Who isn’t ready for a holiday?
The week has been filled with controversial decisions by the Supreme Court that impacted issues ranging from gun rights to abortion to environmental protection and more. It’s been a week of intense emotions and serious debate, and it’s OK to be feeling exhausted.
Hopefully the Independence Day holiday can be a respite for all of us, a chance to set aside differences and enjoy time with our neighbors, friends and family. Enjoy a cold one, a baseball game and some fireworks, if that’s your thing. If that’s not your thing, well, I hope you enjoy whatever your thing is! To me, that’s more of what we have in common in America than what separates us.
If nothing else, please enjoy this kid having an intense battle with a melting bowl of ice cream on a hot day.
Nothing says "summer" to me quite like that. Great stuff.
Now, for your three-day weekend reading, here's a recap of some of the adviser fintech news you may have missed.
Flourish Crypto, the digital assets-for-advisers fintech owned by MassMutual, is providing RIAs on its platform with complimentary access to education from Ric Edelman’s Digital Assets Council of Financial Professionals. Specifically, advisers get access to an introductory course designed to help them become fluent on topics like the blockchain, bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets.
The past couple of months have been rough on digital assets, with everything from bitcoin to NFTs falling hard. However, investor interest in the asset class hasn’t wavered, according to Bank of America. Even crypto skeptics should at least learn about the industry so they can intelligently talk to clients about it. The head-in-the-sand approach just doesn’t cut it.
Marstone, a white-label digital advice platform, has a new partnership to provide its technology to clients of asset management firm American Century Investments. American Century plans to use Marstone to launch a digital-first business line that lowers initial investment amounts and opens its portfolios to a broader client base.
With $230 billion in assets, American Century is another big get for Marstone, which has also worked with Interactive Brokers, HSBC Bank USA and BNY Mellon Pershing — though Marstone has been a bit under the radar recently. But the trend of asset management firms launching digital advice platforms is already several years in the rearview mirror. Is it too little, too late for American Century?
Private equity firms Clearlake Capital Group and Motive Partners have closed the acquisition of BETA+, the $1.1 billion back-office technology suite previously owned by the London Stock Exchange, a deal that was first announced in March. Effectively immediately, the company — which offers post-trade processing, cost and tax reporting software, and front-end client tools — has been renamed BetaNXT.
Both PE firms are major players in the U.S. wealth management market, and it should be interesting to see where this technology ends up going. The mostly likely destination is an integration with InvestCloud, the rapidly growing TAMP and technology provider that both Motive and Clearlake have stakes in. Motive also owns equity stakes in alternative investment giant CAIS, and FNZ, a global wealthtech provider.
Advisers using Advisor360 for an all-in-one technology suite can now view and report on clients’ beneficiary arrangements across investment and insurance products in a single digital dashboard. By integrating beneficiaries across products, including annuities, advisers don’t have to visit multiple websites, which the company claims will streamline meeting preparation.
When it comes to technology, there are few things advisers loathe more than the “swivel chair experience” of having to open up new programs every time they need to perform a different task or look up different information. Not only does it waste time, but it creates more opportunities for mistakes. Bringing everything together into one experience, as Advisor360 is doing here with beneficiaries, remains the prime directive of integration.
Relationships are key to our business but advisors are often slow to engage in specific activities designed to foster them.
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Pro-bitcoin professionals, however, say the cryptocurrency has ushered in change.
“LPL has evolved significantly over the last decade and still wants to scale up,” says one industry executive.
Survey findings from the Nationwide Retirement Institute offers pearls of planning wisdom from 60- to 65-year-olds, as well as insights into concerns.
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