Are we Rebels, or are we just more storm troopers for an evil Empire?
Welcome to another Advisor Tech Talk, where we’re sitting down to round up the past week’s wealthtech headlines on a day that has become associated with the Star Wars entertainment franchise. While we’re not really an observant Start Wars fanatic, we don’t think anyone really outgrows their inner nerd, so… “May the 4th be with you. Always.”
Anyway, Star Wars, like many pop culture franchises, became popular in part because good and evil are so easy to identify that one doesn’t have to expend any brain power figuring out that the big dark shiny masked guy with the menacing breath sounds is not so good, while the pretty young lady with the Cinnabon haircut in the flowing white robes is not so bad.
Outside of movies and comic books, good and bad are not so easily separated, especially when it comes to technology. Obviously, because we’re tasked with covering and writing about tech in general, we’re technology optimists. We’re adopters. We’re embracers. We verge on outright enthusiasm—which is saying a lot where journalism is concerned.
Just this week, we have an Advisor Tech Talk column full of artificial intelligence. AI seems to be everywhere in wealthtech and other advisor technology. Five years ago, we don’t think we could have imagined wealthtech advancing as far as it has today, and five years from now, we’ll probably be surprised again.
Which could be good news or bad news for wealth managers!
We’ve written a lot about technology’s drawbacks, and the possibility that it displaces (or replaces) the readers in our target audience. We rely on human readers to stay relevant, but part of our job is asking whether our readers will remain relevant themselves.
We’d like you all to stay relevant and prosperous as AI sweeps through, but forgive us for harboring a few doubts about the future.
We don’t think that makes us one of the bad guys… but it doesn’t always feel so good.
We like the wealth management industry. While we haven’t had such good client relationships with financial advisors, we know plenty of outstanding people in the industry and we hear almost every day stories of client satisfaction and success.
This is a good industry full of great people doing worthwhile work, with many of those people doing the work very well.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t talk about a computer’s ability to do the work better, or faster, or more accurately. That doesn’t mean we won’t talk about the discrepancies between people’s satisfaction with their advisors and their willingness to replace their advisor.
Or the fact that people seem to be more open to using and trusting technology than they’re willing to openly say, whether they’re asked by academic researchers, financial institutions, or journalists.
We’re not seeking an end to technology or wealth management… so we’re not really the evil galactic Empire.
On the other hand, we’re not really the more virtuous rebel alliance, either, as we wouldn’t seek to save either industry from itself just for its own sake.
Let’s get to your headlines…
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Aequify
Aequify, a financial technology company focused on cross-border financial management, today announced the launch of its AI-generated Data Packs, a reporting suite designed for U.S. expat tax advisory firms.
Built to replace manual data collection and fragmented workflows, Aequify’s Data Packs transform how advisors access, structure and act on client financial information, enabling a shift from transactional tax filing to continuous, year-round advisory relationships.
Leveraging Aequify’s proprietary agentic engine, Data Packs aggregates financial data from more than 30 countries and automatically generates structured, form-ready reports. What once required days of back-and-forth between clients and advisors can now be completed in seconds.
Arch
HB Wealth, one of the nation’s leading independent, fee-only wealth management firms, today announced the expansion of its partnership with Arch to simplify the operational complexities of managing its private markets portfolios. HB Wealth uses Arch to automate document collection and reporting across 10,000+ holdings, giving its advisors real-time visibility into portfolio performance for private equity, private debt, and private real estate investments.
With more than $5 billion of its $30 billion in assets under management (AUM) dedicated to private markets, HB Wealth is among the top fifth of RIAs by private markets exposure, a distinction that reflects both the firm’s scale and its long-standing expertise. With Arch, HB Wealth has streamlined document collection and reporting, including K-1s and investment statements, reducing the administrative burden associated with thousands of documents and supporting more efficient collaboration with CPAs, clients, and their broader advisory teams.
