This week’s Advisor Tech Talk has a ton of wealthtech news, including a huge announcement from Morningstar, but first we’d like to talk about financial advisors and the wealth management industry as a whole.
Let’s start today with a little spit-balling from the market analysts over at Technavio, where they’re predicting that the global wealth management market size will grow by $460.1 billion from 2025 to 2029 at an 8.5% compound annual growth rate. The summary of the report describes an industry being radically altered over time by technology:
“Big data solutions and AI applications are transforming the industry, with the Asia Pacific market, rapid urbanization, and cross border trade driving demand. Cyber security technology, transparent pricing tactics, and investor education are essential considerations. IoT devices, cloud-based solutions, and digital channels are changing the way financial assets, derivatives, and investor education are delivered.”
Elsewhere, Hightower announced Larry Restieri as its new CEO, succeeding wealth management stalwart Bob Oros. Cresset Partners, the private investment firm operating as part of the Cresset multi-family office, has rebranded as Peakline Partners. CI Financial’s shareholders approved a purchase and take-private plan from Mudabala Capital.
Wilmington Trust elevated Dave DiLuigit to head of U.S. markets and its senior leadership team. Florida-based Global Wealth Management promoted Ivan Minkov to CEO as it announced that it has cleared $1 billion in assets. Penn Mutual’s 1847Financial added Brandon Mann as a managing principal.
Choreo added Shelley Smith as chief human resources officer, and Gresham Partners raised Irene Zhang to the role of investment director. Veris Wealth Partners named Jane Swan as chief advisory officer and Roraj Pradhananga as CIO. Integrated Partners elevated Matt Ackerman to chief brand officer, and SignatureFD named Peter Nesvold to its board.
Regional banks and wealth managers WesBanco and Premier Financial announced that their planned merger has cleared regulatory hurdles, while Oklahoma-based Stolper Asset Management and DCH Financial Services announced intentions to merge. Emigrant Partners took a stake in Connecticut-based Principle Wealth Partners.
New M&A activity and AUM additions were also announced by the likes of Cetera, Merit Financial Advisors, Osaic, Bluespring, Tocqueville Capital
Capital Group issued its 2025 capital market assumptions, pulling back on its expectations for U.S. equity performance over the next 20 years, while raising projections for non-U.S. markets (especially outside of Europe) and bonds. Their reasoning seems to chiefly revolve around the past two years of outsized returns for U.S. equities and an assumption that returns and relative valuations between somewhat arbitrarily drawn asset classes will revert back towards some kind of mean. Keep those grains of salt handy.
We also have more data on advisors and digital assets that thankfully goes above and beyond the surveys that tell us little more than what proportion of advisors are allocating to crypto and how much they’re allocating.
CoinShares sponsored a poll of 250 advisors finding that advisors have major roadblocks to adopting crypto, including concerns about reputational risk, inappropriate recommendations, volatility and a lack of reliable, unbiased information—suggesting that existing attempts to educate and encourage advisors to adopt crypto have fallen well short of the mark.
In a bit of good news for the crypto universe, though, CoinShares also found that 85% advisors felt a positive shift in industry sentiment towards digital asset adoption following the 2024 U.S. elections.
So, yeah, a lot was cooking in wealth management—including at WealthManagement.com, among the best, if not the best, spot news website for wealth management itself, where a revamped website was rolled out.
Let’s get to those wealthtech headlines.
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Advyzon
Advyzon, a comprehensive technology platform and portfolio management solution for financial advisors and investment managers, today announced a partnership with the Correspondent Clearing division of StoneX Financial Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of StoneX Group Inc. (“StoneX”; NASDAQ: SNEX). StoneX is an institutional-grade financial services firm that provides global market access, clearing and execution, trading platforms, and more, serving more than 54,000 commercial, institutional, and global payments clients and over 400,000 retail accounts from more than 80 offices across five continents.
