Advisor Tech Talk (Week of 6/16/25)

1295

Wealth management industry awards are mostly hokum, and we all know it. 

Welcome to another week’s Advisor Tech Talk, and we’ll get right to all the goings on in wealthtech in a moment—and of course there’s a lot going on—in fact, we just got off the road from a nice sunny vacation to find that this has been an extraordinary week in wealthtech with huge headlines on juicy topics like AI and blockchain. Like, did the world hit some kind of singularity while we were working on our tan?

If you want to get right to all the big news, scroll down past the big wall of introduction and see for yourself. 

First, however we promised to give you our opinion on annual awards offered by publishers, custodians and (yes) wealthtechs, not just to advisors and wealth management firms, but to other technology companies and publishing companies and custodians.  

Outside of making money, there’s nothing the financial industry enjoys more than patting its own back, right? 

Anyway, in wealth management, the problem with these awards is not in the issuers. I believe that most of the publications and companies offering the awards are worthy of our respect, and that most of them are honestly trying to do a good job with mostly pure intentions. 

The problem is that what they’re trying to do—recognize certain practitioners or firms as exceptional among their peers—is kind of ridiculous on its face, as there is little basis of comparison from advisor-to-advisor or practice-to-practice. There’s no way to make an apples-to-apples comparison of RIAs to RIAs or broker-dealers to broker-dealers, let alone between practitioners from different channels of the industry, because of the amount of variation in how wealth managers practice: the menus of services they provide, how they generate revenue, how they divide responsibility for the client, what clients they serve, and whether wealth management is their sole focus or one component of a larger offering, among so many other variables. 

While it is possible to recognize accomplished practitioners and successful firms, determining who is actually outstanding among their peers should be a job for their peers alone, and not that of a publication or a company that merely serves the wealth management industry. The diversity of the industry confounds any attempt to rank or recognize wealth managers, no matter the basis of comparison. 

I’d like to offer some of my work and experience with FA Magazine, my former employer, as an example. FA Magazine is an outstanding publication and I’m proud to have worked there. Some of their signature features every year are their RIA and independent broker-dealer rankings, which rank firms on the basis of AUM and AUM growth. While this is all well and good and lets the reader know who is handling the most client assets, it says little about the firms handling the money themselves. Is that AUM from a small number of exclusive ultra-high net worth clients, or from thousands or tens of thousands of retirement plan members—or a blend of private clients and retirement plan clients? Are those clients served by a single practitioner who controls their own book of business, or shared by a team of advisors who pool services and revenue? Is it a digital- or AI-first firm or a traditional wealth management firm? 

Every year, my fellow writers and I were tasked with publishing a list of eight-to-ten top advisors under age 40, and every year we failed to adequately represent the industry in our list. We forced ourselves to only consider advisors nominated by their peers, despite pressure to include high earners from big firms on the basis of their notoriety or word-of-mouth. We forced ourselves to give priority to seeking nominators and nominees from diverse populations to include a spectrum of people within our features, even though that was not necessarily representative of the industry itself. We thought we were being fair, and we did end up with wonderful young advisors on our lists—but ultimately the recognition we gave them is less meaningful because of our hopelessly biased selection process. 

Let’s not disparage FA Magazine or those offering awards to the wealth management industry—instead, let’s all remember to take these awards and recognitions with a grain of salt. 

After all, Milli Vanilli won a Grammy, and they couldn’t even sing. 

Time for your headlines. 

Are you and your firm AI-Ready?  Join AICFP today and receive education certification for financial professionals and more – click here for more info!


Broadridge  

LTX, an AI-powered corporate bond trading platform backed by global Fintech leader Broadridge Financial Solutions Inc. (NYSE:BR), today announced the launch of BondGPT Intelligence, a new capability that integrates powerful generative AI capabilities directly within trading platform workflows. The new functionality intelligently anticipates users’ queries based on where they are in the investing and trading workflow,  instantly delivering critical answers and empowering users to make informed decisions with speed and confidence. 

BondGPT Intelligence anticipates clients’ needs, proactively putting key insights at traders’ fingertips right inside the trading platform. Leveraging the award-winning BondGPT application, BondGPT Intelligence provides immediate access to a wide range of market data and insights, anticipating critical questions in real time, and supporting faster, more informed decision-making without disrupting the trading workflow. 

Building on its pioneering use of generative AI, LTX continues to transform the fixed income trading experience by proactively delivering actionable intelligence directly into clients’ workflows at the moment users need these critical insights. This new capability meets the growing demand to leverage generative AI to enhance productivity and simplify workflows without requiring users to access another system. 

CAIS 

CAIS, the leading alternative investment platform for independent financial advisors, today announced the launch of its new execution capability for ticker-traded alternative investment funds. This enhanced feature enables advisors to facilitate the execution of both ticker-traded interval funds and subscription-based funds on the CAIS platform, providing advisors with a unified experience for all their alternatives. 