Prior to Arch, HB Wealth explored building a solution of its own, attempting everything from Excel-based workflows to internal tools, before concluding that no internal solution could scale alongside the firm’s growing private markets program. Beyond the time savings and efficiencies gained through the partnership, Hendler notes that the Arch team’s responsiveness and client service has been a key differentiator.
Benzinga
Benzinga, a leading provider of real-time financial news and market data, today announced a new data relationship with Apex Fintech Solutions, the infrastructure powering modern investing.
Through this relationship, Apex will make a broad suite of Benzinga APIs available to its network of financial platforms, brokerages, and developers, enabling clients to integrate real-time market intelligence and structured financial datasets directly into their products.
Apex clients will gain access to Benzinga’s expanding ecosystem of financial data through Apex’s platform infrastructure. Available datasets include the Benzinga Stock News API, Why Is It Moving feed, Analyst Report Insights, Bulls Say Bears Say summaries, and more.
BetaNXT
BetaNXT, a leading provider of wealth management technology solutions with real-time data capabilities and an enhanced advisor experience, today announced that its pass-through voting solution, developed in collaboration with stewardship technology firm Tumelo, is now live in support of Vanguard Investor Choice.
This new technology expands access to more eligible investors to participate in Vanguard Investor Choice and seamlessly express their proxy voting preferences on corporate governance matters. The innovation combines technology from BetaNXT and Tumelo to support the end-to-end collection and application of investor voting preferences within the proxy voting process.
BetaNXT’s technology is designed to integrate into existing proxy voting environments and can be deployed in client-branded workflows across asset managers, brokers, and advisors. This flexible model allows an organization to seamlessly incorporate pass-through voting capabilities while maintaining established governance and operational processes.
Clique
Thredd, the AI-first issuer processing platform, today announced its partnership with Clique Finance Limited (“Clique”), an invite-only private wealth management ecosystem designed for entrepreneurs, family offices, and high-net-worth individuals with complex cross-border lifestyles seeking to manage wealth beyond traditional banking frameworks.
Together, Thredd and Clique are delivering a modern financial experience that bridges digital assets and everyday spending through a Visa consumer credit card. Clique provides the front-end wealth platform, client experience, and investment infrastructure tailored to high-net-worth users and crypto-native portfolios. Thredd serves as the core issuing and processing engine, enabling Clique’s consumer credit program with a single, API-driven platform. The partnership enables secure, compliant, and flexible payment capabilities that integrate seamlessly into Clique’s broader wealth ecosystem.
Digital Ascension Group
Digital Ascension Group, a wealth management firm supporting established investors, family offices, and registered investment advisors, today announced the appointment of three senior executives to its leadership team, to further support the platform’s next growth phase across investment management, product strategy, operations and compliance. The appointments come as institutional and individual investors seek coordinated, advisory-led approaches to managing digital assets. As many platforms offer fragmented solutions, Digital Ascension Group emphasizes a single coordinated approach designed to support disciplined digital asset wealth management.
Louis Hsu as Chief Investment Officer, Kristen Mirabella as Chief Product and Strategy Officer, Cynthia Jackson as Chief Compliance Officer are joining an established team with experience across leading financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Schwab, U.S. Bank, BlackRock, and Grayscale.
As digital assets become an established component of client portfolios and traditional financial institutions continue to evaluate and develop digital asset capabilities, Digital Ascension Group is focused on delivering a coordinated framework for managing digital asset strategies. This strategic leadership expansion allows Digital Ascension Group to deliver thought leadership and address operational and compliance considerations at the intersection of traditional wealth management and digital asset strategies. The appointments reflect Digital Ascension Group’s continued focus as the industry incorporates digital assets into wealth management strategies, where coordination and long-term planning are important.
FIS
Global financial technology leader FIS® has today announced that M1 have selected FIS Proxy Voting by Proxymity, part of the new FIS Asset Servicing Management Suite, to help modernize their proxy voting process. With legacy proxy voting infrastructure continuing to fail investors systems, this solution will bring M1 into the digital age by providing real-time, secure and transparent communication between issuers, intermediaries, and investors, while helping M1 meet its regulatory requirements.
