The biggest story in technology this week is the ongoing layoffs happening at the largest companies in the world.
Facebook parent company Meta let go 11,000 employees; Alphabet got rid of 12,000, including Google's in-house massage therapists; and Amazon is continuing its process of eliminating 18,000 employees worldwide. Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees the same week it reported $52.7 billion in quarterly revenue and made a $10 billion investment into OpenAI.
I’ve been wondering if and when this is going to trickle down into the niche of financial advisor fintech. Some companies have already done some layoffs, but I’ve received a lot of pitches over the years from a lot of small startups that I’ve never heard from again. What happened to them, or how are they doing these days?
Some layoffs have already occurred in the wealth fintech space, and we’ll likely see more, but most companies serving advisors benefit from being private companies that don’t have to publicly disclose financial information. Their public relations teams aren’t going to come to InvestmentNews to talk about a round of cost-cutting layoffs, but it’s important for advisors to know how their tech providers are doing. These tools can play crucial roles in how advisors manage a retiree’s savings, a family’s college fund or a business’s workplace benefits.
So if you’re an employee at an advisor fintech that's going through budget crunching, reach out to me on email or social media to tell your story.
On the bright side, not everything is doom and gloom. We have new partnerships, products and funding to talk about. Here are the rest of the week’s fintech headlines.
Asset-Map has a deal to bring its financial planning software to 8,000 financial professionals in Cetera’s network of advisors, tax professionals, banks and credit unions. Cetera will get access to Asset-Map Reports, which help advisors visualize a family’s entire holdings in a single interactive view, as well as products for prospecting, event risk indicators and goals-based planning.
This is a big win for Asset-Map in terms of exposure to financial advisors and the assets they manage. So-called “enterprise deals” are where advisor fintech companies are focusing their energies to grow, which makes sense. While individual RIAs can be a bit more nimble in selecting fintech, it requires companies like Asset-Map selling door-to-door, so to speak. A deal with a firm like Cetera instead gets the company in front of thousands of advisors, all at once.
The next generation of products MSCI builds for asset managers, banks, insurance firms and wealth managers will use an investment data platform build natively on Google Cloud. That platform allows MSCI to acquire, ingest and process data more quickly by using tools like Google’s artificial intelligence and natural language process technologies.
For years, Amazon Web Services was a dominant power in serving as cloud data provider to companies in the financial services sector. I can’t remember a project of this scale instead aligning with Google Cloud, and it could be an indicator that Google is looking to be a much bigger player in the space. Don’t discount Microsoft, either. One reason it invested $10 billion into OpenAI is to incorporate it into its own cloud services offering.
A new workflow within Morningstar’s Advisor Workstation brings in the company’s investment data, research and ratings to help advisors build a comprehensive set of investment recommendations. Like financial planning engines, advisors input a client’s risk tolerance, sustainability convictions and goals to surface specific product recommendations to achieve those goals.
A common gripe I hear from advisors about many financial planning tools is the struggle to put a plan in action. The software is great at working with a client to build a plan, but there can be hurdles when it comes to opening the accounts and selecting the investment products. By focusing on the investment implementation part of the equation, Morningstar’s new product could address this — and help prove that recommendations were made in clients’ best interests if a regulator comes knocking.
Mobile financial monitoring technology Elements secured a $5 million seed extension round led by Flyover Capital. The company has grown tenfold since January 2022 and now counts 260 firms as clients.
Elements is all about making it easier to deliver actionable financial advice, such as its “one-page financial plan” that claims to be an easy-to-digest guide advisors can deliver via mobile device. It remains to be seen whether Elements can break through in the advisor fintech space.
Portfolio analytics fintech Kwanti has a new product called Screener that helps advisers find the best-performing assets and product fits for a client’s financial needs. Advisors can search millions of ETFs, mutual funds, SMAs and individual stocks to come up with a narrow list based on specific criteria they set. Screener will show products similar to any assets, comparing up to four products to help advisors find an asset that may be a better fit.
Products like this make so much sense that it’s a bit mind-blowing that they aren’t already ubiquitous throughout the industry. It can help advisors go deeper in their analysis and easily build a custom-tailored portfolio for clients.
The company formerly known as Bridge Financial Technology, which provides API-based digital infrastructure to wealth management firms, has rebranded to BridgeFT in conjunction with the launch of its latest product: WealthTech API. BridgeFT CEO Joe Stensland said WealthTech API will help firms “control their own digital experiences” by providing trade-ready and accurate data from multiple custodians, removing the need for manual reconciliation and eliminating time spent on in-house data aggregation.
BridgeFT pitches its product as “enabling better outcomes” and “reimagining the potential of data” that can solve all the problems of legacy technology that many financial services firms use. The words “seamless” and “streamline” and “empower” and “turnkey” are all in there, but it’s unclear what WealthTech API actually does beyond data aggregation. Perhaps BridgeFT really has an improvement over what's out there for advisors, but there are many who want to provide firms with API-based infrastructure.
Digital client engagement fintech Lumiant is leveraging the practice management mentors at DMW Strategic Consulting to advise wealth management firms on how they incorporate Lumiant’s products into their practice. DMW will also provide Lumiant customers with education on practice management and how to design and implement an effective client experience. More than 60 firms currently use Lumiant, according to the company.
The partnership is all about helping advisers improve “client experience," that nebulous term that nobody can quite define but that everyone is very sure advisors are bad at. DMW principal Dennis Moseley-Williams said Lumiant’s technology “prioritizes life outcomes and client needs over financial returns.” Will that drive referrals, retention and revenue growth? We’ll see.
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