We don’t talk a lot about the price swings in investments and markets in our discussions of advisor technology and wealthtech—perhaps because these discussions are best left to the cable-TV talking heads breathlessly following every peak and trough in major financial indices.
But the ups and downs of financial markets do have some impact on financial technology and financial advisors themselves—and major stock markets’ plunges in recent days deserve some discussion.
For one thing, most financial advisors are still surviving on the antiquated assets-under-management revenue model, and with their clients’ stock holdings losing significant value, expected revenues will also decline. This means that there’s less money on hand to invest in wealthtech.
If the market takes time to recover, the technology spend from wealth management firms may also decline as these firms tighten their belts.
On the other side of the equation, falling financial markets also impacts investment in fintech in general. Fintechs, especially early-stage fintechs, depend on venture and private equity investments to keep the lights on. As investor confidence falls, technology companies may face greater challenges in raising capital.
Lower investor confidence also makes it more difficult for companies to go public via an IPO or alternative method, or to be taken private via an acquisition.
Finally, if the market rout persists, larger wealthtech companies will have less capital on hand to pursue mergers and acquisitions of their own. Expect the flow of wealthtech news to slow considerably.
But it’s not all bad news for advisor technology—wealthtech has experienced incredible growth over the past decade regardless of the overall movement of financial markets. It’s more likely that the market decline will slow the technology’s progress in overtaking wealth management, not halt it altogether.
Let’s get to some headlines.
Axxcess Platform
Axxcess Platform announces today that Colonial River Wealth Management has completed a strategic integration with the Axxcess Platform, a leading provider of wealth management solutions for high-net-worth clients and the advisors that service them. The partnership delivers value-added operational and administrative services coupled with significant enhancements to the firm’s client experience.
EarnUp
EarnUp Inc., a financial wellness fintech company, announced today its newest product, AI Advisor, the industry’s first and only always-on AI-powered financial guru that helps to automate end-to-end consumer financial wellness. From expert advice to seamless execution, AI Advisor provides financial institutions with the ultimate customer engagement tool.
Powered by sophisticated artificial intelligence, AI Advisor empowers users with hyper-personalized insights and guidance, enabling them to make informed decisions to achieve their financial goals. It does this by instantly analyzing the user’s real-time banking and credit data to answer complex financial questions with personalized, actionable answers, including tailored product recommendations. An autonomous AI chatbot solution to supercharge customer engagement, AI Advisor ensures that every user, regardless of their financial background, can benefit from expert-level advice and support and realize a stronger, more financially resilient future.
What sets AI Advisor apart is the ability to understand and interpret the context of a query and respond with an actionable solution, including product offers such as HELOCs, cards, and consolidation loans.
Fidelity
Furthering its commitment to serving wealth management firms of all sizes, Fidelity Investments today announced two new technology offerings developed specifically for smaller and mid-sized registered investment advisors (RIAs) looking to establish and grow their business. The all-in-one technology stack and the advisory bundle featuring FMAX Essentials, a new, streamlined managed account platform, each aim to reduce two common technology barriers for smaller firms: resources and cost.
Fidelity’s latest Advisor Technology Stack study found that firms with less than $250M are 1.8x less likely to embrace technology best practices than firms with $1T+ AUM. This lack of technology adoption could affect the rate of growth that small and medium sized firms experience as the study also found that wealth management firms deploying technology best practices are growing significantly faster than peers. To help small and medium size firms establish a scalable technology infrastructure, Fidelity developed an all-in-one offering that brings together key components we believe advisors need to run their business.
Fidelity collaborated with eMoney Advisor, LLC (eMoney), an expert in financial planning solutions, and Advyzon, an expert in advisor technology, to secure access to special pricing and support models for its all-in-one technology offering. Available today, this solution aims to reduce the time leaders spend on evaluating a technology stack. It includes a variety of tools that are deeply integrated to help streamline advisors’ critical workflows:
iCapital
LibreMax Capital, LLC (“LibreMax”), an asset management firm specializing in securitized products and asset-backed finance, today announced that it has entered into a partnership with iCapital1, the global fintech platform driving the world’s alternative investment marketplace for the wealth management industry, to offer wealth managers and advisors globally access to LibreMax’s investment strategy via iCapital Marketplace.
Founded in 2010 by Chief Investment Officer Greg Lippmann, LibreMax is a $10.5 billion securitized credit specialist investing across both public and private markets. LibreMax invests across a broad range of securitized products including ABS, CLOs, Commercial, and Residential Assets.
iCapital Marketplace connects wealth managers with a broad selection of alternative investments from leading asset managers – all on one platform. iCapital’s technology and distribution helps top wealth managers deliver high-quality alternative investment opportunities to their clients with efficiency and ease.
iPipeline
iPipeline®, a leading provider of digital solutions for the life insurance and wealth management industries, today announces the hire of veteran technology strategy leader, Steve Cover, as Chief Technology Officer. Cover will establish the future technical vision and roadmap for the organization’s next phase of growth, focusing on delivering innovative solutions that simplify, transform, and connect the industry while providing a market-leading level of technical quality and delivery. Cover will ensure that iPipeline’s global technological infrastructure continually delivers on its core mission to digitally transform these industries, unlocking speed, efficiency, and growth for all market participants.