Ticker-traded interval funds represent an opportunity for advisors to gain broader access to alternative investments. However, execution and ongoing oversight of these products continue to pose unique challenges for some advisors versus traditional ETFs and mutual funds. The unique workflow challenges of ticker-traded alternative investment funds can include liquidity management, redemption windows, and complex operational nuances, and require infrastructure built specifically to manage alternative investment workflows. 

Advisors can now facilitate the execution of ticker-traded interval funds through the CAIS platform alongside their subscription-based alternative investment funds, reducing operational complexity and empowering advisors to trade and manage their entire alternatives portfolio in one place. 

CFP Board 

CFP Board is convening an AI Working Group on June 10-11 at its Washington, D.C., headquarters to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming the financial planning ecosystem and to define the evolving role of human expertise in a tech-powered future. As part of CFP Board’s broader strategy to help the profession thrive in an AI-powered world, the group is developing strategic, actionable recommendations to guide the profession forward, helping ensure that technology enhances the human relationships at the core of financial planning. 

In partnership with consulting company Heidrick & Struggles and led by CFP Board COO K. Dane Snowden, the AI Working Group brings together financial and technology leaders to explore how the financial planning profession can rise to meet the challenges and opportunities of an AI-driven future. The group is examining emerging trends, real-world use cases and ethical considerations shaping AI adoption across the profession. From enhancing client experiences and streamlining advisor workflows to protecting public trust, the conversations reflect both the complexity and the promise of this pivotal moment. 

Discussion topics include the Current State of AI, Regulation and The Financial Planner Lens, as well as exercises on exploring future scenarios and evaluating key stakeholder implications. 

Datalign Advisory 

Datalign Advisory launched GEOs, an AI-powered geographic expansion engine to help financial advisors identify underserved consumers. GEOs uses AI and machine learning predictive models along with a knowledge graph of over 200 million Americans to guide advisors to underserved communities where Americans need retirement planning, tax strategy, estate planning, and other guidance but can’t find an appropriate match locally. By aggregating over a decade of behavioral, financial, and demographic data across hundreds of variables, GEOs streamlines how advisors discover and connect with underserved consumers, improving outcomes for both parties. 

GEOs is now available exclusively to fiduciary advisors on Datalign’s platform through our Customer Success team. Interested RIAs can contact their Customer Success Manager or email [email protected] to connect with our advisory team. 

At launch, GEOs delivers three core capabilities: Strategic Expansion, data-driven recommendations for advisors looking to extend their geographic reach with in-person or virtual services, showing exactly which communities need their specialization; Market Opportunity, analysis of promising regions for new advisor connections, factoring in demographic trends, community needs, and current advisor availability in specific service areas; and Growth Modeling, predictive analytics that estimate where an advisor’s expertise can have the greatest impact and highest conversion potential in underserved communities. 

FINNY AI 

FINNY AI Inc. (“FINNY”), the AI-powered prospecting and marketing platform built specifically for financial advisors, today announced the launch of Intent Search, a feature that allows advisors to identify and engage with prospects actively seeking financial guidance. This release also includes Prospect Enrichment and AI Voicemails, two additional capabilities that equip advisors with faster, smarter tools to drive organic growth through FINNY’s all-in-one prospecting solution. 

The Intent Search feature represents a breakthrough in precision prospecting. Powered by 1.8 billion proprietary intent signals that are updated daily, it enables advisors to surface high-intent prospects based on real-time online behavior. Advisors can select keywords related to their services – like “401k rollovers”, “business succession planning”, “charitable giving” and more. FINNY identifies prospects who have recently researched those topics, pinpointing what they’re interested in and when they were actively searching. This allows for timely, targeted outreach based on actual behavior rather than guesswork. Searches are fully customizable, giving advisors the flexibility to layer in as much or as little criteria as needed to align with their prospecting strategy. 

Alongside Intent Search, FINNY has released its Prospect Enrichment and AI Voicemails features. Prospect Enrichment enables advisors to upload external contacts and automatically matches them to FINNY’s database. Each contact is enriched with key information like estimated net worth, interests or money-in-motion events, and assigned a predictive F-Score to prioritize high-potential leads and add them to personalized campaign lists. Meanwhile, AI Voicemails allow advisors to deliver ringless, personalized voicemails at scale. They can select from multiple voice options to suit their preferences, and messages are able to circumvent spam filters. Each voicemail can be paired with a follow-up email to create efficient outreach that retains a human touch. 

Franklin Templeton 

In a move that dramatically enhances market opportunities for its clients and partners, global investment giant Franklin Templeton today unveiled Intraday Yield as a new feature of the company’s Benji Technology Platform. 

