Welcome to another busy week of wealthtech headlines—and despite what’s happening in financial markets around the world in recent days, we expecct more busy weeks to come.
Welcome to the bear market! Or not!
Look, we try to put on a positive face around here, and we do have a soft personal policy of steering clear of market news, but it’s hard to ignore the mayhem in the stock markets right now—and the mayhem is definitely going to have some kind of effect on wealth management and wealthtech.
Yes, global equities have been on a major swoon since the so-called tariff liberation day this past week and the international retaliation, leading to dozens of new tariffs being applied to trade, and as I wrote this, the S&P 500 officially entered into and emerged out from bear market territory—keep in mind that I’m a pretty fast writer. Whee! April 2025 is turning out to be one wild ride, and bank, broker-dealer, custodian, fintech and asset manager stock prices have been walloped.
The good news, I guess, is that any significant impacts on wealth management and wealthtech will mostly happen downstream.
In the near term it seems like fear is gripping the markets and volatility and volume swings should be expected. Investor inertia and paralysis are already becoming problems that will be felt by advisors and the technology firms that serve them. Many wealth managers are experiencing a drop in AUM which, for most, equates to revenue reduction and thinner margins.
While some popular wealthtech providers in the U.S. are based overseas and many U.S. wealthtech providers serve financial advisors in other countries, for the most part there’s little immediate, direct impact on advisor technology in the U.S. from the new tariffs.
However, down the road, the market swoon might mean firms have less money to spend on new technology, or that there is more reluctance to update existing tech. It would also eventually lead to less investor capital floating around to incubate new technology providers. That also means that the private equity spigot that has been fueling a lot of the consolidation in wealth management will be tightened. Much depends on how far the markets fall, and how long a bear market lasts.
Maybe this is a pivot point, a fulcrum on which a revolution in technology or culture could occur. Maybe it’s just another weird month in the 2020s. Time will tell.
For now, we believe advancing innovation and a demand for next-generation clients will push the wealth management industry to at least maintain technology budgets. It will also take some time for innovations driven by capital that has already been committed to come to fruition. Likewise, RIA acquirers have always seemed to be able to find plenty of dry powder when opportunities arise.
Let’s get to your headlines.
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Advisor360°
Advisor360°, a leading provider of integrated technology for wealth management firms, has launched Parrot AI™, a standalone generative AI-powered meeting assistant designed to transform how financial advisors manage client interactions and daily workflows.
Parrot is geared specifically for addressing advisor-specific workflows, language and compliance issues. In addition to automated note-taking and transcription, the tool provides meeting and conversation summaries, crafts follow-up emails, and automatically populates customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Advisors using Parrot can save hours every week on manual meeting documentation, freeing them to spend more time engaging clients and growing their practice.
Developed by a team of cybersecurity, data privacy, and compliance veterans, Parrot follows enterprise-grade security protocols, ensuring firms and advisors stay compliant with SEC, FINRA, and other industry regulations. Parrot includes built-in client consent controls, real-time encryption for all recorded data, and advisor-approved AI-generated content to ensure compliance with data archiving and record-keeping policies. Advisors maintain full control over Parrot’s automated outputs, ensuring accuracy and compliance.
AdvizorPro
AdvizorPro, a leading RIA and financial advisor intelligence platform, today launched TrafficIQ, a new solution that enables firms targeting registered investment advisors to convert anonymous website visitors into actionable sales leads. Purpose-built for firms selling to RIAs, including asset managers, wealthtechs, and more, TrafficIQ is available today and already in use by more than 15 early adopters.
TrafficIQ captures firmographic and geographic signals, such as domain, company name, industry, and location, from anonymous web visitors and matches them to AdvizorPro’s proprietary financial advisor database.
By linking this data to regulatory records and office-level details, TrafficIQ pinpoints not only which firm visited a site, but exactly which team or location the visitor came from, turning passive traffic into specific contacts ready for outreach. It also integrates directly with CRM systems, such as Salesforce and HubSpot, allowing firms to automate lead assignment, personalized email follow-ups, and high-priority call tasks based on real-time behavior. Sales and marketing teams can act while interest is highest, without needing to intervene manually.
