Altruist, which launched its self-clearing platform earlier this year, announced new integrations with Orion’s portfolio accounting software, Orion’s Redtail CRM, Kwanti’s portfolio analytics and portfolio analysis software, MoneyGuide’s MoneyGuidePro, IncomeLab’s Life Hub and eMoney’s financial planning software.
This adds to Altruist’s existing integrations with Wealthbox, Right Capital, Black Diamond, Advyzon and Nitrogen. More integrations with ACA, SmartRIA, Morningstar and ByAllAccounts will also be introduced early next year, according to the company.
Some of these integrations involve syncing financial data from Altruist to portfolio accounting, CRM and risk analysis software, while others bring CRM and third-party custodial data into Altruist so advisors can import their client's holdings and data.
Harpreet Ahluwalia, chief product officer at Altruist, said the firm integrates into Orion by sending household, account and position data in Altruist to Orion's portfolio accounting software.
Altruist also integrates into Orion's Redtail CRM, allowing advisors to open accounts faster by pulling in their Redtail client data to pre-fill client details and demographics. This integration, which is similar to the one they have with Wealthbox, seeks to eliminate manual data entry and onboard clients more quickly, he said.
Altruist Chief Product Officer Harpreet Ahluwalia
Altruist also offers portfolio data aggregation from custodians including Schwab, Fidelity and Pershing.
To gather information about which integrations would be most useful, Altruist surveyed an internal forum of advisors, Ahluwalia said. Most advisors reported using CRM and financial planning software, and, in some cases, specialized performance reporting or risk analytics applications.
“While we have some of these features built into our product, we want to be very flexible and open to an advisor’s existing tech stack and their preferences,” he said. “We wanted to have integrations across all the categories of software that a financial advisor might be using.”
Looking forward, Ahluwalia said they were looking to build out an integrations marketplace, where customers who are shopping for software can look at all the integrations that Altruist offers and learn more about each vendor. He said the marketplace would have a detailed profile of each vendor with videos and screenshots of how the integration works, in addition to reviews from existing customers.
“I imagine it to look almost like an app store of integrations where you can search, find and learn about these integrations and then easily enable them,” he said.
Ahluwalia said some of their advisors were looking to embed Altruist’s account opening and funding workflows into their applications or within Salesforce or Orion. As a result, he said they were seeking to open APIs to some of their “more sophisticated clients that might have developers to be able to essentially recreate a version of our account opening flow within their homegrown applications.”
“They may have something that they’ve built out … that they are already used to,” he said. “We want to be able to embed some of our functionality directly within that instead of having to log into Altruist.”
William Trout, director of wealth management for Javelin Strategy and Research, said integrations such as these were critical to streamlining workflows and improving the advisor and client experience. Given high fixed costs and pricing pressures faced by advisors, these integrations are essential to create efficiency, he said.
After years as an “introducing broker/dealer,” Altruist took the final step in becoming a full-service custodian earlier this year.
Just weeks later, Altruist announced its acquisition of Shareholders Service Group, a brokerage and custodial services platform, giving Altruist close to 10% market share of total RIA firms, SSG’s service organization and a relationship with Pershing, SSG’s clearing and custody provider.
In April, the company said it raised $112 million in series D funding, led by Insight Partners, new investor Adams Street, as well as existing investors. That round brought its total funding to more than $290 million.
Altruist now serves more than 4,000 advisors.