This proprietary innovation enables proportional calculation and distribution of yield, down to the second, when a tokenized security is transferred from one party to another. This means an investor can own a tokenized security for part of the day, transfer it to another investor, and still earn yield for the period they were a shareholder. In addition to accounting for share transfers, the Benji Technology Platform also enables precisely calculated yield to be paid out each calendar day, including weekends and holidays. 

Tapping into the promise of the blockchain, this patent-pending technology represents a significant improvement to the prevailing industry standard where share ownership is often determined, and yield is typically calculated, at the end of a trading day and distributed to investors at the end of the month. 

Fusion Capital Management 

Fusion Capital Management, a technology-enabled RIA serving over 75 partner advisors with more than $1 billion in assets under management, today announced its selection of The Burney Company as its Outsourced Chief Investment Officer (OCIO). This strategic partnership combines Fusion’s innovative advisor support platform with Burney’s five decades of proven investment management expertise and sophisticated equity research capabilities. 

The partnership enables Fusion’s network of entrepreneurial financial advisors to access institutional-quality investment management while maintaining the flexibility and control that defines the Fusion advantage. 

Central to the partnership is Burney’s ability to design custom asset allocation solutions that address the unique challenges facing Fusion’s advisor network. Many advisors work with clients who have existing low-basis positions in various strategies, requiring sophisticated transitional planning and tax-aware investment approaches. 

Fynancial 

Fynancial, a leading mobile-first SaaS platform transforming the wealth management experience, today announced the official launch of Fyn, a first-of-its-kind Agentic AI assistant built exclusively for financial advisors. Fyn is designed to simplify day-to-day advisor workflows by combining firm data, client activity, and platform integrations into one intelligent command center. Advisors can ask Fyn to summarize meetings, surface client-specific opportunities, draft messages, identify high-priority tasks, and send communications, all with natural language prompts. 

Fyn works across CRM systems, financial planning tools, custodians, and proprietary data feeds to provide real-time insights and execution support. With secure architecture and SOC 2 compliance, it’s built for the heavily regulated environment of wealth management. The technology is the advisor’s AI-powered command center giving users instant access to CRM, portfolio, and reporting systems, with always-on, action-taking agents that move from insight to execution. 

Fyn is now live for all Fynancial enterprise customers and will be showcased during a live demonstration at Wealth Management EDGE today in Boca Raton, Florida. 

Idea Decanter 

Prospera Financial Services, Inc. (“Prospera”), a wealth management firm supporting a nationwide network of independent financial advisors, today announced a partnership with Idea Decanter, a creative video marketing agency specializing in custom, regulatory compliant video content for financial professionals. 

The collaboration brings a turnkey video marketing solution to Prospera advisors without the need for a film crew or complicated setup. 

Through the partnership, Prospera advisors will gain access to Idea Decanter’s Idea Kit, a remote video studio that allows advisors to record compelling marketing videos anywhere. Idea Kit provides custom scripts, coaching, lighting and audio equipment, remote-directed video shoot and professional post-production services. 

Integrated Partners 

Integrated Partners (“Integrated”), a national financial planning and registered investment advisory (RIA) firm serving more than $21 billion in assets under advisement (AUA), today announced the official launch of the Integrated Advisor Dashboard, a fully integrated, advisor-first technology platform designed to streamline workflows, personalize insights and unlock long-term growth potential. 

Developed in close collaboration with Invent, a leading platform solving for the integration and data management challenges, the dashboard represents a major leap forward in how advisors can manage, scale and future-proof their practices—without losing the human connection at the heart of financial advice. 

One of the platform’s standout innovations is RAI, a proprietary AI assistant built into Invent in partnership with ARQA, an AI-enabled platform that is on a mission to empower high-net-worth individuals, family offices, investment advisors and institutions by delivering swift and insightful access to extensive information within their portfolios. 

SMArtX Advisory Solutions 

SMArtX Advisory Solutions (“SMArtX”), a leading innovator in managed accounts technology, has announced the addition of 4 new strategies from three leading asset management firms to its Manager Marketplace. SMArtX’s continuously growing platform now offers 1,532 strategies from 319 distinguished asset management firms. 

Day Hagan Asset Management, Loomis Sayles & Company, and WCM Investment Management expanded their current offerings to respectively include defined outcome, core equity, long/short growth equity, and global growth. 

Snappy Kraken 

Snappy Kraken, the martech innovator powering simpler, smarter advisor marketing, today announced the launch of its Smart Growth Suite, a complete system that automates lead conversion for enterprise firms, mid-market organizations and individual advisors. The Smart Growth Suite replaces fragmented tech stacks with a unified system for automated, targeted marketing and lead conversion. 

