It was a bit slower this week in adviser fintech land, with many presumably taking advantage of the three-day weekend to enjoy an early summer vacation, or, if my Twitter feed is any indication, flying down to Florida for the WealthStack conference.
However, we did see United Planners sign a deal with cleverDome for cybersecurity, Envestnet acquiring 401kplans.com for expanded retirement offerings and Savant Wealth Management making a $3 million investment in Australian fintech Lumiant to help it expand in the U.S.
Read on to catch up on the rest of the week’s fintech headlines, and be sure to let me know what you think either on Twitter or email.
Adviser fintech company Tifin launched Magnifi+, a service offering streaming video content and investing insights from financial professionals like Jeffrey Gundlach, Cathie Wood, Kyle Bass and Mark Fisher. The launch comes after a six-episode pilot series that the company says attracted millions of views and sparked a 44% increase in the number of financial advisers registered for Magnifi, Tifin’s investment marketplace.
Given the short lifespan of CNN+ (notice the similar names), I’m skeptical about the viability of an even more niche video streaming platform. But Tifin’s ongoing growth and ability to attract investments continues to surprise, so we shall see.
55ip, the tax optimization software that J..P. Morgan Asset Management acquired from Tifin in 2020, is adding tax transition and automated tax overlay services to GeoWealth, a new turnkey asset management and fintech company.
GeoWealth is one of several newcomers to the TAMP space hoping to ride a wave of increasing adviser outsourcing. The company says 55ip’s tax capabilities, which were obviously attractive enough for a firm like JPAM to scoop it up, can help advisers through this period of market volatility, but it remains to be seen if it's enough to drive advisers to GeoWealth.
AdvisorEngine, the adviser fintech brand under the Franklin Templeton umbrella, released an upgraded version of its portfolio management software that the company says has been in development for 18 months. The enhancements include performance reporting capabilities within the client portal, optimized rebalancing and new automated fee billing.
The company is working hard to make AdvisorEngine an all-in-one solution for advisers’ tech stack. It released a redesigned CRM in January, and the enhancements to its portfolio management capabilities are likely to aimed at winning business from companies like Orion Advisor Solutions, Morningstar Office and Envestnet.
Intelliflo, the fintech company owned by Invesco, announced that it has signed 20 financial advisory firms for the cloud-based version of its portfolio rebalancing and trading software, RedBlack. The benefits of the cloud allow firms to be more efficient and improve business continuity, said Steve Tuttle, chief investment strategist at Signet Financial Management, which moved to RedBlack Cloud in 2022.
It’s a positive development for a company that so far hasn’t generated much traction in the adviser market. Among trading and rebalancing fintechs, intelliflo RedBlack has a 0.40% market share, according to T3’s 2022 survey of financial adviser software. The leaders in the space, iRebal and Envestnet Tamarac, control 9.03% and 8.63% of the market, respectively.
Aspiring financial planners participating in the BLX Internship Program, a nonprofit organization that helps Black and Latinx individuals enter the industry, will now get access to technology from eMoney Advisor, the financial planning fintech brand owned by Fidelity Investments. BLX interns can use eMoney Premier, the company’s top-of-the-line planning software, and can earn a certification in the ability to use the software to show future employers.
Providing students with free access to fintech is nothing new for the industry, or even for eMoney, which in 2019 counted 60 schools using its software in financial planning courses. The hope is that students become advocates for the software at firms that hire them and help increase industrywide adoption. If it helps increase diversity in the industry, then everyone wins.
ACA Group and Foreside Financial Group, two providers of governance, risk and compliance technology for financial advisers, have merged to become one of the world’s largest providers of GRC services. The combining business will have more than 1,250 employees and serve 6,300 clients. Foreside’s distribution business will be rebranded as ACA Foreside and operate as a division under the ACA brand name.
This merger has been anticipated since private equity firm Genstar Capital acquired a majority stake in Foreside in July 2021. As advisers increasingly look to automation to keep up with changing regulatory demands, it’ll be interesting to see how ACA’s size helps it claim market share.
Cloudwall Capital, which describes itself as a digital asset risk management startup, raised $6.3 million in seed funding to bridge the traditional finance world with digital assets and decentralized finance. The company is building a product called Serenity to provide institutional investors with risk management insights for building portfolios using digital assets.
Despite the recent pullback of the cryptocurrency market, there's no shortage of entrepreneurs hoping to get rich by bringing asset managers, banks and financial advisers into the asset class. The hope is that adding institutional investments will raise the price high enough to rekindle retail investors’ hopes, but Cloudwall will face stiff competition from dozens of other startups hoping to accomplish the same goal. The venture capital may be flowing, but this isn’t a field of dreams. Just cause you build it, doesn’t mean they will come.
Formerly Aberdeen Asset Management, the company now known as abrdn has acquired interactive investor, a UK-based retail investing fintech for do-it-yourself investors. Interactive investor has more than 400,000 customers with an average account balance of $181,000 (£145,000).
First, what’s with both companies insisting on going all lower-case with their names? Apologies to my editor in advance. Second, while this deal doesn’t really touch the U.S. adviser market, it’s interesting how the trend of institutional firms investing in going directly to retail investors spans markets beyond the U.S. If asset managers can successfully build pipelines with retail investors and introduce them to proprietary wealth management and advice, it could make things tougher on independent advisers.
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