We thought this would be a slow week.
We were wrong. Technology (still) doesn’t have slow weeks.
Welcome to Advisor Tech Talk, where there were fewer than usual overall headlines to report in our roundup of advisor technology news.
Pull the needle dramatically off the record and run that introduction back for a second, because it sounds like we just contradicted ourselves like Rick James in a Chappelle Show sketch—it wasn’t a slow week, but there was less news than usual this time around. As it turns out, both can be true at once, because this ended up being the week that Vanguard decided to go ahead and buy Altruist.
Vanguard to the rescue!
In announcing the deal, Vanguard described Altruist as an “AI-forward wealth technology and custody platform,” saying the acquisition would help advisors serve more clients and broaden access to financial advice. Vanguard had been an Altruist investor since 2020 and said Altruist would continue operating as a separate business following the transaction. Terms were not officially disclosed, although reports placed the transaction at roughly $4 billion.
The transaction is significant well beyond its price tag. Vanguard is one of the companies most closely associated with low-cost investing, while Altruist has positioned itself around lowering the cost and technological friction associated with operating an advisory practice. Combining those philosophies creates a potentially formidable competitor in RIA custody and advisor technology.
Altruist brings custody infrastructure, advisor relationships, workflows, technology talent and a distribution channel into independent wealth management. Vanguard itself says Altruist has demonstrated an ability to reduce the cost and complexity of delivering financial advice.
The longer-term issue is whether scale and automation eventually translate into lower costs for advisors and, ultimately, their clients. The transaction therefore belongs to a larger convergence occurring between asset management, custody, wealthtech and financial advice. Technology companies are becoming financial infrastructure companies, while financial institutions increasingly want to own technology.
Another big transaction came further down the technology stack. RQD Clearing announced August 27 that it had secured a $74 million minority growth investment led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, with participation from ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and Nyca Partners. RQD provides clearing and custody infrastructure to broker-dealers, RIAs and foreign financial institutions accessing U.S. markets.
What else? LPL and Osaic made a couple of big technology hires public this week. AI was everywhere, again, this week in announcements involving Zocks, Practifi, AssetMark, april, Vanilla and others.
But we’re already giving away too much of what you’re going to find below.
Let’s get to 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!
The Ameriflex Group
The AmeriFlex Group® (or “the firm”), an advisor-owned hybrid RIA recognized for its planning-first approach and succession solutions, today announced it has developed a proprietary AI-enabled program that analyzes hundreds of firms and creates comprehensive profiles of each in the time it once took to review a single practice. The program, called Scout, is currently being tested in five key markets for The AmeriFlex Group® and will be rolled out nationally next year.
Built in part with Anthropic’s Claude AI solution, the team applies this tool to a variety of public and proprietary data sources to develop a profile of firms that may need support with long-term succession planning. Using these profiles, The AmeriFlex Group’s succession specialists can more efficiently initiate conversations and engagement with more practices, while freeing them up to ensure a personalized and smooth transition.
By leveraging this program, along with other growth initiatives, The AmeriFlex Group® expects to expand its advisor ranks by 100 advisors in the next 24 months. Earlier this year, the firm announced it welcomed 18 advisors to the platform, representing more than $1.7 billion in total client assets in the first half of 2026. In January, the firm announced it had secured a strategic minority investment from its broker-dealer partner, Cambridge Investment Research.
Amplify Technology
Amplify Technology, LLC (“Amplify”), the AI-native RIA growth platform built on data lake architecture, today announced that Brookwood Investment Group (“Brookwood”), a Phoenix-based registered investment advisor, has partnered with Amplify to create the Brookwood Intelligence Platform,™ a unified technology foundation that brings data, investment intelligence, portfolio management, trading, account servicing, and advisor workflows together across the firm.
Founded by Kimberley and Robert Raimondo, Brookwood Investment Group has grown from $515 million to more than $1.5 billion in assets in the past two years, and now serves more than 75 advisors and 6,200 clients. The firm is advancing a Professional Advisor Partnership model designed to give entrepreneurial financial advisors the independence to exercise their own judgment while surrounding them with the expertise, infrastructure, technology, and collective intelligence of a larger institution.
Brookwood had long envisioned a more connected technology environment, but as the firm grew, the limitations of its fragmented infrastructure became increasingly apparent. Advisors and staff were working across disconnected systems and piecing together information from multiple places, taking time away from serving clients and higher-value work. Amplify offered the connected infrastructure Brookwood needed to bring its data and workflows together, and provided a foundation for continued innovation as the firm scales.
AssetMark
AssetMark, a leading wealth management platform for financial advisors, today introduced Talk TracksSM, an AI-powered feature available now in the AssetMark Advisor Portal that transforms complex portfolio information into clear, client-ready insights on demand. The launch is the latest step in a broader pipeline of AI-enabled capabilities AssetMark plans to introduce across the advisor lifecycle.