Apex Fintech Solutions
Apex Fintech Solutions Inc. (“Apex”), an innovation launchpad for the global investment ecosystem, announced a multi-year strategic partnership with Google Cloud to accelerate the launch of the Apex Ascend investment platform and bring trading, clearing, and custody into the modern era. Through the partnership, Apex will leverage Google Cloud’s suite of cloud computing services that deliver an integrated AI stack, robust infrastructure, and comprehensive tools for data, security, and communication.
The Apex and Google Cloud partnership is focused on bringing cloud innovation, modernization, scalability, reliability, and security to capital markets that have historically relied on less flexible legacy custodian, clearing, and trading platforms. To this end, Apex launched Apex Ascend, the first next-generation, cloud-native investment infrastructure built on Google Cloud, in January 2024. Ascend provides a suite of modern capabilities that enables fintech, wealth management, and institutional clients to go from idea to launch seamlessly and confidently. It includes a built-in real-time ledger, real-time account opening and funding, self-service data analytics — plus robust automations like corporate action updates, rebalancing, order management, and trade execution.
Apex Ascend has seen strong adoption from U.S. and global broker-dealer, wealth management, and other financial services clients. Thanks to the developer-focused APIs, SDKs, and Ask Ascend, some Ascend users have been able to onboard in as few as six weeks. With built-in advanced analytics, custody, clearing, and trading technology, Ascend is poised to become the cornerstone of the wealth management industry by streamlining operations and empowering clients to innovate faster, setting a new standard for clearing, custody, and trading infrastructure.
Arta Finance
Today Arta Finance, a global wealth platform, introduced Arta AI – a new way to engage with wealth, giving clients a suite of AI agents to analyze portfolios, explore investment ideas, and access financial insights on demand. This marks a significant milestone towards a future where clients will be able to use AI agents to navigate all aspects of their wealth journey. With today’s launch, clients will soon be able to talk to Arta AI to review their portfolio, create personalized investment strategies, analyze stocks, and learn more about what Arta has to offer. Arta AI will also be available to partner banks and financial institutions globally through Arta’s “wealth as a service” offering.
With its digital platform, access to human advisors, and proprietary AI system, Arta is redefining how clients engage with wealth management, making it easier to access insights, analyze strategies, and navigate complex financial decisions. Arta AI is designed to be an intuitive conversational partner, allowing clients to interact naturally through voice or text. Clients can ask questions like, “How did my portfolio do last month?” or “How is Google stock doing today?” or “What should my portfolio look like?” and receive data-driven responses. Arta AI can adapt to each client where needed, offering tailored responses based on the client’s financial profile and preferences.
Arta AI is purpose-built for wealth management — a regulated domain that involves sensitive client preferences and information. Arta’s AI-powered features use various types of underlying technology from agentic systems to function calling and RAG to non-generative AI approaches like traditional machine learning and convex optimization. Arta AI has the ability to bring in the specific models that are appropriate for the task — whether conducting financial analysis or explaining the difference in asset classes to a client.
BetaNXT
BetaNXT, a leading provider of wealth management technology solutions with real-time data capabilities and an enhanced advisor experience, continues to help financial services and wealth enterprise firms seamlessly adapt to evolving regulations. The firm has launched its latest innovation, BetaNXT ReservePro, to seamlessly comply with the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) updates to the SEA Rule 15c3-3, requiring broker-dealers to transition from weekly calculations of fund reserves for customer protection to a daily cadence, as of December 31, 2025.
The SEC’s Securities Exchange Act (SEA) Rule 15c3-3 requires broker-dealers to maintain a special reserve bank account that contains the net cash a broker-dealer owes to its customers. Each item involved in the reserve formula calculation involves multiple customer-related balances from across a broker-dealer’s operational departments. The SEC’s adopted amendments mandating that certain broker-dealers perform the formula to calculate reserve requirements on a daily, rather than a weekly, basis, beginning December 31, 2025, were enacted in December 2024.