Cover brings more than 30 years of knowledge and experience of leading high-performing technology teams, and developing technological solutions that both deliver on and advance business strategy. Cover has a proven track record of implementing unique technological visions, transforming software development processes with agile and efficient methodologies, and modernizing product architectures and platforms to meet industry needs in new ways. He has led the delivery of innovative and high-quality technology roadmaps to meet customer needs and achieve business goals for technology companies such as UKG, Horizon Software International, UnitedHealth Group, Microsoft, and most recently, CentralSquare Technologies, where he defined and executed the company’s technology strategy and oversaw the development of global software.
Morningstar
Morningstar Retirement, part of Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN), a leading provider of independent investment insights, today announced the Morningstar Model of U.S. Retirement Outcomes — a simulation tool that considers individual characteristics, healthcare costs, and projected longevity to assess retirement income sufficiency. Through use of the model, the Morningstar Center for Retirement & Policy Studies published new research which examines potential retirement inadequacy among American workers.
The research report, “Beyond the Retirement Crisis Headlines: Why Employer-Sponsored Plans Are the Key to Retirement Adequacy for Today’s Workers,” suggests that certain demographics may be more likely to run short of money in retirement due to variables such as their current retirement savings, levels of financial resources, existing disparities in retirement account balances, and whether they participate in a defined-contribution plan.
OneDigital
OneDigital, a leading insurance brokerage, financial services, and HR consulting firm, and Homethrive, an innovative caregiving support platform, are excited to announce a strategic partnership aimed at revolutionizing employee caregiving support. This collaboration will empower employees with comprehensive resources and personalized, on-demand guidance to manage caregiving responsibilities effectively while maintaining productivity at work.
It’s estimated that 73% of employees have caregiving responsibilities including caring for a child with special needs, an aging parent or family member with a medical need. In partnership with Homethrive, OneDigital employees and their family will have free access to Homethrive’s state-of-the-art platform, which offers a seamless blend of digital tools and human interaction to support any caregiving responsibility they may face. Homethrive’s platform includes access to experienced care guides, and a suite of digital resources designed to guide and assist caregivers in navigating their responsibilities.
The partnership between OneDigital and Homethrive exemplifies a commitment to addressing the evolving needs of the modern workforce. By offering comprehensive caregiving support, this collaboration aims to foster a more supportive and productive work environment for employees juggling caregiving responsibilities.
Pocketnest
Pocketnest, the woman-founded financial wellness platform, announces the launch of Birdie, its groundbreaking generative AI designed to transform how financial institutions engage with Millennial and Gen X communities.
Birdie represents a significant leap forward in Pocketnest’s mission to empower financial institutions with cutting-edge technology that guides digitally-native communities toward financial independence through personalized guidance.
Built on Pocketnest’s foundation of behavioral science and advanced AI, Birdie provides instant, tailored financial guidance by integrating users’ linked bank accounts, financial data, behavioral tendencies, and preferences. Users can simply type prompts like “How much should I save for retirement?” to receive customized education that aligns with their unique financial situations, personal banking and investment accounts, and goals.
PureFacts
PureFacts Financial Solutions (“PureFacts”), an award-winning SaaS provider of end-to-end revenue management solutions for the investment industry, announced today the completion of a majority investment from GrowthCurve Capital (“GrowthCurve”). PureFacts founder and CEO Robert Madej and the company’s employees will retain their interest in PureFacts.
Founded in 1997, PureFacts helps many of the world’s top wealth management, asset management and asset servicing firms manage and grow their revenues. The PureRevenue Platform enables scalable revenue management by powering the entire revenue lifecycle. User firms can calculate, collect, distribute and optimize their revenues using the PureFacts fees engine, incentive compensation application and business intelligence solutions powered by a single system of record for revenue management.
GrowthCurve Capital is a private equity firm focused on building businesses through data, analytics and machine learning, combined with a comprehensive approach to human capital. The GrowthCurve investment will propel PureFacts along its growth trajectory by supporting new product development, continued market expansion, and the development and use of leading-edge artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics for the investment industry.
RISR
RISR, the first comprehensive business owner engagement platform for financial advisors, has joined forces with Journey Strategic Wealth (“Journey”), a nationwide advisory firm with a mission to be the premier platform for advisors seeking support around organic growth. Adopting RISR’s comprehensive technology further enables advisors on the Journey platform to drive organic growth with business owners, which has been a significant priority for the firm over the past year.
Consistent with this growth focus, Journey handles all operations for its advisors, enlisting coaching on revenue generation and providing the tools necessary to serve clients deeper down the value chain. Through the firm’s partnership with RISR, advisors serving business owner clients can offer immediate and differentiated value by leveraging holistic insights into the client’s most important asset: their business. Journey advisors can now seamlessly collect business data using QuickBooks or tax documents and surface insights across valuation, growth opportunities and risk management to their clients.