StoneX’s Correspondent Clearing division, which provides comprehensive custody and clearing solutions for broker-dealers, investment advisers, and foreign financial institutions, is partnering with Advyzon Enterprise Solutions to bring Advyzon’s full, all-in-one wealthtech platform to StoneX’s introducing broker-dealers and financial advisors. The comprehensive solution, which will be configured to StoneX’s specifications, will include all of Advyzon’s capabilities, including portfolio management, customizable performance reporting, trading and rebalancing, web portals, mobile apps, CRM, billing, and secure document storage, with the option to add on services from Advyzon Investment Management (AIM), which provides investment solutions and access to a robust model marketplace called Nucleus.
This partnership announcement coincides with the one year anniversary of the launch of Advyzon Enterprise. Goes joined the Advyzon team in February 2024, launching the new business unit to expand Advyzon’s presence in aggregators, independent broker-dealers, regional broker-dealers, regional banks, insurance broker-dealers, and other enterprise firms.
BetaNXT
BetaNXT, a leading provider of wealth management technology solutions with near real-time data capabilities and an enhanced advisor experience, announces that its groundbreaking DataXChange platform is now fully operational and broadly available after a successful pilot with early adopter clients. Launching three months ahead of schedule, after having fully onboarded a significant number of leading wealth management firms, DataXChange, Powered by Snowflake, is ready to help forward-thinking wealth enterprises accelerate their data modernization journeys, innovation efforts, and overall growth.
DataXChange, which began pilot testing in September 2024, brings internal and external inputs—BetaNXT data, clients’ proprietary data, partner data, and third-party data—together in one data management ecosystem to deliver a flexible, customized, and connected experience that optimizes what data can do for wealth enterprises and their clients and partners. Going forward, all BetaNXT innovations and updates will be built on and available through the DataXChange platform, and all BetaNXT partnerships with third parties will be fully integrated with DataXChange as well.
Over the next several months, BetaNXT will introduce the first wave of new products and services built on DataXChange to further streamline and optimize the data experience for wealth enterprises and their clients.
Datalign Advisory
Datalign Advisory (“Datalign”), an AI platform matching consumers with leading financial advisors, today announced Link Ventures invested $5 million in Datalign, bringing their total investment in Datalign to $9 million on a post-money valuation of $75 million. The capital enables Datalign to further accelerate the development of innovative AI and ML capabilities that promise to transform how financial advisors serve their clients. The investment follows a year of exceptional 300% growth, with Datalign referring nearly $40 billion in assets to Registered Investment Advisor (“RIA”) firms at the end of 2024, compared to $14.8 billion at the end of 2023.
Link Ventures’ investment in Datalign marks a significant milestone in both companies’ trajectories. Link Ventures has consistently demonstrated an ability to identify and scale category-defining, transformative companies, as evidenced by early investments in CarGurus, EverQuote and DataSage (acquired by Vignette). Link Ventures has emerged as a leading force in AI investing, with its investments in Mercor and Liquid AI becoming two of their respective industry’s top five AI unicorns in the past year. Link sees similar unicorn potential in Datalign’s approach to reimagining the wealth management space and rapid path to profitability.
Capitalizing on Link Ventures’ deep expertise in building market-defining companies, Datalign aims to aggressively scale its team of AI experts and has plans to release several AI-focused products in 2025 as the company continues to invest in industry-changing technology that redefines how people receive financial services.
Hexure
Hexure, a leading provider of sales and regulatory automation solutions for the life and annuity industry, announced Axonic Insurance Services (“AIS”) has implemented FireLight e-application to launch its new annuity product and expand its reach in the insurance market. As a result, AIS’s partners will have quick access to submit annuity applications, supporting the distribution of its Waypoint Multi-Year Guaranteed Annuity (MYGA).
AIS, a new entrant in the U.S. individual insurance market, chose FireLight to deliver a digital and accessible annuity sales process to its distribution partners, to effectively deliver annuity products to U.S.-based consumers. With FireLight’s established distribution network and large financial professional base already familiar with the platform, AIS saw an opportunity to accelerate market entry while offering a fast, intuitive e-application experience. Additionally, FireLight’s multi-line of business flexibility and platform scalability supports AIS’s long-term growth as it expands its product portfolio.