BetaNXT ReservePro harnesses DataXChange to seamlessly integrate data from various sources. This ensures efficient data management, calculations, and easy access for compliance and reporting purposes. DataXChange, which is now fully operational following its successful pilot with early adopter clients, brings together all internal and external inputs in a single data management ecosystem. By streamlining all data within a flexible and connected experience, DataXChange helps optimize what that data can do for wealth enterprises, as well as their clients and partners. BetaNXT ReservePro is the latest solution to be built on DataXChange.
Cache
Cache, a pioneering fintech company offering specialized products for managing large, concentrated stock positions for individuals and their advisors, today announces the appointment of seasoned executives Aaron White, CFP® as Head of Investor Solutions and Shang Chou, CQF as Head of Institutional Solutions. These strategic hires assume critical leadership roles at a time when Cache’s modern exchange funds are rapidly gaining wider adoption among advisors and investors.
Cache Exchange Funds are designed to tackle the challenges of equity concentration, enabling investors to diversify their single stock holdings without triggering immediate capital gains taxes. Cache recently crossed $300 million in managed assets, and employs 14 professionals, charting tremendous growth since launching its first fund in March 2024.
White joins Cache with nearly 16 years of experience in wealth management, with a specific focus on private investments and tax strategy. Previously, he was Chief Growth Officer at Adero Partners, a registered investment advisor (RIA) with $4.5 billion in assets. At Adero, White advised tech executives, founders, venture capitalists and private equity managers on the complexities of managing concentrated stock portfolios. Prior to his career in wealth management, he provided financial analysis and stock option valuation services (409A) for early-stage companies at a regional accounting firm.
Envestnet
Envestnet is expanding its commitment to the Canadian wealth management market with the launch of a Direct Indexing (DI) solution—the first of its kind in Canada to be model-traded and held within a Unified Managed Account (UMA). This innovation represents a major milestone in personalized portfolio management, offering greater flexibility, customization, and tax efficiency for Canadian advisors and their clients.
Direct Indexing has become a cornerstone of modern wealth management, allowing investors to personalize portfolios, optimize tax efficiency, and customize exposure to align with their financial goals. According to Cerulli Associates1, direct indexing is the fastest-growing segment in managed accounts, with assets expected to grow at a 12.3% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) from 2022 to 2026, outpacing ETFs and mutual funds. By 2026, Direct Indexing assets are projected to reach $800 billion, driven by increasing advisor adoption and investor demand for personalization and tax efficiency. More than 60% of advisors surveyed by Cerulli indicated that they are considering direct indexing as an alternative to traditional ETFs and mutual funds. While these figures are based on a study conducted in the U.S., we anticipate a similar trajectory in the Canadian market as investor expectations evolve and demand for personalized, tax-efficient solutions like Direct Indexing continues to rise.
With this launch, Envestnet, through its QRG Capital Management, Inc. asset management unit, is introducing an innovative DI solution within a UMA structure, enabling Canadian advisors to seamlessly integrate model-traded direct indexing strategies into a holistic, multi-asset portfolio.
Ethic
State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), the asset management arm of State Street Corporation (NYSE: STT), today announced that it has made an equity investment in Ethic Inc. (Ethic), a technology-driven asset management platform that powers personalized, values-aligned, and tax-smart investing for financial intermediaries.
SSGA and Ethic also announced a strategic partnership to deliver customized investment solutions at scale to SSGA’s institutional and financial intermediary clients. The shift toward personalization is reshaping the financial services industry, with investors increasingly expecting portfolios tailored to their individual values, risk tolerance, and tax situation. A recent SSGA study underscores this trend, revealing that nearly two-thirds of U.S. investors want more personalized advice, while 85% of advisors believe tax personalization enhances a portfolio’s value proposition. To meet this growing need, SSGA has partnered with Ethic to provide a seamless, technology-driven solution, enabling financial intermediaries to construct personalized portfolios at scale.
InvestiFi
InvestiFi, the only InvestTech platform designed to allow investing to and from deposit accounts, has announced Todd Clark as its new President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). Clark will be responsible for overseeing key aspects of InvestiFi’s business, including sales, marketing, implementations, client success, customer service and finance, leveraging his experience across the financial industry.
