences. Hammer holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Brigham Young University, and a CEPA designation.
Lambert joins Diversify with over nine years of experience and industry knowledge gained at Orion Advisor Technology. Lambert began his career on the Data Reconciliation team before advancing to the role of Manager of Professional Services. As Director of FinTech, Lambert will collaborate with leadership and Diversify’s advisor teams to facilitate, implement, and optimize the use of technology at Diversify. Drawing on his experience at Orion, a key technology at Diversify, Lambert is expected to make an immediate and significant impact.
Elements
Elements, a financial vitals system that helps financial advisors serve clients faster, announced the release of Target Scores, the newest feature added to the Elements financial planning ecosystem. Designed to enhance the advisor-client experience, Target Scores allow advisors to establish customizable and distinct goals for each Elements score on behalf of their clients. By setting strong financial standards, advisors can facilitate positive shifts in client behavior to help their clients improve each facet of their finances.
Recognizing the challenges many face in managing their finances, Elements empowers advisors and their clients to conveniently assess and address 12 core financial variables that address each area of a client’s financial health. With the launch of Target Scores, clients gain transparency into their current financial standing and the desired benchmarks as set by their advisor within each of those key “elements”.
For each financial Element, there are default targets based on generalized best practices. Advisors are then able to tailor the goal and target ranges depending on their clients’ unique needs. Target Scores include a simple health indicator to help clients easily understand and monitor progress towards each goal. For advisors seeking greater efficiency, custom Target Score templates can be generated and assigned across groups of clients.
Flourish
Flourish, a platform that provides access to financial products that help registered investment advisors (“RIAs”) improve their clients’ financial outcomes, announced its partnership with Corebridge Financial, one of the largest providers of retirement solutions and insurance products in the United States.
Through the partnership, the American Pathway Advisory multi-year guaranteed annuity (MYGA) that Corebridge launched earlier this year will be added to the Flourish Annuities platform, the first end-to-end annuities solution built explicitly for RIAs and their clients. American Pathway Advisory allows consumers to lock in growth for three, five or seven years and is designed to help RIAs maintain a consistent allocation to guaranteed rates within their client portfolios. The advisory solution brings enhanced flexibility through innovative renewal options and no withdrawal charges, which gives consumers access to their money and makes it easier for RIAs to manage assets should needs or circumstances change.
The January 2024 launch of Flourish Annuities has generated remarkable demand from over 200 RIA firms, and stands out as an operationally streamlined solution, simplified to save time and minimize complexity. Key features include the Flourish Insurance Agency, an outsourced insurance desk (OID), which eliminates the need for advisors to hold insurance licenses; a digital application process to eliminate complicated paperwork; and a vetted marketplace of fee-based annuities from multiple carriers.
Franklin Templeton
The Arbitrum Foundation and global asset manager Franklin Templeton announced that the Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund (FOBXX) is available on Arbitrum, the leading Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain. Investors can gain exposure to FOBXX in digital wallets through the Benji Investments platform, Franklin Templeton’s proprietary blockchain-integrated recordkeeping system, and may use the Arbitrum network upon request and subject to eligibility.
The collaboration will accelerate the integration of decentralized finance within traditional financial services. By onboarding the Arbitrum network to the Benji Investments platform, Franklin Templeton will further extend the compatibility of FOBXX within the digital assets ecosystem and reach a previously untapped audience for the asset manager.
Since 2018, Franklin Templeton Digital Assets has been building blockchain-based technology solutions, running node validators, and developing a wide range of investment strategies. The firm’s dedicated digital assets research team leverages fundamental “tokenomic” analysis, insights from an embedded data science team and deep industry connections to help inform product development and investment decisions.
iCapital
Leon Capital Group (Leon, Leon Capital), a single-family office known for its long-term outperformance of institutional peers, announced its partnership with iCapital, the global fintech platform driving access to alternative investments for the wealth management industry. This collaboration marks a significant milestone for Leon, which until recently primarily utilized its balance sheet and only allowed co-investment from fellow single-family offices. Now, Leon’s fund offering will be available on iCapital Marketplace, providing wealth managers and high-net-worth individuals seamless, transparent access to innovative approaches to real estate, healthcare, credit, and other alternative investments. As a result, private investors will benefit from Leon’s enhanced return profile and broad diversification that institutions and select family offices have long enjoyed.
Currently overseeing approximately $10 billion of private assets in its family office, Leon now seeks to reach an audience of advisors, investors, and partners to share and grow its investment network. By opening its investment vehicles to third party investors, the company seeks to expand access to investments that maximize alignment of interest via an outsized General Partner (“GP”) capital commitment to each investment vehicle.
Leon’s large capital commitments to its fund offerings result in enhanced focus on generating returns and minimizes the conflicts of interest impacting downstream decision-making. Assets in Leon’s real estate portfolios, for instance, have each been evaluated, priced, and developed separately for their individual risk-return profile, eschewing any focus on capturing fees from scaled asset deployment. The result of Leon’s alignment is true diversification across individually selected assets. This disciplined approach has benefited stakeholders of Leon Capital for over 15 years, and the company is excited to now share this with a much broader investor audience through its partnership with iCapital.