Despite advances in financial technology, many organizations still rely on outdated, archaic systems for proxy voting – the process by which shareholders participate in corporate governance matters. These batch type solutions can create delays, errors, and limited transparency, often resulting in over-voting or under-voting, while investors lack real-time confirmation that their votes were properly submitted.
M1, an innovative wealth management platform that enables consumers to earn, invest, spend and borrow with powerful automation, will deploy FIS Proxy Voting by Proxymity, a cloud-based solution that streamlines the entire voting process. The solution, delivered in collaboration with Proxymity, a leading digital investor communications platform that modernizes how issuers, intermediaries, and investors connect and communicate, delivers end-to-end digitization of the voting lifecycle, replacing legacy processes with a faster, more transparent approach. It provides prompt access to notification and responses associated with their holdings whilst helping meet regulatory requirements, and offers a unified and bespoke experience for M1’s customers.
The Founders Arena
The Founders Arena, the leading global WealthTech Accelerator, in collaboration with First Rate, Inc., SEI®, the City of Arlington and the Arlington Economic Development Corporation, today announced its sixth cohort of startups who are redefining the future of financial services. As WealthTech becomes the foundational layer in how people build, manage and access their financial futures, The Founders Arena has distinguished itself by supporting founders solving fundamental challenges, rather than fleeting market cycles.
The Founders Arena is a boutique, high-touch experience built around market access, connecting founders directly with buyers, investors, and decision-makers. Each company is selected through a rigorous, evidence-based process focused on measurable impact, transparency, and real-world adoption.
Since its inception three years ago, The Founders Arena has helped 30 startups from around the world to scale their business, and achieved four successful exits
Hexure
Hexure, a leading player in AI-powered sales automation solutions for the insurance and financial services industry, today announced the addition of case status visibility and enhanced post-issue servicing in its FireLight platform through an expanded partnership with The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the premier post-trade market infrastructure for the global financial services industry. FireLight now provides broader access to DTCC Insurance & Retirement Solutions (I&RS) offerings, so advisors and operations teams can track activity and complete servicing steps in one workflow. Users can access DTCC’s Activity Status Tracking (ACT), which provides real-time visibility into case progress and In‑Force Transactions (IFT), which streamlines in-force requests, alongside Producer Authorization, which helps validate and manage producer credentials as part of the workflow.
For many firms, case status updates and in-force requests require navigating multiple systems, emails, and phone calls. This creates delays, increases service costs, and takes time away from serving clients.
With FireLight’s access to DTCC’s I&RS offerings, advisors can now initiate common financial and non-financial requests, including fund transfers, withdrawals, investment updates, policy updates, first notice of loss, brokerage account linking, advisor of record, distributor of record, and more, on one platform. These services, along with FireLight’s existing I&RS Producer Authorization access, reduce manual effort and ensure an efficient and streamlined sales and servicing process.
iA Financial Group
iA Financial Group, a leader in insurance and wealth management in Canada, today announced a strategic partnership with PINQ² (“Plateforme d’Innovation Numérique et Quantique” in French—Digital and Quantum Innovation Platform), marking a significant milestone in the insurance sector.
iA Financial Group is the first Canadian insurer to partner with PINQ²’s Advanced Hybrid Platform, using classical and quantum computing to drive innovation. The company aims to explore quantum computing power to enhance its operations and services.
This collaboration builds on iA Financial Group’s long-standing investment in artificial intelligence, which has been instrumental in optimizing financial modelling, enhancing portfolio management, strengthening risk analysis and personalizing client experiences. The exploration of quantum computing will further accelerate these advancements, offer unparalleled computational capabilities and open new avenues for applications, faster decision-making and more relevant solutions for clients.
iCapital
iCapital1, the global fintech platform shaping the future of investing, today announced that it is working with Anthropic to advance the next phase of its AI strategy. The integration of Anthropic’s Claude models reflects iCapital’s continued investment in platform capabilities and tools that support participants across the ecosystem and enhance client experience at scale.