Clark was CEO of CO-OP Solutions, a credit union network with industry-leading ATM, digital payment, security, and marketing services, from 2016-2023, growing the company to $500 million in revenue and delivering to thousands of Credit Unions (CUs), leading it to become the 2nd largest CU technology company in history before merging with PSCU. Under his guidance, the company evolved into the industry’s premier partner for payments and financial technology. Before CO-OP, Clark co-founded Core Data, one of the first prepaid card companies, which became the second-largest ATM processor in the United States.
Clark has leveraged his knowledge of finance as a board member for several companies. He was Chair of the Board for Everlink, a payments company serving financial institutions, and has served on the board of Herring Bank for 3 decades. In addition, Clark has served as a member of InvestiFi’s board since April 2024.
iPipeline
iPipeline®, a leading provider of digital solutions for the life insurance and wealth management industries, announces the appointment of Rachel Edwards as Managing Director, UK. The former Verisk Global Managing Director will guide iPipeline’s UK business strategy and product roadmap, supporting its mission to simplify, transform, and connect the protection and pensions savings & investment markets. Edwards joins iPipeline on April 14 and will oversee a seven-person leadership team in the UK. She will report directly to CEO Pat O’Donnell.
Edwards brings a 20-year track record of successfully driving revenue growth and delivering innovative, customer-centric risk management solutions at the intersection of insurance and technology. At Verisk, she served as Global Managing Director for Life, Health, and Travel, where she was responsible for product diversification and design and oversaw the expansion of high-growth business operations into seven new countries. Edwards spent the first five years of her eight-year tenure at Verisk defining strategic growth plans, securing funding for innovation, and optimising go-to-market strategies in the APAC region.
Prior to her tenure at Verisk, Edwards served as Managing Director, Australasia, at Healix, a global healthcare and risk management solution provider, where she oversaw insurance operations and technology solutions across Australia and New Zealand.
Luma Financial Technologies
Insigneo, an international wealth management firm at the forefront of advisor-centric innovation, has partnered with Luma Financial Technologies (“Luma”), a prominent provider of structured product and insurance technology, to elevate its structured note capabilities and further streamline advisor workflows. Through the adoption of Luma’s market-leading technology, Insigneo is now upgrading its existing offerings with real-time trade data, advanced reporting tools, and a streamlined solution that supports each stage of the product lifecycle.
This strategic move marks an important step in Insigneo’s growth, equipping its advisors with a more agile, robust, and intuitive approach to managing structured notes. Luma will be seamlessly integrated into Alia, Insigneo’s proprietary web-based ecosystem of solutions designed to enable investment professionals to manage their practices more efficiently and effectively.
With Luma’s unified solution, Insigneo advisors can access a robust suite of tools—including education modules, portfolio tracking, trade execution, and automated insights. Its seamless integration with Insigneo’s infrastructure provides advisors with real-time visibility into their structured product activity, while also enabling that data to enhance other key areas of Insigneo’s platform. With real-time data eliminating upload delays, enhanced reporting delivering actionable insights, and automated emails keeping users informed, Luma empowers Insigneo advisors to streamline their workflows and better serve their clients.
Mako Financial Technologies
Mako Financial Technologies, Inc. (“Mako”) and SGGG Fund Services Inc. (“SGGG”) are pleased to unveil a strategic alliance to modernize and streamline subscription and KYC processes for fund issuers, advisors, and managers in the US and Canada.
This partnership will allow funds and advisors to automate and optimize their subscription onboarding and servicing workflows. The technical partnership allows for straight through processing of subscriptions into SGGG’s Diamond Fund Administration System and complementary fund services – eliminating rekeying errors and decreasing processing times. Further releases envision automating redemptions and other post-onboarding activities.
SGGG, one of North America’s leading financial services firms, has delivered third-party fund administration, solutions and expertise to asset managers since 1997. Today, SGGG provides administration to 1,100 alternative funds globally with $95 billion of assets under administration.
Penelope
Penelope, a retirement services platform built for small and mid-sized businesses, today announced the addition of three senior advisors to its team: Marcia Wagner, Kevin Crain and Lisa Kottler. These seasoned leaders bring decades of experience across retirement policy and regulations, technology, financial services, and plan design as Penelope accelerates growth to meet rising market demand.