As portfolios become more personalized and client expectations rise — including clients increasingly consulting AI on basic financial questions — advisors are being asked to address a broader range of questions across an increasingly varied set of client portfolios and needs. Talk TracksSM is designed to equip advisors for that new reality by bringing relevant portfolio and market context together quickly, helping them respond with clarity and confidence. The result is more informed conversations that reinforce the advisor’s value and help them deliver the kind of personalized guidance clients increasingly expect.
Talk TracksSM synthesizes client portfolio data, market context, performance activity and relevant news to generate personalized talking points. It appears as a side panel in the Advisor Portal, where advisors can review portfolio snapshot summaries; market and macroeconomic context tied to client holdings; sector-level explanations; and tax-savings insights for accounts enabled with Tax Management Services. Each insight can be expanded for additional detail, giving advisors control over how deeply they explore and apply the information.
april
april, the only embedded, year-round tax platform built to power smarter financial decisions, today announced expanded capabilities within its Integrated Tax Platform that provide wealth management firms with access to personalized tax planning insights, informed by client-authorized IRS tax data. By combining tax transcript data with april’s proprietary, IRS-approved tax engine, firms can gain a more complete view of a client’s financial picture and identify opportunities for precise, tax-optimized financial planning.
The new tax data capabilities reflect growing demand from advisory firms seeking to move beyond traditional tax preparation and incorporate tax intelligence into onboarding, financial planning and ongoing client management strategies. With access to historical tax data, advisors can better understand complex financial situations and uncover planning opportunities related to events such as equity compensation, concentrated stock positions, Roth conversions and estimated tax payments. As the only company that combines large-scale tax preparation with AI-powered tax planning, april transforms IRS tax data into accurate, personalized insights that advisors can use throughout the year.
With client consent, april securely retrieves IRS tax data and processes it through the company’s tax engine, which filed more than 1.4 million federal and state tax returns in 2026. Firms can access tax data and planning insights directly within their existing software and advisor workflows, enabling deeper customization and adoption without adding another point solution to the technology stack. These capabilities will be available through april’s Integrated Tax Platform, providing firms with a ready-to-deploy solution that requires minimal implementation effort.
Caddi
Caddi today launched an AI agent that builds and governs a firm’s AI agents, aimed at the industries with the largest back offices: wealth management firms, law firms and insurance companies.
Back-office work was never left manual because it was boring. It was left manual because it is hard to specify. Filing an executed contract sounds like one step; in practice it is a decision tree. Did both parties sign? Is this the executed copy or another draft? The real process is the happy path plus forty exceptions, most living only in the head of whoever has done the job longest. Past attempts wrote a specification, built against it, and discovered the exceptions in production one incident at a time.
Few operations leaders can say which processes run across their firm, how often, or at what cost. Caddi’s agent reads the systems a firm already runs and surfaces the processes that repeat, ranked by frequency and cost. The first decision is which process to automate, made against observed activity rather than a hunch.
Corgi Insurance
Corgi Insurance, the AI-native, full-stack financial infrastructure company, today announced the appointment of McArn Bennett as Head of Public Policy and Corporate Affairs. Bennett will lead Corgi’s federal policy strategy and engagement with policymakers and regulators as AI reshapes insurance and financial services.
Bennett brings more than 15 years of experience spanning public policy, law, government affairs, financial services, and strategic communications. Before joining Corgi, he founded Marshwood Policy & Strategy, advising clients on federal and state financial services policy and regulatory engagement. He previously spent seven and a half years on the Financial Services Committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, most recently as Senior Counsel on the Subcommittee on Capital Markets.
During his time on the Committee, Bennett helped develop the capital formation agenda, led legislative and oversight programs, and worked closely with the SEC, financial regulators, congressional leadership, and industry stakeholders. Earlier, he served as Legislative Counsel to Congressman Tom Rice (SC) and worked in political affairs and stakeholder communications at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Google Cloud
Today, Google Cloud unveiled Gemini Enterprise for Financial Services, a purpose-built agentic AI solution engineered for financial professionals. This solution includes a Google-managed Financial Research agent, more than 50 new skills with specialized agentic instructions for financial roles and workflows, enterprise data connectors, an expanding third-party agent ecosystem, and the foundational Gemini Enterprise platform.
Initially available in preview for the capital markets and corporate banking industries, Gemini Enterprise for Financial Services is already being used by global financial institutions like CME Group and Deutsche Bank, a key design partner for the Financial Research agent. This launch builds on the rapidly growing momentum of Gemini Enterprise with many leading financial institutions like BNY, Citi Wealth, Lloyds Banking Group, Macquarie Bank, and Signal Iduna using it to equip their workforce with advanced, agentic workflow tools to drive growth and efficiency.