The initiative is focused on applying advanced intelligence in a way that builds on iCapital’s existing platform, expanding how advisors, product providers, and their clients engage with education, workflows, and insights across the investment lifecycle.
iCapital is working with Anthropic to apply Claude’s strong reasoning capabilities, interpretability, and ability to operate within a complex, compliance‑first environment to power client solutions across its platform. These capabilities are well-suited to iCapital’s data‑rich infrastructure and support the development of practical, enterprise‑grade tools that help advisors and product providers navigate complexity, gain insights, and serve clients more effectively, consistent with iCapital’s longstanding approach to responsible technology adoption.
Illuminate Financial
Illuminate Financial, the specialist venture capital firm focused on technology for financial services, today announced it has raised $135 million for its Early Growth Fund from investors including BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Börse, HSBC, Jefferies, RBC, S&P Global, and TD Securities. The fund targets Series B+ Enterprise AI and Fintech companies at the critical inflection point between proven technology and institutional scale.
Few venture funds can offer portfolio companies direct relationships with the institutions that will ultimately buy, partner with, or scale their technology. Illuminate’s strategic investor base provides an unparalleled network of go-to-market relationships, industry expertise, and operational insight. Their involvement is a meaningful differentiator for Series B companies seeking to accelerate enterprise adoption.
This is Illuminate’s fourth fund and first to target the Series B+ stage, a deliberate expansion built on over a decade of early-stage fintech investing. Founded by Mark Beeston in 2014, the firm operates across London, New York, and Singapore, led alongside Partners Alexander Ross, Rezso Szabo, Rachel Townend, and Luca Zorzino. Illuminate has raised $500 million across four funds, invested in 55 companies, and completed 14 successful exits. Its 2015 vintage fund is ranked the top European venture fund for distributions by Cambridge Associates.
InspereX
InspereX, the tech-driven distributor of fixed income, structured products, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and alternative investments, today announced a strategic expansion into the annuity marketplace through a new partnership with AuguStar® Retirement (“AuguStar”), a Constellation company. InspereX will distribute AuguStar’s annuity solutions to PNC financial advisors and other select wealth management platforms.
This partnership enhances InspereX’s expanding distribution platform by adding transparent insurance and retirement solutions, giving financial professionals access to a broader more diversified set of tools designed to help navigate evolving client needs and market conditions.
InspereX will serve as a distribution partner for AuguStar products, leveraging its national platform, home office relationships, and wholesaling capabilities to support advisor education, strategy implementation, and ongoing client service.
Jump
Jump, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) operating system for financial advisors and other financial services providers, today announced a strategic collaboration with Markel, a leading global specialty insurer. The collaboration expands access to Jump’s platform across Markel’s network of financial professionals and supports advisory firms as they adopt AI-enabled workflows. Through the collaboration, eligible firms may have access to education, resources and risk-management support, as well as the ability to explore insurance solutions offered by Markel and placed through Joseph Caruso & Associates, as broker of record, subject to underwriting and applicable law.
This strategic collaboration reflects a broader shift toward closer alignment between technology providers and insurance partners as advisory firms increasingly adopt AI to drive efficiency and improve client outcomes. By combining Jump’s automation and intelligence capabilities with Markel’s underwriting experience and Joseph Caruso & Associates’ brokerage specialization, the collaboration helps firms reduce operational friction while ensuring their risk management strategies keep pace with innovation.
The collaboration will include access to Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance solutions for advisory firms that choose to use Jump. Insurance products and services are offered by Markel and placed through Joseph Caruso & Associates as broker of record, and are subject to underwriting, eligibility requirements and applicable law. Coverage terms, availability and any risk-management resources may vary by jurisdiction and policy.
Masttro
Masttro, the wealth intelligence platform for family offices, private banks, and RIAs serving UHNW clients, today announced the appointment of Dan Gorlick as Chief Product Officer.
