What a busy week!
Yes, there are plenty of wealthtech headlines coming your way below, but a lot of huge news in general dropped in the last seven days, not the least of which was the transition of power between presidential administrations.
Advisors have never been thought to be the most progressive lot, though my personal experience says that the financial industry is a lot more politically and ideologically diverse than it is credited for by the public. Yet, it should come to little surprise to anyone that, post-election, economic optimism is on the rise among advisors.
According to a recent Security Benefit survey, advisors are not only marginally more economically optimistic, they also believe at an 80% that the all-important Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will be extended before the end of this year. Their measure of economic optimism among advisors rose from a 53 in Q3 to a 56 after the election.
What’s weighing on economic optimism? Inflation, according to Security Benefit. Perhaps because of the policies of the incoming administration, advisors’ inflation concerns are on the rise as well.
Amid the heaps of pardons and executive orders of the past couple of days, let’s not forget the aftermath of the Los Angeles-area wildfires. Now, look, wildfires are common and natural to the timbered country of the American west. We humans take substantial risk of being impacted by wildfire when we live in these locations. P&C insurers know what they’re doing when they raise premiums and look to pull out of certain states.
Leaving aside the tragic human costs of wildfires, as a technology writer, it’s here that I should add that there is an infrastructure risk to concentrating so much of our technology development within vulnerable geographic areas like Silicon Valley—which is not, of course, in the L.A. area, but is still within a region of California prone to not just wildfires, but also floods and, of course, earthquakes with the San Andreas and Monte Vista faults running through or near its communities.
California is probably not the place we want our businesses storing their data!
Let’s get to those headlines.
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401GO
401GO, the next-generation retirement plan provider for employers, advisors and individuals, announced the appointment of Stan Smith as Chief Growth Officer (CGO). His 26-year career includes leadership positions at Fidelity Investments, SaveDaily, and DriveWealth. As CGO, Smith will work to meet 401GO’s aggressive market share growth projections while helping the company extend frictionless retirement planning to its several thousand clients and partners.
In addition to leading a sales team, Smith will help 401GO diversify its revenue streams through the development of additional products tailored to several underserved markets.
Having recently raised a successful $12 million series A venture fundraising round, 401GO is in the midst of a strong and pronounced growth phase, experiencing multiple periods of year-over-year revenue gains exceeding 150%.
Advisor360
Advisor360°, a leading provider of integrated technology for enterprise wealth management firms, has acquired Parrot AI, a Boston-based generative AI technology firm. The acquisition builds on Advisor360°’s existing AI capabilities with the addition of Parrot AI’s premium software—enabling advisors to record, transcribe, and summarize meetings to produce shareable notes and files that securely and seamlessly integrate with all major meeting and conferencing platforms.
Along with integrating premium generative AI capabilities into its configurable platform, Advisor360° also plans to introduce Parrot AI’s software as a stand-alone version specifically for advisors.
Advisor360° acquired Parrot AI’s core technology and intellectual property as part of the transaction and welcomed 12 full-time employees, including Parrot AI CEO and Co-founder Paul Morville. The team has deep experience across software and product development, large-scale SaaS, information security and privacy for enterprise companies.
Broadridge
To better streamline multi-asset post-trade processing and operational reporting, Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE: BR), a global Fintech leader, today announced it added an GenAI-powered advanced analytics feature to its platform. A key component of the Broadridge’s OpsGPT ® application, this new GenAI-powered functionality enables users to generate insights and visualizations directly from their trade data using natural language, eliminating the need for data migration.
This new feature, part of Broadridge’s OpsGPT, leverages generative AI and natural language interactions to supply instant reports, data visualization and quickly generated summaries in an intuitive and user-friendly interface. A key benefit of the new feature is its ability to reduce reliance on manual reporting, replacing it with an AI-driven analytics tool that supports multiple languages, including English and Japanese, with plans for Chinese capability in the near future.
The advanced analytics feature is instrumental to international firms navigating evolving regulatory and market dynamics. By streamlining reporting tasks, the tool enables current and prospective post-trade platform users across EMEA and APAC to better manage their operations and maintain compliance, while addressing the challenges posed by faster settlement cycles and compressed margins.
CapIntel
CapIntel, a pioneer in financial technology solutions, announced today the successful rollout of new services with Canada Life, a leading insurance, wealth management and benefits provider. The relationship reinforces CapIntel’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology and seamless system-to-system integrations, with an interactive comparison and proposal tool that allows clients to better understand their investment portfolio.
CapIntel has been working with Quadrus since 2021 and has recently started working with Investment Planning Counsel (IPC), which Canada Life acquired in November 2023. After a smooth rollout in fall 2024, IPC has experienced an adoption rate of 75% among its advisor network. Since 2021, the companies have used CapIntel tools to generate more than 107,000 client proposals.
Fin.Link
Fin.Link, the leading platform for financial professionals to connect, grow, and succeed, is thrilled to announce the addition of Zander Heinen as President. In this role, Heinen will enhance user experience and engagement across the Fin.Link community and its partnerships.
Heinen brings a wealth of strategic leadership and platform development expertise, positioning Fin.Link to deliver even greater value to its members. As the company evolves, he will focus on creating meaningful connections, improving user engagement, and ensuring the platform remains a premier destination for financial professionals for M&A, recruiting, scaling, and networking.
FP Alpha
FP Alpha, the innovative AI-powered advanced planning platform, is excited to announce the launch of FP Alpha TAX, the platform’s popular tax offering, that is now available as a standalone product. This unbundling aligns with FP Alpha’s mission to provide financial advisors with cutting-edge tools to enhance their value proposition and offer advanced planning services (such as tax and estate planning services) to their entire client base. Similar to their Estate Planning offering, this change allows advisors to tailor their FP Alpha experience to their specific needs, focusing solely on tax planning, if desired. As an added incentive for advisors to do this, FP Alpha TAX is priced lower than other competitive tax planning solutions.
