Welcome back to another (ANOTHER) busy edition of Advisor Tech Talk, where we give you a rundown of all of the week’s big wealthtech headlines, as well as a general discussion of what’s going on in the world surrounding financial advisor technology.
The big news this week, of course, is the election, and we’re going to get a last word in, as you’re probably reading this as votes are being cast or counted, or shortly after a result has been announced. We wanted to offer a few scenarios for how the election might impact wealthtech.
Okay, let me level with our readers here: I can’t help myself, I’m a political science guy and politics impacts everything. While I’ll remain non-partisan, let me make this clear to you: no matter what the election’s outcome happens to be, wealthtech is likely to win in the long term.
In fact, let’s get the worst-case but least likely scenario out of the way first: there isn’t a clear winner. I don’t think an ambiguous result is out of the realm of possibility, since polls are, on balance, a dead heat here less than 24 hours before election day. That would be bad all around, and not just for wealthtech.
The next-worst scenario is that that there is a clear winner in the presidential race with one or both chambers of Congress going to the same party. While we could argue back and forth about how one candidate introduces a lot more uncertainty and volatility into the world, while another might introduce more regulation and taxes, I believe that there are too many variables at play to argue who would be better or worse for wealthtech and the economy in general—if the presidential candidate has any bearing at all.
For wealthtech, the economy and financial markets, I believe the best-case and most likely scenario is that we end up with divided government where no one party or person can effectively implement policy change without compromise. Any change imposed by lawmaking would be incremental and easily reversed. Economies thrive on certainty, even if the status quo is far from optimal.
I guess that’s why, while I’m still entertained by the back-and-forth between the candidates and their surrogates in the media, I’m no longer caught up in the sturm and drang surrounding presidential elections. In the U.S., government still isn’t where most important things are accomplished—and that’s definitely by design.
Let’s get you to your advisor technology headlines.
Amplify Platform
Amplify Platform (“Amplify”), a unified all-in-one wealth management platform for financial services, welcomes its newest client Kingswood Wealth Advisors (“Kingswood”), a network of independent wealth management firms that oversees more than $2 billion in client assets.
This partnership will provide Kingswood with automated digital onboarding across multiple custodians, as well as streamlined reporting and dynamic trading capabilities across asset classes within a unified managed account (UMA) architecture.
Amplify goes beyond the turnkey asset management platform (TAMP) and registered investment advisor (RIA) operating system models, offering an all-in-one platform that powers essential functions for RIAs, broker-dealers and TAMPs. The platform aggregates firmwide data into one system, integrates smoothly with third-party services and offers a clear view of operations. By simplifying technology and reducing reliance on multiple apps, Amplify helps firms like Kingswood scale effectively, enabling deeper functionality that supports growth and better client outcomes.
Binance
Binance, the global blockchain ecosystem trusted by over 230 million users worldwide, today announced Binance Wealth, the first crypto exchange technological solution for wealth managers. Binance Wealth allows wealth managers to oversee the onboarding of their clients and make investment recommendations, allowing their clients to receive strong support during onboarding and thereafter while retaining full discretionary control, akin to traditional wealth management.
Wealth managers must first apply to access Binance Wealth. After being successfully onboarded, they can then help support their clients’ onboarding journey by submitting the necessary KYC/KYB documentation for verification. Onboarded clients can then manage their own investments directly as well as receive recommendations from their wealth managers for their review and approval.
Binance Wealth is the first crypto exchange solution enabling wealth managers to address their high-net-worth clients’ interest for exposure to this new asset class. Binance is meeting demand from the private wealth segment preferring to diversify their portfolios with the support of their trusted wealth managers.
Broadridge Financial Solutions
Global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) has completed its previously announced acquisition of Kyndryl’s Securities Industry Services (SIS) platform, which provides wealth management and capital markets software solutions to Canadian financial services firms.