Mr. Gorlick joins Masttro as the company continues to expand its client base to over 400 firms in more than 40 countries, with 10,000+ end clients globally. His appointment reflects Masttro’s continued investment in product innovation at a time when family offices are placing greater emphasis on technology amid rising data complexity across private markets, entity structures, and reporting workflows.
Prior to recent tenures as Head of Product of iLEVEL by S&P Global and Product Lead at Google Cloud, Mr. Gorlick spent more than a decade working on the Aladdin team at BlackRock, including serving as Head of Product for Whole Portfolio. His experience managing product and client service teams makes Mr. Gorlick a natural fit to lead Masttro’s product strategy as the company grows its client base of family offices and wealth advisors.
Ncontracts
Ncontracts, the leading provider of integrated compliance, risk, and vendor management solutions to the financial industry, today launched Nquiry Ntelligence — an AI-powered compliance intelligence platform purpose built to help financial organizations get fast, accurate, cited, auditable answers to complex regulatory questions in minutes.
Compliance teams at banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, and wealth management firms face a growing and often unmanageable volume of federal regulations, federal guidance, state laws, SEC rules, and rules from related organizations like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, NACHA, and more. Getting a reliable, defensible answer to a compliance question can take hours or days of research, and a wrong answer carries real consequences. Existing tools consistently fall short: general AI tools lack regulatory depth and auditability, static compliance libraries return documents rather than answers, and internal teams are stretched thin. Nquiry was built to solve this problem.
Nquiry is trained on 17 years of proprietary Ncontracts compliance data, verified by former regulators, attorneys, and practitioners. This institutional knowledge is baked into every answer Nquiry returns, giving compliance teams the documented evidence trail they need to stand behind their decisions in front of auditors, examiners, and management.
OneVest
Today, we’re launching the OneVest MCP Server, a Model Context Protocol bridge designed to securely expose wealth management workflows to Large Language Models. Where OneVest’s recently released Agentic Wealth OS delivers execution across the wealth management enterprise, the MCP server extends that intelligence into any MCP-compatible AI tool, including Anthropic’s Claude, Cursor, and others, connecting it directly to a firm’s live environment: live data, current pipeline, outstanding tasks and much more. The AI works from inside the system of record, in real time, not from a snapshot or a data export.
Built on an open standard, the OneVest MCP Server does not operate in isolation. It works alongside any other MCP-compatible tool in the market, unlocking use cases that compound as more of the wealth management industry adopts the standard. OneVest customers will now be positioned at the center of that ecosystem.
The OneVest MCP Server enables wealth management firms to operate with a level of AI connectivity that most platforms are still building toward. Advisors and wealth managers can interact with live data, manage their full book of business, and execute workflows through natural language, without leaving the AI tools they already use. Firms that deploy MCP-connected systems today are building a competitive advantage that compounds over time, and the OneVest MCP Server is how firms get there now.
RFG Advisory
RFG Advisory (“RFG”), an innovator in the wealth management industry dedicated to helping independent financial Advisors build their business without compromise, today announced the appointment of Mark Gilbert, co-founder and CEO of Zocks Communications (“Zocks”), and Jim Patrick, a seasoned financial services executive, to its board of directors. These additions strengthen both sides of RFG’s platform, pairing deep investment experience with continued advancement of the firm’s technology and data infrastructure.
Together, the appointments reflect RFG’s continued focus on improving how Advisors operationalize and professionalize their business and maximize their independence. By strengthening both institutional investment management and the intelligence layer of the platform, Advisors gain a more connected experience that reduces complexity, surfaces growth opportunities faster, and creates more time to focus on clients and enterprise value creation.
The firm also announced a strategic investment in Zocks, a leader in AI-driven workflow automation and business intelligence for financial Advisors, marking a significant step forward in RFG’s strategy to build a fully integrated, AI-powered operating system for independent Advisors. RFG participated in Zocks’ Series B round, co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and QED Investors, alongside other new and existing investors.