FP Alpha TAX is designed to simplify tax planning, increase efficiency, and deliver value to clients through actionable insights. With the ability to project, compare, and optimize tax strategies, FP Alpha TAX transforms the often complex and time-consuming process of tax planning into a streamlined, impactful advisory service.
iCapital
iCapital1, the global fintech platform driving the world’s alternative investment marketplace for the wealth and asset management industries, and Parallel Markets, a leader in reusable financial identity, providing a scalable, end-to-end solution for investor onboarding, verification and monitoring, today announced they have entered a definitive agreement under which iCapital is expected to acquire Parallel Markets.
Integrating Parallel Markets’ advanced technology with iCapital’s onboarding and compliance monitoring processes will provide fund managers and wealth advisors with a more seamless user journey within the iCapital ecosystem while ensuring compliance in a constantly evolving regulatory landscape. The new iCapital Investor Passport will offer a turnkey onboarding solution for all fund investors, both institutional and wealth management, creating a universal reusable investor identity that can be used across iCapital Marketplace and the suite of offerings on iCapital’s platform for global alternative asset managers. This digital identity will function as a data locker for storing, managing, and sharing personal information needed for fund subscription and compliance verification in private markets. It will make it easier for investors from around the world to manage and share their KYB (Know Your Business) / KYC (Know Your Customer) data while helping fund managers scale more efficiently and ensure consistency in compliance, including AML (Anti-Money Laundering).
It is estimated that $2.5 billion is spent globally on identity verification services and compliance across the financial services industry2. With universal passport identity technology, fund managers have the potential to realize significant reductions in onboarding time and overhead costs. Investors typically upload sensitive information repeatedly for different opportunities, and iCapital, fund managers, and issuers bear the burden of reviewing and verifying this information.
Portfolio Aid
Portfolio Aid Inc. (“PortfolioAid”) and FutureVault Inc. (“FutureVault”) announce today a partnership to deliver unparalleled value to wealth management enterprises, wealth advisors, and clients, signaling a new era for the WealthTech and Wealth Management industries.
With heightened regulatory demands and evolving client-advisor expectations, this partnership leverages PortfolioAid’s award-winning wealth compliance technology and FutureVault’s award-winning Client Life Management Vault™ and Digital Vault construct to set a new benchmark for digital document management, compliance transparency and an enhanced client value proposition, ultimately delivering massive value to the wealth management industry and advisor-client experience.
Together, FutureVault and PortfolioAid have partnered to support leading wealth management enterprises in redefining the standards for compliance, security, efficiency, trust and delivering unparalleled value to investors and clients. This partnership offers wealth advisors an opportunity to engage with clients and their next generation while at the same time affording their clients the ability to securely interact with their network of trusted professionals (estate attorneys, accountants, insurance brokers).
Private Advisor Group
Private Advisor Group, one of the largest and fastest-growing independent wealth management firms in the country*, has announced that First Trust Advisors L.P. (First Trust) has joined its investment management platform WealthSuite, becoming the latest investment strategist available to its community of over 800 financial advisors.
WealthSuite is a comprehensive investment management platform designed to streamline portfolio management and enhance client experiences. Advisors on the platform can now access curated investment strategies from First Trust alongside offerings from BlackRock, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Adviser, Invesco, Orion Advisor Solutions, and WisdomTree. Each strategist was selected after a rigorous due diligence process encompassing an evaluation of investment management capabilities, technology integration, and distribution support.
First Trust brings a suite of innovative exchange-traded fund (ETF) models to WealthSuite. These models, designed to meet a variety of investment objectives, can be utilized by themselves or integrated with other strategic models to deliver a more diverse investment approach for clients.
TIFIN
Cetera Financial Group (Cetera), the premier financial advisor Wealth Hub, has partnered with TIFIN AG Inc. (TIFIN AG) to provide Cetera advisors and financial institutions access to artificial intelligence (AI) tools designed to identify new growth opportunities and deliver actionable insights. The collaboration with TIFIN AG, a leading provider of AI-powered solutions that aim to drive organic growth, expands Cetera’s share-of-wallet tools and resources for Cetera advisors and financial institutions.
Through the partnership with TIFIN AG, Cetera advisors and financial institutions will have personalized AI-driven insights and support tailored to their specific growth goals, as well as the ability to unlock new opportunities for client portfolios.
TIFIN AG’s technology drives retention and organic growth for advisors and financial institutions by identifying growth opportunities, flagging at-risk clients and improving client conversion. These insights help financial professionals retain their existing client base and expand their share of investable assets, allowing them to better serve their clients, while driving net new assets.
Wealth Access
Wealth Access, the leading customer data insights platform that unifies and enriches data to power hyper-personalized experiences for financial institutions, today announced an integration with Q2’s Digital Banking Platform, via the Q2 Partner Accelerator Program. Q2 Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: QTWO) is a leading provider of digital transformation solutions for financial services.
Wealth Access’ integration with the Q2 Digital Banking Platform allows financial institutions to access their data through a single entry point. Through intelligent data unification across multiple systems, the platform generates dynamic balance sheets, allowing service teams to break down silos, view each client’s complete financial history, and collaborate across business lines. Wealth Access delivers deep insights that fuel hyper-personalized banking interactions, strengthen customer loyalty, and drive increased revenue.
The Q2 Partner Accelerator Program, through the Q2 Innovation Studio, allows in-demand financial services companies who are leveraging the Q2 Software Development Kit (SDK) to pre-integrate their technology to the Q2 Digital Banking Platform. This enables financial institutions to work with these partners, purchase their solutions and rapidly deploy their standardized integrations to their customers.