The acquisition further emphasizes Broadridge’s commitment to providing leading solutions to the Canadian financial services market that enable simplification and innovation and will enable Broadridge to bring accelerated innovation and product investments to the Canadian wealth market.
CAIA
Today, CAIA Association is excited to announce the launch of the Private Equity Microcredential available on the UniFi by CAIA™ platform. The program is designed to equip the private wealth management industry with the core knowledge needed to understand the complexities of private equity.
For years, CAIA has been shining a light on one of the growing trends that has defined the past decade: a steady shift from public to private markets as companies seek to raise capital. By some estimates, private equity investments, including the venture, growth, and buyout categories, now represent the largest segment of the alternative investments industry, with few signs of slowing on the horizon.
With collaboration from industry leaders, Cliffwater, FS Investments, and Meketa Capital, this program introduces the entire spectrum of the private equity industry including venture capital, growth equity, and buyouts with an emphasis on portfolio implementation.
Candidly
Candidly, the category leader in student debt and savings solutions, today announced the launch of Onward, a revolutionary consumer debt optimization solution designed to help financial institutions empower their end-customers to better manage their financial futures. Initially available as an API-only offering, with a full front-end experience coming in early 2025, Onward is poised to reshape how American workers allocate their hard-earned money across debt, savings, and investing.
As household debt reaches unprecedented levels and rising cost of living continues to burden American workers, many find it difficult to move beyond debt and save for the future. Onward addresses this pervasive challenge for most households by offering real-time, personalized decision support, which can be coupled with actionability, enabling users to realize savings on their consumer debt and then devote those savings into interest-bearing deposits.
Onward is available to workplace financial solution providers like 401(k) and 403(b) recordkeepers, retirement plan advisors, and others seeking to enhance their financial wellness offering while increasing deposits and assets under management. Onward assists users in optimizing their liabilities and freeing up cash flow tied up in debt payments and then intelligently redirecting those dollars across the suite of financial services and benefits offering that is the user’s next best action. The Onward API is highly configurable and can plug-and-play into a company’s existing product suite, such as HSA’s, FSA’s, brokerage accounts, IRA and retirement accounts.
Clearwater Analytics
Clearwater Analytics (NYSE: CWAN), a leading worldwide provider of SaaS-based investment management, accounting, reporting, and analytics solutions, today announced a new integration with Snowflake, the AI Data Cloud company, to radically simplify how institutional asset managers and asset owners of all sizes utilize their data. This collaboration will integrate Clearwater data, including Prism, its investment data management solution, with Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, streamlining the process of gaining insights and making decisions more swiftly and effectively.
This integration will deliver:
- Data Collaboration: Enable clients to directly build applications on rich Clearwater datasets using data share via the Snowflake Marketplace.
- Seamless Integration: Incorporate Clearwater’s accurate, timely and comprehensive data to power the entire end-to-end investment management process.
- Improved Efficiency: Direct access to data without making a data copy.
- Advanced AI Tools: Use of the Clearwater Platform and Snowflake Cortex AI for natural language queries.
- Streamlined Reporting: Timely regulatory, client, and investment reporting based on consistent and governed data sets.
Compound Planning
Compound Planning, a leading digital family office committed to reimagining wealth management for next generation advisors, today announced five veteran financial advisors have joined its team.
The additions mark what has been a successful year for the firm, as Compound Planning has added 26 total advisors in 2024, surpassing the 10 advisors who joined the firm in 2023. The additions also bring the firm’s total AUM to $2.5 billion, reflecting a 25% increase since June.
With the latest additions, Compound Planning reinforces that its personalized service, coupled with a modern advisory technology stack, has made the firm an attractive destination for both talented advisors and high-net-worth clients.
Envestnet
Axos Clearing, a subsidiary of Axos Financial Inc. (NYSE: AX) and a leading clearing firm that combines innovative technology with personalized service, today announced a strategic partnership with Envestnet, a provider of integrated technology, data intelligence, and wealth solutions. The partnership will integrate Envestnet’s managed account solutions into Axos Clearing’s Axos Complete portal, empowering hybrid broker-dealers (BDs) and registered investment advisers (RIAs) to enhance client service and streamline operations.
