Hundreds of executives from leading asset managers, custodians, brokerages and technology vendors came together at the third-annual Wealthmanagement.com Industry Awards on Wednesday to celebrate excellence among the vendors and suppliers who serve the financial advisor community.
Envestnet was the night’s biggest winner with four awards, earning honors for the best turnkey asset management platform (TAMP), portfolio accounting technology, it’s role as a technology disruptor and for the Tamarac client portal. The company also led the way in nominations, being named a finalist in 15 different categories.
Charles Schwab and Morningstar each took home three awards, known as the "Wealthies," while eMoney Advisor, Pershing, TD Ameritrade and Wealth Access each won two.
View the winners
The awards, which were presented at a black-tie gala at The Plaza hotel in New York City, celebrate the year’s best initiatives to help advisors build better practices and more effectively serve their clients. A panel of independent judges scored nearly 500 initiatives from more than 300 companies–a record high number for the awards—on the basis of their scope, scale, adoption and feature set as well as qualitative measures like innovation and creativity.
The list was culled to 127 finalist companies. In the end, 54 Wealthies were given out to 43 different firms. A full list of winners can be seen here.
WealthManagement.com editor-in-chief David Armstrong said the winners are offering “first-rate products and services” to advisors, helping them “build better practices by giving them the tools they need – be it professional services, technology platforms or simply new ideas around investment management.”
“These companies deserve to be recognized for doing noble work, as these initiatives help advisors provide a more prosperous future for countless clients, large and small,” Armstrong said.
This year’s event also included an Executive Forum, which included keynote speakers, CEO panel discussions, and breakout roundtables on wealth management technology, sales and distribution, the broker/dealer landscape and marketing best practices.
William O’Conor, WealthManagement.com’s managing director, said he hopes the awards and the Executive Forum will inspire future innovation and create an environment that truly supports advisors to be leaders to their clients and communities.
“Each of these firms can learn from what the others are doing,” O’Conor said. “Bringing these companies together for the awards event helps facilitate that dialogue in a way that will benefit the industry overall, but most importantly financial advisors and their clients.”
A portion of the proceeds from the 2017 Industry Awards will be donated to the Foundation for Financial Planning, an organization dedicated to providing pro bono financial planning to underserved communities.
