Welcome to the April 2023 issue of #AdvisorTech for the latest news in the financial industry. Here, we cover the big news, announcements, underlying trends and developments emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors.
This month’s issue is the news that RIA custodial platform Altruist is building its own complete self-clearing capability, while simultaneously acquiring a competing (non-self-clearing) custodian, Shareholder Services Group (SSG). to start. It suggests that Altruist has reached a tipping point in terms of growth and scale in its business as a self-clearing manager (and intends to push that growth even further in view of the SSG acquisition). Custodians of the “Big 3” (or part of the new “Big 4”) of Schwab/TDAmeritrade, Fidelity and Pershing.
From there, the latest highlights also include exciting advisor technology announcements such as:
- BlackRock has closed the retail arm of its robo-advisor FutureAdvisor and transferred clients to Ritholz Wealth Management. This is another sign that D2C robo-advisors are struggling to gain momentum given the high cost of customer acquisition.
- Absolute Engagement launched the Engagement Engine tool, giving advisors the opportunity to inject input from their clients into their workflows, helping clients feel heard, understood, and engaged on issues that matter to them. be available.
- Advice Delivery and Engagement Platform Lumiant has raised $3.5 million in seed funding to support its growth as it builds an “end-to-end” financial planning and advice engagement platform. existing financial planning software?)
Read this month’s column for an analysis of these announcements and discussion of trends in advisor technology, including:
- FP Alpha separates its Estate Planning Lab solution for automatically reading and summarizing clients’ estate planning documents, available as a standalone option, and deploys a new P&C insurance snapshot tool.another document
- Sora Finance is a debt (re)financing tool that allows advisors to take a more active role in their clients’ “debt under management” by executing refinancing opportunities and purchasing new loans. Raised $3.9 million, aiming to grab attention inat the most favorable rate
We also provided an update to our popular Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map (and added changes to our AdvisorTech directory), so be sure to read all the way through.
*Also, if you are a #AdvisorTech company wishing to submit a technical announcement for consideration in future issues, please do so at TechNews@kitces.com.
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