Envestnet’s managed account technology will enable Axos Clearing clients to streamline portfolio management, automate routine tasks like rebalancing and reporting, and offer a wider range of investment options, helping advisors serve clients more effectively and scale their practices.
As the industry continues to move toward fee-based models and investors increasingly favor advisory relationships, Axos Clearing and Envestnet’s partnership ensures that more financial professionals will have access to an industry leading wealth management platform, helping them manage client relationships more effectively and efficiently.
Envestnet
Envestnet, a leading provider of integrated technology, data intelligence and wealth solutions—and also one of the largest direct index separately managed account providers—has launched an Options Strategy Quantitative Portfolio (QP) to address the market volatility, tax risk, and liquidity risk associated with concentrated stock positions, and to help advisors and their clients unwind these positions.
Investors may find themselves with concentrated stock positions for a number of reasons, such as an inheritance, a large stock position granted by a company, shares from a business sale, or simply loyalty to a long-term holding. This can expose them to loss if the company underperforms and its stock drops. For investors holding a concentrated position in less liquid or closely held stocks, sometimes selling the position without moving the market or finding buyers can be difficult when trying to exit the position. Furthermore, selling a concentrated position in a stock that has seen strong appreciation may trigger significant taxes. Consequently, many investors will delay or avoid selling to defer taxes leading to a prolonged concentrated position, further exacerbating the risk.
Developed by Envestnet’s quantitative asset management unit, QRG Capital Management, Inc. (QRG), the new strategy offers investors three options-based hedging solutions that can help generate income from and/or mitigate the risk of a concentrated position while spreading out taxable gains over a multi-year time span.
FreeWill
FreeWill, a social-good enterprise at the nexus of philanthropy and estate planning, announced today the launch of Estately. Estately is a software solution that allows financial advisors to offer full-service estate planning as a component of their comprehensive wealth management practices, enabling them to centrally guide each step of the estate planning process.
The estimated $84 trillion2 Great Wealth Transfer poses significant opportunities and challenges for financial advisors. Adeptly navigating this transfer of wealth is critical for retaining and winning future business for any financial advisor. Clients increasingly seek estate planning3 support today, and roughly three-quarters4 of future heirs prioritize it, signaling the importance of estate planning in establishing long-lasting, intergenerational client relationships.
Unfortunately, financial advisors struggle with numerous pain points when attempting to help their clients with estate planning. Estately leverages the technology and scale of FreeWill, which has already simplified and democratized the estate planning process for more than one million Americans, including more than 15,000 clients of financial advisors in the past six months alone.
FusionIQ
FusionIQ, a leader in the delivery of cloud-based wealth management solutions, today announced the launch of FIQ Wallet, the industry’s first digital wealth management platform designed specifically for digital wallet companies. This groundbreaking solution empowers wallet providers to expand their service offerings beyond payments by integrating sophisticated wealth management capabilities, such as goals-based digital advice and self-directed investing.
Wallet providers are increasingly essential to industries where companies use digital wallets to pay 1099 employees. In 2023, digital wallets dominated point-of-sale transactions, accounting for 30% of global transactions, and led online purchases with 50% of transactions. The total value of digital wallet transactions reached $9 trillion, while the global mobile payment market was valued at $72.5 billion. In the U.S., 65% of adults used a digital wallet at least once a month, with 53% using it more frequently than traditional payment methods.
With FIQ Wallet, users can now invest their earnings directly from their payment wallets without the need to transfer funds to traditional bank accounts, reducing fees and simplifying the process. By keeping money within the wallet and allowing it to grow through investments, FIQ Wallet increases the “stickiness” of digital wallets, leading to higher user engagement.
iCapital
iCapital1, the global fintech platform driving the world’s alternative investment marketplace for the wealth and asset management industries, in collaboration with GeoWealth and BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), today announced its technology is now powering a custom platform experience for registered investment advisors (RIAs), which enables firms using GeoWealth to more easily include private assets within unified managed accounts (UMAs). The experience is available for eligible advisors accessing custom model portfolios provided by BlackRock while leveraging GeoWealth’s investment implementation platform.
