Northern Trust Asset Management will acquire Belvedere Advisors, a registered investment advisor. In doing so, Northern Trust will also acquire Emotomy, Belvedere’s digital investment advice platform tailored for financial advisors. Northern Trust Asset Management President Shundrawn Thomas hailed the deal, which was announced today.
“This strategic acquisition reaffirms our commitment to partnering with the financial advisor community to deeply understand their needs and provide best-in-class investment solutions and technology to help them serve their clients more efficiently and effectively,” he said.
Emotomy is a an open-architecture, customizable advice platform, which enables advisors to select from preconstructed models or construct their own, offering access to a number of investment options and custodial providers. Additional tools available include portfolio research and construction, account reviews, investment suggestions and other resources; the platform is integrated with Pershing Advisor Solutions and TD Ameritrade Institutional, among others. Belvedere was founded in 2005 and is based in San Francisco. The Emotomy platform has been built out in house over the past four years. According to the firm's latest form ADV filed with the SEC in late June, Belvedere/Emotomy had a total of $130 million in discretionary assets on the platform and $1.8 billion being managed by other advisors.
Last year, Emotomy’s risk assessment tool was selected as a finalist for TD Ameritrade International’s first competition among tech designed specifically for financial advisors and clients (Emotomy submitted a tool with machine-learning algorithms that would warn registered investment advisors when client accounts were at risk of leaving in the hopes to spur more client/advisor interaction to prevent the loss).
The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2019, according to Northern Trust and Belvedere. Afterward the latter firm will operate as an independent and wholly owned subsidiary of Northern Trust Investments. Northern Trust Asset Management has more than $900 billion of investors’ assets (Northern Trust as a whole had $1.2 trillion in assets under management as of last month).