Integrity Marketing Group
Integrity Marketing Group, LLC (“Integrity”), a leading distributor of life and health insurance, and provider of wealth management and retirement planning solutions, today announced it has partnered with Hawkins Insurance, an independent marketing organization based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and led by Wylie Hawkins. Financial details of the partnership were not disclosed.
Hawkins Insurance provides life insurance and annuity products to families nationwide through a dynamic and hard-working team. Driven by a shared commitment to treat clients like family, agents strive to ensure every interaction leaves consumers better prepared for the future, with greater peace of mind. Hawkins Insurance also maintains an active role within the community, regularly serving with the Salvation Army and other local charitable organizations.
Hawkins Insurance can maximize opportunities for expanded service and growth that come by leveraging Integrity’s best-in-class solutions. The Integrity platform includes a full suite of technology, support and resources such as LeadCENTER, a leads delivery system providing actionable, real-time leads segmented by demographic. It also includes LifeCENTER, an instant quoting and enrollment platform that seamlessly integrates with Ask Integrity™, a proprietary AI-powered and voice-activated customer relationship management technology. In addition, Hawkins Insurance will benefit from insightful data and analytics, thoughtful leadership guidance and groundbreaking product development available only to Integrity partners.
Morningstar
Morningstar, Inc. (Nasdaq: MORN) and SS&C Technologies, Inc. today announced an agreement that will make SS&C’s Black Diamond® Wealth Platform the first wealth platform to integrate with the newly launched Direct Advisory Suite from Morningstar. The alliance pairs rich investment data and research, portfolio construction and holdings-based analysis, and client engagement capabilities from Direct Advisory Suite with award-winning technology for portfolio accounting, client communications, compliance, trading and rebalancing, data aggregation, and performance reporting in Black Diamond.
Direct Advisory Suite, the latest application built on the Direct Platform from Morningstar, combines extensive research, investment planning, and reporting capabilities with a sleek, intuitive interface. Designed to streamline workflows and enhance productivity, Direct Advisory Suite is the next phase of Advisor Workstation, used by more than 175,000 advisors. The suite offers extensive research tools to compare investment opportunities, advanced portfolio analytics with customizable charting and comparison tools, and a user experience that includes AI-powered assistance to support confident client engagement. Advisors from the approximately 2,700 wealth management firms on the Black Diamond Wealth Platform will have the option to include direct access to these capabilities in the platform experience.
Alongside this news, Morningstar plans to retire Morningstar Office. The company has worked closely with Black Diamond to design a smooth transition with a highly customized migration process, saving users time and resources. Advisors who choose to transition to Black Diamond will continue to have access to the data and research they value from Morningstar.
Potomac
Potomac, an Investment Strategist, TAMP, and FinTech provider is pleased to announce it has passed a key milestone by crossing the $2 billion threshold. This comes as the business has made a significant decision in its planned software rollout.
Potomac’s growth has been supercharged by the continuing integration of their tactical investment strategies among Broker Dealers and TAMPs, most notably their addition to platforms such as LPL MWP, Cambridge CAAP, and GeoWealth.
The news comes in concert with the decision to give away its Proposal and Risk Analysis software, Guardrails. After its soft release last year, Potomac will soon release Guardrails to all its over 1,100 financial advisors free of charge.
Ramp
Apex Fintech Solutions Inc. (“Apex”), an innovation launchpad for the global investment ecosystem, is excited to collaborate with leading financial operations platform, Ramp, on a new solution that helps businesses earn more on their operating cash. The solution, which is called the Ramp Investment Account, is part of Ramp’s new Treasury offering and is designed to give businesses a simple way to invest their extra cash in high-yield money market funds.