Securitize
Securitize (which has announced a proposed business combination with Cantor Equity Partners II, Inc. (Nasdaq: CEPT)), the leader in tokenizing real-world assets, today has announced an agreement with Computershare to support U.S.-listed clients in issuing equity securities in tokenized form, enabling a new pathway for issuers to bring their shares onchain.
This milestone highlights tokenization’s role as an enhanced option to public markets, enabling issuers to bring equities onchain, seamless servicing, and full alignment with existing regulatory frameworks.
Issuers can now include Issuer-Sponsored Tokens (ISTs) as part of their issued capital alongside existing shares, including those held in the Direct Registration System (DRS). The change gives participating issuers greater flexibility in how shares are issued, while allowing shareholders to choose how they prefer to hold their securities.
TradeStation Group
TradeStation Securities, Inc. (“TradeStation”), the brokerage firm built for active equity and derivatives traders, today announced that Quasar Markets, Inc.*, a research and execution workflow platform, has connected to TradeStation’s execution services. This integration expands the ecosystem of third parties connected to TradeStation’s execution services via the TradeStation API.
The integration enables traders to move more efficiently from Quasar Markets’ market research and portfolio analysis to live trade execution with TradeStation. By connecting insights and execution in a single workflow, traders can maintain momentum and make decisions faster without disrupting their existing trading setup.
With this connectivity, users can review watchlists, monitor portfolio exposure, evaluate setups, and route trades directly through TradeStation. The Quasar platform also delivers institutional-grade market data in a clean, decision-ready format, allowing traders to analyze markets and act with confidence. Traders can identify an opportunity in a volatility strategy, assess it in the context of their portfolio, and execute the trade† with the reliability of TradeStation’s brokerage services.
Trust & Will
Trust & Will, the leader in online estate planning, today announced the appointment of Bill Parker as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). In this role, Parker will lead the company’s technology and engineering strategy, overseeing platform development, AI innovation, and the infrastructure powering Trust & Will’s intelligent estate planning system for families, advisors, attorneys, nonprofits, and institutions nationwide.
Parker brings more than two decades of technology leadership experience across fintech and proptech, with a proven track record of building and scaling high-growth platforms. Most recently, he served as CTO at Leap, where he led product, engineering, information security, and infrastructure while driving a company-wide transformation toward AI-native product development. Before that, he was CTO at Built Technologies, where he scaled the product and engineering organization through a 10x growth period, taking the platform to more than $100 billion in construction spend managed. Earlier in his career, Parker spent nearly 17 years at Quicken Loans / Rocket Companies, rising from engineering and architecture roles to being hand-selected to build Rocket Loans from the ground up, serving as CTO before transitioning to CEO of the business.
In his new role, Parker will oversee Trust & Will’s engineering organization and technology roadmap as the company continues to scale across its growing network of more than one million users, 26,000+ financial advisors, and 145+ enterprise partners. He will also guide continued investment in AI-powered capabilities, including intelligent document workflows, personalized planning guidance, and life event intelligence for families and the professionals who serve them.
Wealth Access
Wealth Access, the Connected Intelligence Platform that enables financial institutions to See As One, today announced a strategic partnership with Candescent, a leading Intelligent Banking platform serving more than 1,300 banks and credit unions. The partnership gives financial institutions a direct path to solve one of the most persistent and costly problems in retail banking: clients who bank with an institution for decades and still move their wealth somewhere else.
Industry data highlights a clear opportunity for financial institutions. Research from the American Bankers Association found that while nearly 60% of U.S. households hold investment accounts, institutions capture only 4% of those accounts from their own customers. In many cases, this gap stems from fragmented data. Digital banking teams and wealth teams operate on separate systems, limiting visibility into the full client relationship. As a result, everyday digital interactions often lack the context needed to support timely, informed conversations that could strengthen long‑term relationships.
Through this partnership, Wealth Access and Candescent will work together to support a more connected, insight‑driven approach across the client experience. By aligning intelligence across banking and wealth relationships, institutions can create more relevant engagement, moving beyond one‑size‑fits‑all campaigns toward interactions informed by a clearer understanding of each customer or member’s financial picture.