InvestCloud
InvestCloud, a global wealth and asset management solutions provider, successfully launched its Client Lifecycle Management (“CLM”) platform in partnership with Rathbones Group Plc (“Rathbones”), a leading UK wealth manager. By leveraging InvestCloud’s single modular solution, Rathbones benefits from differentiated digital capabilities that will enhance the Group’s client onboarding and servicing experience.
Supporting Rathbones’ business today, as well as its upcoming integration of Investec Wealth and Investment (UK), InvestCloud provides a scalable and secure platform featuring centralised lead and prospect management, onboarding and servicing capabilities. Through this partnership, InvestCloud will enable Rathbones to support its growth ambition, improve the quality of its data and create greater operational efficiency, giving Rathbones’ teams more time to focus on client-facing activities.
PreciseFP
PreciseFP, the award-winning client engagement and data-gathering software from Docupace, announced the launch of a new peer referral program. The initiative aims to reward ambassadors from the PreciseFP user community for introducing the platform to industry colleagues, thereby broadening its reach and impact across wealth management.
The program invites anyone and everyone to refer members of their professional network as new users, sharing the benefits they have experienced firsthand. This includes energizing office operations, reducing errors, and increasing conversions from prospects to clients. In 2023, PreciseFP users saved a remarkable 33,734 hours and over $5 million in practice management costs.
PreciseFP is widely recognized in the industry for offering an award-winning client onboarding platform that includes a paperless onboarding process through customizable client engagements with e-signature capabilities. The platform brings financial advice to the digital age by eliminating the need for client paperwork, and by automating the collection of financial data – significantly enhancing advisor productivity.
Saphyre
Saphyre, using patent-approved technology to solve pre-trade activities and post-trade issues, announces that Capital Group joins the network of financial institutions using the Saphyre platform.
Saphyre’s proprietary technology handles the onboarding and maintenance of custody, broker trading, and buy-side accounts while synchronizing in real-time associated reference data between such entities. This synchronization provides a real-time golden source of data to all external permissioned parties using the Saphyre platform. Downstream, this solution eliminates issues related to failed trades, and at the same time enables real-time, T+0, collaboration between parties which is necessary to meet the upcoming T+1 requirements.
SavvyMoney
Cloud-native digital banking services provider Constellation Digital Partners (Constellation) announced its recent partnership with SavvyMoney, a leading provider of personalized financial management tools.
Through this partnership, Constellation Digital Banking platform users will have access to SavvyMoney’s powerful toolsets and guidance to help gain better insights and improve the credit standing and financial health of their members. SavvyMoney’s industry-leading credit scoring solutions and robust analytics provide real-time data for better, faster decisioning and its interactive digital tools and personalization capabilities help community FIs support the financial wellness of their customers and members and foster deeper, more meaningful relationships.
The Constellation Digital Banking platform is designed to make it easier for community financial institutions to connect to innovative fintechs like SavvyMoney. Leveraging open architecture, the platform provides credit unions with the flexibility to customize their own fintech solutions and gain more control over their technology roadmaps, streamlining the transition to digital banking and ensuring their members receive the personalized digital banking experiences that they deserve and expect.
SMArtX Advisory Solutions
SMArtX Advisory Solutions (“SMArtX”) announced the addition of 22 new strategies from four leading asset management firms to its rapidly expanding Model Marketplace. SMArtX’s cutting-edge platform now offers 1,505 strategies from over 300 distinguished asset management firms.
Joining the platform are newcomers American Drive Model Portfolios introducing actively managed ETF portfolios, and Cohen & Steers launching fixed income, and real estate strategies. Existing partners Alpha Vee Solutions and Invesco Advisers have also expanded their offerings with new strategies focusing on equity, fixed income, and tax-optimization.
Truist
Truist Financial Corporation announced that Steve Hagerman will be its new chief information officer. Hagerman will join Truist on Oct. 28, reporting to Chairman & CEO Bill Rogers. Based at Truist headquarters in Charlotte, Hagerman will lead the enterprise technology team, shaping and executing a strategic vision for the bank’s technology future, including key areas like data and analytics, AI, information security, technology transformation, and more.
Hagerman has more than 25 years of experience, primarily in the financial services industry. Most recently, he served as CIO for consumer technology, chief technology officer, and head of consumer lending technology at Wells Fargo. Previously, he held senior leadership positions at JPMorgan Chase and served in the United States Marine Corps. He is a graduate of Franklin University and the Wharton Executive Education Program.
Wealthbox
Wealthbox announced a new enterprise CRM agreement with Community Bank, N.A., a diversified financial services company based in DeWitt, NY. Community Bank focuses on four main business lines – banking, benefits administration, insurance services, and wealth management – with over $13 billion in assets within the financial services companies.
The enterprise agreement makes Wealthbox available to 65 financial professionals and staff in Community Bank’s LPL-affiliated Investment Services division including Nottingham Advisors, Nottingham Trust (a division of CBNA), Community Investment Services, OneGroup Retirement Advisors, and OneGroup Wealth Partners.
Wealthbox is particularly well-suited for banks and credit unions due to its advanced features that are tailored to the financial services industry. By centralizing client information and facilitating collaboration among team members, Wealthbox helps banks and credit unions enhance client service, improve productivity, and ultimately drive growth in their wealth management divisions. This strategic partnership between Wealthbox and Community Bank underscores the value that innovative CRM solutions bring to financial institutions seeking to optimize their operations and deliver superior client experiences.