Ramp’s extensive platform already helps businesses manage their spending across corporate cards, expenses, bill payments, travel, procurement, and more. Now, by working with Apex as their brokerage firm, Ramp allows businesses to invest excess cash in a yield-forward Apex investment account from directly within the Ramp platform.
To start, customers will be able to invest in the Invesco Premier U.S. Government Money portfolio, a fund that invests in short-term, high-credit-quality money market instruments. The service is designed for simplification of use, so businesses can move their extra cash into an investment account with just a few clicks.
Rise Growth Partners
Rise Growth Partners (‘Rise’), the wealth management industry’s first synergistic financial partner for growth-oriented registered investment advisors (RIAs), today announced the launch of a new weekly market recap series in partnership with Wealthion titled ‘Rise Up’. Wealthion is one of YouTube’s fastest-growing financial education channels, reaching over 310,000 subscribers. The series offers valuable insights and expert guidance to investors, providing in-depth analysis of key market events, why they matter for their portfolios and financial plan and what they should consider for the coming week.
Hosted by Joe Duran, CFA, managing partner of Rise and fellow managing partner Terri Kallsen, CFP®, the series will feature guest experts from one of its partner firms each week and, unlike other shows that focus on specific asset classes, this series offers a broader perspective on how market events impact overall portfolio and financial planning strategies. Airing every Saturday, each episode offers planning tips and actionable advice for investors, covering everything from everyday strategies to preparing for specific challenges—such as how to safeguard against disasters like the California wildfires. Wealthion will connect its viewers with an advisor at a Rise partner firm should they be seeking additional support.
Investors are always on the lookout for valuable educational content, especially in light of the recent presidential inauguration and the ongoing global and economic shifts. Rise is dedicated to delivering consistent, high-quality resources that empower, educate and support everyday investors. By providing expert insights and practical tools, Rise is helping them navigate and thrive in an ever-evolving financial landscape.
SMArtX Advisory Solutions
SMArtX Advisory Solutions (“SMArtX”), a leading innovator in managed accounts technology, has announced the addition of 22 new strategies from four leading asset management firms to its Manager Marketplace. SMArtX’s continuously growing platform now offers 1,544 strategies from 323 distinguished asset management firms.
Newcomers, Ancorato and NewEdge Investment Solutions each added strategies composed of structured notes. Fidelity Institutional and Northern Trust Investments also expanded their current offerings to respectively include target allocation ETF strategies and tax-sensitive equity strategies.
Smarsh
Smarsh, the global leader in communications data and intelligence, today announced the appointment of David Brolsma as Chief Financial Officer. Brolsma will have an expanded leadership role at Smarsh and oversee global finance, accounting, corporate development, integrations, and internal operations. He will leverage his expertise in IPOs, M&A, international regulatory compliance, revenue efficiency, and operations to help guide the company through its next stage of growth.
Brolsma’s appointment comes on the heels of recognition from Gartner as a leader in the Digital Communications Governance and Archiving Solutions Magic Quadrant and Smarsh’s 17th consecutive appearance on the Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies list. With a strong communications compliance foundation and a cloud-native, AI-enabled platform, Smarsh is entering its next growth phase. This comes at a time when Smarsh customers in highly regulated industries, including 90% of the top global institutions, face rapid technological advancement and complex global regulatory requirements. In this challenging landscape, the Smarsh Platform empowers organizations to stay ahead by leveraging communications data to surface risk and critical business insights at scale.