Marcia Wagner is the founder of The Wagner Law Group, one of the nation’s most respected law firms specializing in ERISA, employee benefits, and executive compensation. Kevin Crain is a nationally recognized expert in retirement services and financial wellness, with over 40 years of leadership experience across the retirement industry. He most recently served as Head of Retirement Research at Bank of America, where he led groundbreaking studies on employee benefits, longevity, and financial well-being, with a focus on underserved and diverse populations.
Lisa Kottler is a seasoned leader with deep fintech and startup expertise. As a Partner in Strategic Growth & Innovation at KWP, she advises C-suite leaders on go-to-market strategy, growth, and emerging technologies. Lisa previously built NFP’s retirement division into a nationally recognized leader and held leadership roles at Voya, CIGNA, and Schwab.
Pocketnest
ELGA Credit Union, a Michigan-based credit union with $1.6 billion in assets, partners with woman-founded financial wellness platform Pocketnest to deliver hyper-personalized finance tools to its nearly 100,000 members.
Pocketnest is a proven credit union partner, serving more than 50 enterprise clients, with integrations and relationships with major digital banking providers like CU Answers, Nymbus, and Lumin Digital. The fintech has demonstrated success in improving member financial wellness and identifying millions of dollars in cross-sell revenue for credit unions.
Pocketnest is a comprehensive financial wellness platform that leverages behavioral science and generative AI to deliver instant, tailored financial guidance across ten core themes of financial wellness—from budgeting and debt payoff to estate planning and taxes. It also provides credit unions with valuable member insights to foster deeper engagement and identify cross-selling opportunities.
Savvy Advisors
Savvy Advisors Inc. (“Savvy” or “Savvy Advisors”), a federally registered investment advisor (RIA) affiliated with Savvy Wealth, Inc. (“Savvy Wealth”), today announced the addition of five experienced financial advisors, expanding its team to more than 50 financial planners and wealth managers across the country. Advisors who join Savvy gain access to Savvy Wealth’s proprietary, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered technology designed to increase advisor efficiency and output, while enabling a modern client experience.
Savvy recently surpassed over $1.5 billion in assets under management (AUM) and continues to attract advisors serving high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth clients. Savvy Wealth’s all-in-one, integrated technology offering includes Co-Pilot, an AI-powered CRM; a digital client onboarding experience for clients; 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 across public and private markets.
SEI
SEI® (NASDAQ:SEIC) today announced the continued expansion of its direct index separately managed account (SMA) strategies, as well as enhancements to its unified managed account (UMA) solutions, to integrate these strategies into model portfolios constructed to better serve financial advisors and their clients with sophisticated, scalable, and tax-efficient investment solutions.
Designed to serve mass-affluent, high-net-worth, and ultra-high-net-worth investors, the new strategies, which are crafted to hold underlying securities that mirror the attributes of a selected index, include, from the SEI Investment Management Corporation, The Systematic S&P 500® Core, Systematic U.S. SMID Cap Core, and Systematic U.S. Small Cap Core strategies join the existing robust lineup of direct index equity and fixed income solutions. From Parametric Portfolio Associates come The Custom Core U.S. Large Cap – S&P 500®, Custom Core U.S. Mid and Small Cap 1000, and Custom Core U.S. Small Cap strategies join an existing broad set of Parametric’s Custom Core® Equity solutions.
To help bolster tax optimization, SEI’s Systematic Core Strategies and other tax-managed models and SMAs seek to opportunistically harvest tax losses during periods of market volatility and defer gains for tax efficiency. SEI provides a personalized “Estimated Taxes Saved” report to advisors that includes client-specific information about estimated year-to-date taxes saved (or incurred) by performing active tax management.
Snappy Kraken
Snappy Kraken, the martech innovator powering simpler, smarter advisor marketing, today announced its integration with Catchlight, the organic growth platform that provides data and insights on leads and clients. The integration offers advisors and enterprises the ability to implement personalized prospect engagement with relevant messaging at scale. In addition, both Snappy Kraken and Catchlight have completed their Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 certification, a third-party audit on data security protocols. Issued by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), this certification underscores Snappy Kraken and Catchlight’s commitment to maintaining the highest standards for data protection and operational excellence on behalf of the advisory firms they serve.