Announced today, Gemini Enterprise for Financial Services and Legal are the first in a series of specialized, packaged industry solutions built on top of the secure, fully-governed Gemini Enterprise platform. Each industry solution delivers out-of-the-box, domain-specific, purpose-built AI capabilities, which may include tailored agents, specialized skills that provide simple shortcuts to manage a variety of workflows, data connectors, and model optimizations tailored for a specific industry.
LPL Financial
LPL Financial LLC, a leading wealth management firm, today announced that Jonathan Lewis has joined the firm as managing director, chief technology and information officer. In this role, Lewis will lead key technology domains for the firm, including architecture, engineering, infrastructure and development. He will report to Greg Gates, who assumes the broader title of group managing director, chief product and technology officer.
Lewis brings more than two decades of experience leading large-scale technology organizations across the financial services industry. Most recently, he served as head of digital and trading technology for wealth management at Wells Fargo, where he led large-scale technology platforms and advanced AI-driven engineering capabilities to support advisors and clients. Prior to Wells Fargo, Lewis was head of asset management technology at J.P. Morgan.
Lewis is based in New York City.
Osaic
Osaic, Inc. (“Osaic”), one of the nation’s largest providers of wealth management strategies, today announced the appointment of veteran technology executive Sayee Bellamkonda as Chief AI & Technology Officer. Bellamkonda will lead Osaic’s advisor- and client-facing technology, AI, and cybersecurity strategies and will join the firm’s executive committee, reporting to CEO Jamie Price.
Bellamkonda’s recruitment marks a strategic investment in Osaic’s integrated technology capabilities as the firm advances its short- and long-term technology and AI roadmap. In his role, he will focus on strengthening the technology, data and AI infrastructure to further increase advisor and employee productivity, improve client outcomes and create greater scalability across the enterprise. Bellamkonda will work across the organization to enhance these capabilities and build on the technology initiatives already underway at Osaic, supporting the firm’s commitment to enabling financial professionals to achieve success on their terms.
Prior to joining Osaic, Bellamkonda held executive roles at Vialto Partners, CBRE, Ameriprise Financial and American Express, where he led large-scale digital, data, technology and innovation initiatives across global organizations. At Vialto, he served as executive vice president and chief digital and technology officer, and led the effort to build the company’s global technology organization following its separation from PwC. Throughout his career, he has led global technology teams and organizations spanning digital products, enterprise data, AI, cybersecurity, cloud transformation and innovation.
Practifi
Practifi today announced the launch of Practifi Sentir (“Sentir”), an intelligent CRM that is AI-native by design and built on the same enterprise-grade foundation firms already trust. With Sentir, client work lives in one place with clear ownership, so advisors can reliably follow up and strengthen client relationships. The system automatically briefs users on the state of every account, prepares work, recommends next steps, and draws in relevant context from outside the CRM, ensuring advisors walk into every interaction informed and ready to act.
Sentir’s built-in AI capabilities work across every client record, workflow, and interaction, proactively surfacing what advisors need rather than just storing what they enter, with every insight and action linked to trusted records within the CRM. Advisors can act with confidence knowing nothing happens without human review. Importantly, all of the Sentir functionality runs inside the same enterprise-grade security, permissions, and compliance model of Practifi, ensuring nothing new has to be configured, reviewed, or trusted separately.
The existing Practifi system will now be known as Practifi Naya (“Naya”), Practifi’s configurable wealth management CRM built around each advisory firm’s workflows and business model. It continues to give firms an operational foundation to run efficiently, with the flexibility to build on it as their practices grow and goals change, and will still be available commercially to both existing and new users.
Rocket Money
Rocket Money, part of Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), today launched Rowan, an AI agent that goes beyond analysis, monitoring consumer’s finances and even acting on their behalf, all through simple text messaging.
Powered by Anthropic, Rowan watches spending around the clock. When it spots a way to save, it sends a text. The consumer replies in plain language and Rowan handles the rest. It can renegotiate recurring bills, cancel subscriptions and even create automated savings transfers.
Most personal finance apps are passive, showing a dashboard that leaves the real work up to the consumer. Rowan does the work for them.
Tradestation Securities
TradeStation Securities, Inc. (“TradeStation”), the brokerage firm built for active equities and derivatives traders, announced the availability of CME Group* Single Stock Futures (SSFs)†, a new suite of financially settled futures contracts on individual U.S. stocks. Building on TradeStation’s reputation for high-end trading technology and reliable brokerage services, the new product offering underscores the company’s commitment to delivering the ultimate trading experience for those born to trade.