Brolsma has over 20 years of experience with both high-growth technology companies like WP Engine and Rackspace and established publicly traded multinationals, including Valero Energy and EY, leading international finance, revenue, and governance roles based in Europe and the U.S. Most recently, David served as CFO & SVP of WP Engine, Inc., a large-scale hosting service owned by private equity firm Silver Lake, where he led multiple technology acquisitions. Before WP Engine, Brolsma was Vice President & General Manager at Rackspace, Inc., the open cloud company, where he spearheaded the company’s successful IPO, as well as its global expansion strategy. Brolsma holds an MS in Accounting from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Snappy Kraken
Snappy Kraken, the martech innovator powering simpler, smarter advisor marketing, today announced two platform enhancements designed to deliver AI-driven campaign automation and insights, streamline marketing activity and accelerate growth for both enterprises and individual advisors. Built for mid-market and enterprise firms, including registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers and independent marketing organizations (IMOs), the Enterprise Hub provides control over and visibility into their advisors’ marketing activities, leveraging AI-powered insights and analytics to optimize campaign management across large organizations. The refreshed Campaigns App, targeted toward individual advisors, streamlines campaign selection and creation while providing improved data analytics and reporting on campaign performance and contact activity.
Following the release of Snappy Kraken Enterprise, a comprehensive marketing technology solution specifically designed for enterprises, the new Enterprise Hub offers large financial services organizations complete flexibility, control and robust data analytics over their advisors’ marketing activities. It streamlines marketing operations, compliance and reporting to drive scalable growth across large firms.
With the release of the Enterprise Hub and the all-new Campaigns App, Snappy Kraken is further equipping enterprises and advisors with technology that streamlines and scales marketing operations; provides in-depth, AI-driven data analytics; and accelerates firm growth.
Socure
Socure, the leading provider of artificial intelligence (AI) for digital identity verification, compliance and fraud prevention, today announced the general availability of its new RiskOS platform. RiskOS builds on Socure’s strategic acquisition of Effectiv by integrating its sophisticated orchestration and decisioning engine with Socure’s market-leading identity verification and fraud prevention solutions powered by its industry-leading identity graph.
As fraud continues to cost businesses hundreds of billions each year, fragmented strategies and isolated point solutions are no longer enough to combat increasingly sophisticated fraud tactics and evolving regulatory pressures. RiskOS transforms risk decisioning—delivering the industry’s most powerful platform, processing tens of thousands of real-time computations per second and launching with over 50 pre-integrated third-party data solutions. Streamlining risk, fraud, and compliance operations through its no-code interface, making rule changes, adding new third party solutions to a workflow or changing decisioning logic can be done in just minutes vs weeks or months.
Identity certainty is at the heart of every RiskOS decision, and by leveraging Socure’s proprietary consortium made up of more than 4 billion known outcomes from over 2,800 customers across more than 40 industries, Socure’s AI benefits from extensive reinforcement learning. It has a 96.4% identity recurrence rate, meaning the majority of identities have been seen and previously verified within the network. With 314 million recurring identities, Socure’s best-in-class entity resolution and proprietary data provide a holistic view of risk, including verified devices, emails, phone numbers, transaction history, and behavioral analytics. Each customer’s identity is mapped to a unique SocureID, enabling proactive alerts on identity changes, fraud risks, and sanction exposure over time. RiskOS represents a fundamental shift in how enterprises can quickly decision off of any Socure product, any dataset, at any point in the customer journey—with the highest degree of certainty in the industry, and without writing a single line of code.
TIFIN
TIFIN AMP Inc. (“TIFIN AMP”), an AI-powered distribution intelligence platform, is excited to announce a strategic relationship with Ares Wealth Management Solutions (“AWMS”), the global private wealth platform of Ares Management Corporation (NYSE: ARES) (“Ares”). Through this relationship, TIFIN will provide AWMS an AI-powered solution designed to enhance the productivity of AWMS’ distribution teams and support accelerated growth across the U.S. advisor-sold channel by delivering targeted solutions and helping align sales and marketing efforts with the most impactful opportunities.
This partnership highlights the growing role of AI in reshaping how asset managers engage with advisors, enhance productivity and enable more personalized client experiences. Together, TIFIN AMP and Ares are focused on delivering smarter, more efficient distribution strategies to meet the evolving needs of the wealth management industry.