Catchlight is an AI-powered organic growth platform that gathers up to 2,000 data points on each prospect, equipping advisors with actionable insights about the prospect’s financial picture. Insights and data provided in a profile include estimated investible assets and income, age range and estimated home value, as well the Catchlight Score – a prediction of the likelihood that a prospect may convert to paid advice.
Through this integration, Snappy Kraken users who are signed up for Catchlight will be able to see each prospect’s Catchlight Score, estimated investible assets, estimated income and projected client revenue within the Snappy Kraken application. Plus, they will be able to see even more insights within the Catchlight application. This will enable advisors to identify their most engaged and potentially most valuable prospects and focus marketing efforts where they are likely to have the greatest impact.
SUBSCRIBE
Stockbridge, a leading real estate investment management firm with $33.9 billion in assets under management, announced today that it partnered with SUBSCRIBE, the leading operating system for alternative investments serving fund managers, institutional and wealth investors, and service providers. Through the initiative Stockbridge’s investment products will be available to any wealth management firms through SUBSCIRBE.
In early 2025, Stockbridge launched its Private Wealth division, aiming to secure capital from accredited investors. This strategic expansion from a solely institutional investor base into the private wealth sector will enable Stockbridge to enhance investor diversification across the firm. The partnership with SUBSCRIBE follows Stockbridge’s recently announced collaboration with iCapital, SUBSCRIBE and the iCapital Marketplace are further enhancing the visibility and accessibility of Stockbridge’s investment products for wealth investors.
As wealth managers increase exposure to private markets within client portfolios, they must remain focused on the customer and their investment objectives. SUBSCRIBE delivers a seamless fund investment operations process that eliminates all the friction.
Wealth.com
Wealth.com, the industry’s leading end-to-end estate planning platform, today announced a strategic partnership with Cetera Financial Group* (‘Cetera’), a premier financial advisor Wealth Hub. Through this partnership, more than 12,000 financial professionals in the Cetera network will gain access to Wealth.com’s advanced estate planning technology and resources, enabling them to better meet the growing client demand for holistic financial planning.
Cetera strives to differentiate from the traditional, commoditized independent broker-dealer (IBD) model by providing financial professionals and institutions with cutting-edge solutions, comprehensive support and tailored services to help them grow and scale their practices. This partnership enhances Cetera’s comprehensive wealth management offerings by equipping advisors with a best-in-class estate planning platform that simplifies and modernizes legacy planning for their clients.
With more than $545 billion in assets under administration (AUA) and $235 billion in assets under management (AUM), Cetera continues to evolve its platform by continually adding innovative solutions to better serve its advisors and their clients. With an estimated $124 trillion in assets set to transfer across generations over the next two decades, this shift presents both significant challenges and opportunities for advisors. Cetera is committed to equipping financial professionals with the tools, expertise and resources needed to help clients preserve wealth, manage complexities and seize new planning opportunities.
Yieldstreet
Yieldstreet, a leading private markets investment platform, today announced the upcoming launch of Yieldstreet 360 Managed Portfolios — what it believes to be the first-ever automated private markets investing solution. This innovative investing solution is designed to remove traditional barriers to private markets, offering diversified exposure to private equity, private credit, and real estate — all tailored to individual investors’ goals.
The launch arrives at a time of extraordinary growth in private markets, which have more than doubled from $9.7 trillion in 2012 to $24.4 trillion in 2023, according to a recent EY analysis. Building on Yieldstreet’s history of providing access and removing traditional barriers to private markets investing, Yieldstreet 360 will provide a way for investors to passively diversify across private markets through a single solution.
Yieldstreet 360 builds and manages diversified private markets portfolios that span thousands of underlying assets, addressing the high investment minimums, complex structures, and limited access points that have kept individual investors on the sidelines for too long. Investors can select from multiple strategies that align with their specific goals, with options ranging from income-focused to growth-oriented approaches. Each portfolio provides automated investment management, rebalancing, and real-time performance tracking without requiring investor involvement.