With the partnership, GeoWealth, a proprietary technology and turnkey asset management platform (TAMP) serving the RIA channel, will provide advisors with intuitive workflows, efficient reporting tools, and comprehensive investment management capabilities throughout the investment’s lifecycle, while iCapital’s Multi-Investment Workflow Tool streamlines the entire alternative assets investing experience.
The integration streamlines access to BlackRock custom models that are intended to incorporate private markets, direct indexing and fixed income SMAs – in addition to traditionally offered ETFs and mutual funds – in a single account.
Northern Trust Asset Management
Northern Trust Asset Management (NTAM), a leading global investment management firm with $1.3 trillion in assets under management as of September 30, 2024, announced today that Robert Eaton has joined Northern Trust Asset Management as a Senior Relationship Manager within NTAM’s Wealth Client Group.
Eaton brings more than 20 years’ experience in asset management, exchange traded funds and wealth-tech, serving in a variety of roles including leading relationship management, product strategy, portfolio analytics and wealth-tech business development teams across wealth channels and vehicle types.
Eaton’s prior experience includes serving as Head of Strategic Relationships at BondBloxx Investment Management ETFs; a variety of business development roles at BlackRock including Head of Americas Business Development for Aladdin Wealth Tech and Head of National Accounts for BlackRock and iShares; and as Head of US Retail Marketing at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers.
Pontera
Pontera™, the fintech company helping retirement savers receive 401(k) account management from their financial advisor, has announced the availability of Envestnet’s BillFin solution through an integration to make 401(k) account billing more efficient and seamless for financial advisors.
BillFin is a flexible and easy-to-use billing solution that has modernized how advisors and planners bill their clients by enabling advisors to calculate fees, create invoices, and calculate payouts for fee splitting. The platform offers flexible billing setup, standardized billing templates, an intuitive user experience and more. With this integration, advisors who use Pontera to manage their clients’ 401(k) accounts can offer more efficient billing.
More than 74% of Americans would like professional help managing their workplace retirement accounts, according to the Pontera 401(k) Literacy Survey, which polled more than 2,000 U.S. plan participants, half of whom also work with a financial advisor. The study found advised participants are more knowledgeable, more confident about their future in retirement and contribute more to their accounts.
Private Advisor Group
Private Advisor Group, one of the largest and fastest-growing independent wealth management firms in the country*, has introduced Greenhouse, its new all-in-one technology platform exclusively available to Private Advisor Group affiliated independent advisors and their teams. Every aspect of the technology is designed to save advisors time from single-sign on to key applications and custodian partners, streamlined record reporting, and an online community for sharing real-time ideas, crowd-sourcing answers to questions and staying connected.
A unique feature of Greenhouse includes its exclusive online community forum where advisors, their staff and the Private Advisor Group team can correspond in real-time. Dedicated threads exist for crucial client conversations, next-gen and even a lifestyle corner for sharing hobbies and fun. With Private Advisor Group’s advisor community spread across the country, this new technology keeps teams connected in a meaningful way beyond conferences, meetings or webinars.
Greenhouse’s new reporting features streamline tasks, saving advisors valuable time—anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes—on routine branch record reporting. The platform also offers transparent account and client management, efficient compliance and regulatory monitoring, access to educational resources and events, and productivity tools.
PureFacts Financial Solutions
PureFacts Financial Solutions (“PureFacts”), an award-winning provider of end-to-end revenue management solutions for the wealth and asset management industry, announces the appointment of Pete Hess as President. Hess’ hiring follows the completion of a strategic investment from GrowthCurve Capital (“GrowthCurve”), a private equity firm focused on building businesses through data, analytics and machine learning, combined with a comprehensive approach to human capital.