Wealth.com
Wealth.com, the industry’s leading end-to-end estate planning platform, today announces the addition of Kathy Wunderli to its legal team as Head of Private Wealth. Wunderli joins the team with more than 20 years of experience in private wealth law, specializing in estate planning, probate, trust administration, and tax matters. Her distinguished career has made her a trusted advisor to entertainment industry professionals, high-net-worth families, individuals, closely-held business owners, and nonprofits.
Most recently, Wunderli was a partner in the Private Wealth Group at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, based in Los Angeles, where she advised clients on a range of complex legal issues, including premarital and post-marital agreements, cross-border estate planning, and the administration of trusts and estates.
Wunderli has received noteworthy recognition for her legal work on behalf of her clients and contributions to the legal community. She was named to Variety’s 2023 Legal Impact Report and earned a spot on the Hollywood Reporter’s 2022 list of Power Lawyers: Troubleshooters. Additionally, she was recognized as one of Los Angeles Times’ Inspirational Award nominees in 2024. Outside of her legal practice, Wunderli is deeply committed to advocacy and mentorship. She serves on the Board of the California Women’s Law Center, co-founded CHAI (Community Hope Action Initiative), a grassroots organization dedicated to uplifting and inspiring individuals to take bold action to improve their communities and the world. During her time at Willkie, she led mentoring initiatives within Willkie’s West Coast offices to foster an inclusive workplace culture. Additionally, Wunderli has made significant contributions to her community, having founded Redondo’s “Battle of the Books,” a reading program enjoyed by hundreds of children each year.
Webull
Webull, a leading digital investment platform, today announced that it has partnered with Kalshi, the first CFTC-regulated exchange with prediction markets. The partnership will offer users the ability to trade binary event contracts through the Webull platform.
Prediction markets are one of the fastest growing asset classes in the US today. Kalshi has recently secured its ability to launch financial brokers on the platform. To ensure investors have access to best-in-class tools, Webull has relentlessly driven innovation over recent years, continually enhancing its platform to meet shifting market demands – as seen with the increase in short-dated options volume.
This partnership will provide Webull users with a unique, CFTC-regulated product, allowing them to be more precise with risk management around intraday market movements by utilizing a cash settled short-term contract.
Zeplyn
Zeplyn, the AI assistant for financial advisors, today announced that Kabir Sethi, former Chief Product Officer of LPL Financial and a senior technology executive at Merrill Lynch, has joined the company’s board.
With a distinguished 20-year career in wealth management technology, Sethi has played an instrumental role in shaping the digital transformation of the financial services industry. In his role at LPL Financial, he led the evolution of the firm’s digital and wealth management platforms. At Merrill Lynch, Sethi spearheaded the firm’s digital wealth management strategy, driving the development of a new and leading advisor platform experience and innovations in advisor-client collaboration. Prior to that, he led the development of digital products, user experience, and portfolio management solutions that empowered financial advisors and their clients.
On the heels of this announcement, Sethi will join Zeplyn at T3 Technology Conference in Dallas, TX. During a panel discussion scheduled to take place March 6, 2025 at 2:20 pm CST, he will share strategic AI insights that are making real, scalable impact at forward-looking wealth management firms. Sethi will also provide guidance for CTOs looking to use AI as a way to drive innovation, enhance client experiences, improve operational efficiency, and unlock new growth opportunities.
Zocks
Zocks, an innovative, privacy-first AI platform that turns client conversations into actionable data and insights, today announced a partnership with Carson Group, a leading financial services firm providing solutions, resources, and support to a nationwide network of advisors.
Through the partnership, Carson is leveraging Zocks advanced AI technology to build and update client profiles, capture meeting notes and tasks from conversations, and automate advisor workflows. Zocks is also streamlining replies to client email inquiries and surfacing broader insights across the firm’s advisor base. With seamless back office integrations, Carson and its advisors are gaining valuable client insights from across conversations, emails and CRM data.
In just two months since launch, the partnership has demonstrated adoption and impact, with over 280 Carson Group users actively leveraging the platform to drive strategic insights and enhance client relationships.