As part of the suite, Snappy Kraken is introducing Dynamic Groups, a capability designed to help advisors automate segmentation and support personalized outreach to convert leads efficiently. With Dynamic Groups, advisors can segment contacts using attributes like age, gender, investable assets and more, enabling personalized messaging without manual work. Dynamic Groups helps advisors deliver timely, relevant messages to specific audiences—whether following up with referrals, re-engaging cold leads or reaching high-value clients. 

The Smart Growth Suite combines tools typically spread across CRMs, marketing automation platforms, content hubs and AI tools—offering a compliant, ready-to-use system that automates workflows across the lead-to-client lifecycle with powerful admin-level control for larger firms. Based on Snappy Kraken’s performance data, firms using the suite see a 20% to 340% increase in lead conversion rates, driven by automated lead generation sequences. 

Syntax Data 

Syntax Data, a financial data and technology provider offering data-optimized index solutions, today announced a strategic partnership with Prometheum ATS, a FINRA member and SEC-registered broker-dealer and trading platform for blockchain-based securities. Prometheum ATS is a subsidiary of Prometheum Inc. (“Prometheum”), a market infrastructure provider for blockchain-based securities. 

Syntax and Prometheum ATS will bridge traditional indexing with blockchain-enabled market infrastructure, supporting the next phase of growth for blockchain-based securities and investment products. The collaboration will start by extending Syntax Direct’s direct indexing capabilities to RIAs and other institutions trading through Prometheum ATS. The firms will also explore the creation of bespoke indices enabling the development of on-chain investment products from RIAs, asset managers, banks, and product issuers. 

To develop index and data feeds between both parties, Prometheum ATS plans to supply on-chain securities market data into Syntax Direct – Syntax’s scalable platform that enables investment advisors to create customized, branded indices and financial products – while Syntax plans to deliver an index data feed into Prometheum ATS. As more on‑chain securities products and index data become available on Prometheum ATS, the partners anticipate asset managers and product managers will launch white‑label funds, SMAs, ETFs, and other products that track Syntax indices – each issued, traded, custodied, cleared, and settled on Prometheum’s end‑to‑end blockchain infrastructure. 

Wealthbox 

Wealthbox, the #1-rated CRM software platform for financial advisors, announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement for a $200 million strategic majority investment from Sixth Street Growth, the growth investing business of leading global investment firm Sixth Street. The partnership marks a major milestone in Wealthbox’s evolution and positions the company to further scale its operations, accelerate product development, and expand its footprint across the wealth management industry. 

The investment from Sixth Street Growth reflects the firm’s strong conviction in Wealthbox’s management team, its modern and intuitive product, and a forward-looking roadmap that includes the development and rollout of innovative AI features designed to drive advisor productivity and firm-wide efficiency. The funding underscores the company’s strong position in the independent advisor market, its expanding opportunity in adjacent wealth-tech categories, and strategic trajectory upmarket to larger RIA firms and enterprise broker-dealers. 

This investment will enable a new chapter of growth. Wealthbox plans to accelerate product development, expand integrations across the advisor tech stack, and deepen its enterprise capabilities to meet the needs of increasingly complex advisory firms. 

Webull 

Webull (NASDAQ: BULL), an online investment platform, today announced the launch of cryptocurrency hourly contract trading for U.S. retail investors through its partnership with Kalshi, the first CFTC-regulated prediction market exchange. Users are now able to capitalize on Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrency markets in a straightforward over/under prediction style. 

This expansion builds on Webull’s partnership with Kalshi and allows users of all experience levels to engage in low-cost alternative trading styles from a single platform. Access to these markets also enables users to take positions based on their predictions while limiting risk. More experienced traders can apply their skills and capital to capture an edge across a wide range of popular markets. 

Prediction markets offer a low cost and accessible way to trade without having to worry about margin calls, complicated options risks, or hidden fees. Users can participate with minimal capital, making them an ideal environment for learning, experimenting, and building confidence without the limitations of traditional markets. 

YCharts 

YCharts, a leading investment research and client engagement platform trusted by financial professionals across North America, is expanding its role in the proposal-building process. Recent enhancements have strengthened the platform’s ability to support the full advisor workflow, from preparation to presentation. 

AI Chat and Quick Extract streamline proposal prep by helping advisors analyze securities, summarize holdings, and build portfolios in seconds. With Quick Extract, advisors can upload client statements in PDF or spreadsheet format and instantly convert them into working portfolios, eliminating the need for manual entry. Risk Profiles introduce structure and transparency into the proposal process by allowing advisors to map model portfolios to defined risk levels. Advisors can compare current and proposed portfolios against a target risk profile to ensure suitability and clearly communicate the rationale behind each recommendation. Householding enables advisors to view and analyze multiple accounts as a unified portfolio. This supports holistic planning and allows for better alignment with family-level goals and tax considerations. 

These updates position YCharts as a progressive proposal-building platform that helps advisors improve communication, build trust, and grow their business through more efficient and personalized recommendations.