Here is your Riskalyze Fintech Five for June, a focused take on what we think are the recent top five stories in wealth management technology.
1. WealthManagement.com Announces 2022 'Wealthies' Finalists
Our first story today is all about celebrating innovation in wealth management. That’s right, we’re talking about the recently announced 2022 nominees for the Wealthies, WealthManagement.com’s annual awards that recognize the leaders and organizations making waves in fintech.
This year, 225 different organizations were selected as finalists, including 92 firms recognized for Outstanding Achievement across multiple categories.
Leading the way with the most nominations was Orion, Carson Group, TIFIN, and Riskalyze —what a great opportunity to celebrate and recognize great innovation in our space.
The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Sept. 8 in New York City.
2. Envestnet Streamlines their Organization
Next up is a big announcement from Envestnet. The tech firm will be streamlining their organization in the coming months, with President and former Tamarac CEO Stuart DePina stepping down. Three new units will form the core structure of the company moving forward: Solutions, Data and Analytics, and WealthTech.
Dana D’Auria will be group president of Envestnet Solutions, which has the core Envestnet platform for broker-dealers and their many TAMP offerings; Farouk Ferchichi will lead Data and Analytics; and Tony Leal will be head of Envestnet Wealthtech, which brings Tamarac under his purview. Tom Sipp will be EVP of Business Lines and tie it all together under CEO Bill Crager.
Congratulations to each of these great leaders—the industry is excited to see the impact of these big changes in the coming months.
3. Orion Completes Redtail Acquisition
One of the biggest stories to rock the fintech sphere so far this year was Orion’s out-of-nowhere acquisition of industry giant Redtail. And now, the integration is officially underway.
According to last year’s T3 tech survey, Redtail holds 62% of the market in the advisor CRM space. With this news, Orion has massively increased their scale with insight into over $3 trillion in assets under administration. For now, Redtail will continue to operate as it always has, as a standalone subsidiary of Orion.
Speaking of Orion, Dr. Daniel Crosby, Orion’s Chief Behavioral Officer has always been a Twitter sensation to us, and now the world has caught on to the industry’s best kept secret.
On June 8th, he tweeted about his love for Diet Coke, which went viral and garnered over a half a million likes and a shout out from Elon Musk. Congratulations Daniel—we look forward to finding out which brand you’re going to give millions of dollars in free advertising to next.
4. A Boom in Texting Spurs Latest Smarsh Acquisition
And in other acquisition news, archiving giant Smarsh continues their acquisition spree with their latest deal: Telemessage—a mobile messaging, voice capture and archiving company that will help users keep track of text conversations.
Now, Smarsh can expand their communications and archiving capabilities to better serve clients across several industries, especially financial services. Now, their employee monitoring capabilities include popular apps like WhatsApp, WeChat and Telegram.
As communication channels seem to be infinitely expanding, this is welcome news for advisors who want to offer clients the flexibility of using whichever platform they prefer—and it’s news that drives home Smarsh’s status as a leader in archiving for finserv.
5. Lumiant Enters U.S. Market with Values-Based Financial Life Advice Platform
Last, we’ve got the latest from Lumiant, an Australia-based advice and client engagement platform that’s just over 1 year old. Founded in February 2021, they’ve recently announced their plans to enter the U.S. market.
Taking the lead stateside will be Blake Wood, who joins Lumiant from his last role as SVP of Corporate Strategy at Envestnet.
Just this past April, Lumiant was named to Fintech Global’s Wealth 100 List as one of the world’s most innovative wealthtech solutions. It’ll be interesting to see what this fresh, client-centric company will bring to the states, and how it will shape the finserv community’s approach to building strong client relationships.