SSFs allow traders to take long or short positions on individual U.S. stocks through CME-cleared futures contracts without owning or borrowing the underlying shares. The contracts include both standard (100-share multiplier) and micro (10-share multiplier) sizes, providing traders with greater flexibility in how they access individual stock exposure.
Designed for active stock, options, and futures traders, SSFs provide another way to trade familiar names with the flexibility of futures. The contracts allow traders to express directional views on individual stocks through a single futures contract while offering features such as margin-based capital efficiency. Like other futures products, SSFs carry a high degree of risk and use leverage, meaning traders can lose more than their initial investment, so they’re best suited for those who understand the mechanics of futures trading.
Vanguard
Vanguard and Altruist, an AI-forward wealth technology and custody platform serving financial advisors, announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Vanguard will acquire Altruist.
Altruist combines a purpose-built platform, specialized talent, established advisor relationships, and deep expertise translating advice into better workflows and experiences. Under Vanguard’s ownership, Altruist will be even better positioned to help advisors across the industry serve more clients, improve investors’ outcomes, and bring high-quality financial advice to more people.
Vanguard first invested in Altruist in 2020 to bring greater competition to the registered investment advisor (RIA) custody space, to make advice more accessible, and to deliver better outcomes for investors.
Vanilla
Vanilla, the leading estate planning platform for wealth management firms, today announced the beta launch of Vanilla Safe™, a new product that provides organized access to key documents, contacts, and guidance for an emergency to every member of a client household, from spouses to adult children to fiduciaries. Enabled by advisors with a single invite, Vanilla Safe is available on mobile and web at no additional cost to every Vanilla customer and their clients.
In most households, one partner is typically more informed about the family finances and important documents. When that partner is the first to pass, the surviving spouse is often unable to locate those documents and the account details they suddenly need. Worse yet, most families are not financially prepared for an unexpected loss, and it happens more often than families expect. Vanilla Safe closes that gap, so families are prepared.
Vanilla Safe goes beyond document storage. It monitors a family’s preparedness, guides them through emergencies, and keeps the right people connected, all enabled by their advisor.
WealthReach
WealthReach, an AI-powered organic growth platform built for registered investment advisors (RIAs) and wealth management firms, today announced a partnership with VastAdvisor, the governed AI organic growth operating system for wealth management firms. Through the partnership, WealthReach identifies previously anonymous visitors to a RIA’s website, as well as those actively searching for topics related to the firm’s services online, and then automatically exports these contacts into VastAdvisor’s platform. VastAdvisor helps RIAs and wealth enterprises define and target their ideal client profiles (ICPs) through paid digital media channels. These firms can utilize WealthReach’s warm leads to further define ICPs that are visiting their site for retargeting.
Traditional advisor marketing has treated organic visibility and paid advertising as separate initiatives, run by different teams or vendors with little coordination between them. A firm might invest in search engine optimization (SEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) to rank on Google and AI answer engines, while separately buying ads aimed at broad, generic audiences. The WealthReach and VastAdvisor partnership connects those efforts, allowing firms to direct paid spend toward in-market prospects who have demonstrated interest in relevant financial topics and match the firm’s ideal client profile while constantly learning from past campaign efforts.
Advisors have traditionally relied on word-of-mouth referrals and purchased leads, which may not capture the in-market prospects a firm doesn’t yet know about. Purchased leads may also be sold to multiple competing firms, forcing advisors to compete for prospects they do not own. Together, WealthReach and VastAdvisor give RIAs another path: building audiences from their own organic visibility and intent signals, then using those audiences to inform paid acquisition.
Zocks
Harbourfront Wealth Group (“Harbourfront Wealth”), a leading Canadian independent management firm, and Zocks, the privacy-first AI platform for financial services, today announced Zocks is available to Harbourfront Wealth’s entire advisor network following a successful pilot. This also marks a milestone market expansion for Zocks, with Harbourfront Wealth as its largest enterprise customer in Canada to date.
With Zocks, Harbourfront Wealth advisors can now automate many of the operational tasks that surround client meetings, including note-taking, email follow-ups and CRM updates. Zocks captures relevant details from conversations, turns them into structured client data, and securely syncs that information across connected systems, including financial planning software and contact management systems. Client data is stored in Canada, supporting the privacy, compliance, and data residency expectations of Canadian wealth management firms.
Harbourfront Wealth took Zocks from pilot to firm-wide availability in roughly 90 days, demonstrating strong momentum and enterprise scalability. As of August 12, more than 2,900 client meetings have been processed and an estimated 2,000+ hours of administrative time have been returned to advisors — the equivalent of at least one additional client meeting per advisor every week. With more time and capacity, advisors are deepening client relationships, pursuing new opportunities, and growing their business.