Most recently Chief Revenue Officer for the Americas at InvestCloud, a global financial services platform provider, Hess brings an impressive track record in the industry. Hess spent 23 years at Advent, which was acquired by SS&C Technologies in 2015, including three years serving as president and three as CEO. Hess also served as an operating partner at leading U.S. private equity firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe, which focuses on the technology and healthcare sectors.
In his new role, Hess will report to Madej and is tasked with leveraging PureFacts’ position as the leading revenue management solution for global wealth and asset management firms. Hess will assume day-to-day leadership of PureFacts operations with Madej focusing his time on engaging with key clients, partners and prospects.
RISR
RISR, the first comprehensive business owner engagement platform for financial advisors, today announced its partnership with Citadel Wealth Management (“Citadel”), a division of Citadel Credit Union. The collaboration aims to provide Citadel’s advisors with a more robust toolkit for supporting business owners, enabling them to offer more personalized advice and a comprehensive view of their financial situations.
Citadel Credit Union, a member-owned, not-for-profit financial institution serving over 260,000 members, has a rich history of empowering businesses and individuals throughout the Greater Philadelphia area. By adopting RISR’s platform, Citadel builds on its 85-year legacy of delivering financial solutions that build financial strength and foster community growth. This partnership reaffirms Citadel’s commitment to equipping its advisors with the resources they need to better serve business owners who help to foster economic development in the region.
Recent studies have revealed the complex factors influencing how business owners plan for the future—ranging from succession planning and strategic growth to navigating shifting regulatory landscapes and managing family dynamics. By integrating RISR’s platform, Citadel’s advisors can offer business owners a comprehensive set of tools that offer clarity in order to help guide decisions for their financial futures. Further, they will gain the ability to deliver real-time insights into business valuation, financial health, growth opportunities and potential risks.
SUMA Wealth
SUMA Wealth, the fastest growing wealth technology company devoted to increasing prosperity for young U.S. Latinos and their families kicked off a collaboration with California State University Northridge’s (CSUN) Global Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Equity Innovation Hub to enhance access to bilingual, technology-enabled educational programming designed for Latino students. Apple, which helped to launch the Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub, open to all CSUN students, is supporting this work through its Racial Equity and Justice Initiative.
Together, SUMA Wealth and CSUN’s Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub aim to address critical gaps in financial literacy, career development, and access to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) educational pathways to promote opportunities for social mobility for Latino students, particularly at HSIs. The collaboration aims to deliver several educational programs, such as the Dinero 101 Bootcamp, a financial literacy course covering critical topics such as budgeting, debt reduction, savings, credit management, investing and retirement. In addition, the collaboration intends to host STEAM Pathways workshops which integrate financial education with STEAM career opportunities and equip students with the necessary skills to succeed in both financial and technical fields.
By combining SUMA Wealth’s expertise in delivering engaging and bilingual financial programs with CSUN’s Global HSI Equity Innovation Hub’s leadership in educational innovation and equity — and with support from Apple — the initiative is set to impact the growing Latino workforce as a key force for a thriving U.S. economy.
TradingBlock
TradingBlock, a provider of custom trading technology solutions for institutions, individuals and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), today announced that traders on their platform can now deploy customized order-routing algorithms to meet their specific needs. The capability is available to asset managers and professional and active traders who want to align order-routing algorithms to their unique strategies.
Order-routing algorithms, which are software-based instructions used to determine how to carry out buy or sell orders for securities, help traders by enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of executing trades including options strategies in dynamic market environments.
In addition to allowing traders to design order management protocols that closely align with their strategy, the trader-designed algorithms are kept confidential and can be used in conjunction with built-in order routing redundancy through multiple executing brokers. This redundancy ensures trades are fast and reliable even if certain components of the order routing process fail. Minimizing the risk of delays is crucial in the fast-paced world of options trading.
