VettaFi, the ETF data, research and indexing firm, announced this week it purchased the financial advisor-focused digital publisher Advisor Perspectives.
Founded in 2007, Advisor Perspectives curates market commentary from asset managers and solicits industry-contributed practice management articles, delivered via emailed newsletters and on the Advisor Perspectives website. Their “proprietary database” of email contacts contains “hundreds of thousands of financial professionals,” according to the announcement.
“Today, with this acquisition, VettaFi’s emailable reach increased over 200%, including a 300% lift in the registered financial advisor segment,” VettaFi CMO Jon Fee said in the statement. “We are determined to harness this growth into positive outcomes for advisors of all sizes as they grow and navigate the future of finance.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but insiders with knowledge of Advisor Perspectives say the firm's revenues fall between $2 million and $3 million annually, mostly derived from digital advertising and webinar sponsorships.
According to Fee, VettaFi is working to create a community within the financial services industry. “With Advisor Perspectives coming into the fold, our community of investors is now bigger and stronger,” he said. “We look forward to unlocking best practices, peer-to-peer learning and data-driven insights across the wealth advisory landscape.”
“[Advisor Perspectives has] built one of the most robust advisor databases in the industry, which, when coupled with the massive data warehouse built and collated by the VettaFi team, makes VettaFi the clear leader in researching, understanding and connecting with financial advisors about products and solutions,” added Tom Hendrickson, VettaFi’s chief product and innovation officer.
Advisor Perspectives is the latest addition to the VettaFi universe, joining ETF Trends, ETF Database, S-Network Global Indexes and Alerian.
“I am very excited about the new ways we can bring value to advisors and the broader community we serve and look forward to joining the VettaFi team as a leader post-transaction and building on what we have grown over the last 15 years,” said Bob Huebscher, founder and CEO at Advisor Perspectives. “Our mission will continue to be to help advisors enable their clients to meet their financial goals.”
The news of Advisor Perspectives' acquisition comes just days after Bonhill Group Plc, filed a regulatory notice announcing the company was formally soliciting offers for the company, which includes advisor publication Investment News along with a series of European financial events. Current Bonhill executives told RIABiz the company had largely been mismanaged by the previous management team, which acquired the publication in 2018 and would expect 1.5 times revenue in a sale. Bonhill reported almost $7 million in revenue for the first six months of the year, with half of that coming from Investment News.
