Franklin Templeton joins a wave of deals in the direct or custom indexing space, with its plan to acquire O'Shaughnessy Asset Management and its custom indexing platform, Canvas.

MassMutual is debuting a crypto platform for RIAs, called Flourish Crypto, with third-party integrations to services from eMoney Advisor, Orion and Envestnet.

Crypto is risky, but the integration will unlock greater transparency into its diversification and correlation characteristics, says Riskalyze CEO Aaron Klein.

Charles Schwab is piloting Schwab Personalized Indexing among its employees, with plans for a 2022 launch for mass affluent investors and advisors.

Fidelity is rolling out the ability to trade fractional shares of equities and ETFs in real time initially for its RIA custody clients, with plans to expand to clearing clients in the next several months.

Conviction has been rising in recent years that slicing bonds by factors like value and price momentum provides a way to outperform traditional investing styles.