Journey is setting a new standard for entrepreneurial support by offering advisors comprehensive tools to better serve their clients and safeguard the value they’ve built in their business. With over half of all private business owners in the country passing the age of 50 and many set to retire, sell or transition out of their business over the next decade, advisors have an opportunity to serve more business owner clients. Through this integration with RISR, Journey advisors gain the confidence, insights and data necessary to acquire and better guide this type of clientele.
Savvy Wealth
Savvy Wealth, a digital-first platform for financial advisors centered around modernizing human financial advice, today announced an additional $15.5 million funding round led by Canvas Ventures. This latest infusion of capital, which closes the company’s $26.5 million Series A round, will accelerate the development of its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology platform, expand its product and engineering teams, and recruit entrepreneurial advisors to its national affiliate registered investment advisor (RIA), Savvy Advisors (“Savvy”). The round also saw participation from existing and new investors, including Thrive Capital, Brewer Lane Ventures, Index Ventures, The House Fund and Alumni Ventures. Since its founding in 2021, Savvy Wealth has brought in over $33 million in venture capital backing.
In less than two years, Savvy has grown its team to 30 advisors who manage over $700 million in client assets, and is poised to cross the $1 billion in assets under management (AUM) milestone this year with its current trajectory. According to a recent Fidelity report, one in six advisors have switched firms in the past five years, with the majority seeking an independent practice. Savvy Wealth has shown it can significantly enhance efficiency for independent advisors, cutting the time spent on non-revenue-generating middle and back-office tasks by up to 90 percent. Its all-in-one, integrated technology offering includes Co-Pilot (an AI-powered CRM), digital client onboarding, a fully embedded marketing and lead generation agency, and Savvy Wealth Investment Management, a proprietary investment management solution that helps automate tax loss harvesting, rebalancing and asset allocation.
The Savvy Wealth platform is rounded out by solutions coveted by high-net-worth investors, including personalized direct indexing, 401(k) account management, financial planning, tax preparation, alternative investments, estate planning, insurance and more.
SEI
SEI® (NASDAQ:SEIC) and Canoe Intelligence (Canoe) today announced an enhanced integration that automates the transmission of private equity and hedge fund valuations, as well as private equity call and distribution data, to improve operational efficiency for family offices using the SEI Archway PlatformSM.
With global alternative assets expected to hit $23 trillion by 2027,1 family offices allocated 42% of their investment portfolios to alternative assets in 2023.2 However, as the demand for alternative assets has grown, single family offices have been challenged with manual data management workflows, resulting in inefficient data aggregation, accounting, and reporting that can be error-prone. By automating data transmission and ensuring data consistency, this integration streamlines the accessibility and integration of alternatives data to maximize operational efficiency and empower family offices to make confident decisions.
The enhanced integration introduces a new data channel that makes it easier for SEI Archway Platform users to collect, aggregate, and analyze their alternative asset data. By leveraging the connectivity of these two platforms, mutual clients are able to:
Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) announced today that Bridget Engle has been named Senior Executive Vice President (SEVP) and Head of Technology, reporting to Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf and joining the company’s Operating Committee, effective August 12, 2024.
Engle will be responsible for all technology across the Company. She brings more than 30 years of experience managing large, global technology organizations in complex financial institutions. Engle joins Wells Fargo from BNY where she served as SEVP and Chief Information Officer (CIO) from 2017 until earlier this year. Prior to her role at BNY, she served in several roles at Bank of America, including as the CIO of Consumer Banking as well as CIO of Global Banking and Markets, and in various roles at several other financial institutions earlier in her career.
The company also announced that Tracy Kerrins will serve as the Head of Consumer Technology and will lead a new Generative AI team, which will be responsible for driving the adoption of Generative AI across Wells Fargo, reporting to Engle.
Writer
Writer, the full-stack generative AI platform delivering transformative ROI for the world’s leading enterprises, today announced Palmyra-Med-70b and Palmyra-Fin-70b, two industry-leading specialized large language models (LLMs) specifically designed for the healthcare and financial services industries. Beginning today, these cutting-edge models are available as open models from NVIDIA, Baseten, and Hugging Face, as well as via the Writer Platform. They bring unparalleled domain expertise and accuracy to medical and financial generative AI applications, surpassing the performance of comparable models with single (zero-shot) attempts.
Palmyra-Fin-70b stands as a game-changer in financial generative AI applications. It is now the only financial services model offered as an NVIDIA NIM inference microservice and available from ai.nvidia.com.
Palmyra-Fin-70b shows unparalleled proficiency in financial forecasting, investment analysis, risk evaluation, fraud detection, and asset allocation strategy, and it can power these use cases with unprecedented accuracy. Leveraging a vast corpus of financial data and incorporating state-of-the-art fine tuning techniques, Palmyra-Fin possesses specialized knowledge that enables it to understand and analyze financial information with extraordinary precision. Financial institutions and businesses can harness its capabilities to gain actionable insights and make informed decisions.
