Here is your Riskalyze Fintech Five for November, a focused take on what we think are the recent top five stories in wealth management technology.
1. Analysts: Envestnet, FNZ Partnership Could Alter RIA Custodial Landscape
Some have referred to Envestnet as a financial services supermarket. Whatever you need, they’ve got it.
Now they might just become the Walmart Supercenter—Envestnet is once again stepping up to add more capabilities, and this time, it’s custody.
To do it, they’re partnering with FNZ, a digital custodian based in New Zealand that recently acquired State Street’s institutional custody business in the US.
With the absorption of TD Ameritrade into Schwab, there is likely room for competition among custodians, but as many already know, it’s an uphill climb to gain traction.
Envestnet might just have the user base and infrastructure to make it work. What advisors want from their custodians is more innovation, and rolling custody right into the existing Envestnet suite of services could be a compelling offer.
The biggest question I have is, how will this impact Envestnet’s relationship with existing custodians? Will it cause new tension? Will everyone continue to get along? It’s going to be interesting for sure.
2. Orion announces Redtail Campaigns powered by Snappy Kraken
It’s always good to see friends team up, and it’s even better when it results in advisors getting access to a constellation of marketing capabilities at the snap of their fingers.
I’m talking, of course, about Orion’s newly acquired CRM, Redtail, launching a new offering called Redtail Campaigns, built on top of the Snappy Kraken marketing automation engine.
Marketing is at its best when you can use data to inform your next communication. By putting Snappy Kraken’s automated marketing campaigns into Redtail, advisors are able to get a clear view of which prospective customers are interacting with their content so they can apply workflows effectively.
This integration connects Snappy’s large library of automated marketing campaigns with Redtail, so advisors can launch new campaigns to highly engaged prospects, and do it all without ever leaving the Redtail CRM.
As a Snappy board member and fan of what Orion and Redtail are doing with their CRM and asset platform, this new offering gets a big thumbs up from me.
3. Crypto Markets Extend Losses as Binance Seen Balking at FTX Takeover
Fraud has a new tell—when a 30-year-old multi-billionaire who badly needs a haircut claims to give all his money away while actually living in a penthouse in the Bahamas—run screaming from the room.
FTX is a name known by many beyond financial services thanks to their Super Bowl advertising, ubiquitous sponsorships of things like MLB umpire uniforms and the Miami Heat basketball arena.
And now, FTX is how you spell FRAUD. Some have compared it to Lehman Brothers or Enron, but a far better analogy is MF Global, who former Governor Jon Corzine crashed into bankruptcy in 2011.
Here again we have an unethical leader who stole customer deposits and bet them in a massive leveraged gamble to make money for himself. The wreckage could include close to $20 billion in customer assets, not to mention confidence in the entire digital assets space.
Political giving shouldn’t get you off the hook. This is the kind of thing they build prisons for. I hope prosecutors have this fraudster behind bars soon.
4. Fidelity Pilots Direct Indexing Offering for Advisors
The trend toward personalized services is everywhere. You see it in your Netflix queue, your Amazon suggested searches, and even in investment portfolios.
Direct indexing has been a hot trend for several years among WealthTech providers, TAMPs, and others, and now Fidelity is jumping into the fray with the announcement of its Custom Separately Managed Accounts for institutional clients.
But even though it’s been a trend to offer direct indexing, it’s still early for most advisory firms to embrace the ability and extend it to clients—primarily because there are some serious customer experience tradeoffs like complex statements and super-long 1099s that not every client wants to sign up for.
Will a custody-level offering from Fidelity bend that curve? We’ll be watching closely.
5. Hubly Rolls Out Automatic Task Assignment Features
It may not be a sure bet that advisors will embrace direct indexing, but one thing that is certain is that busy advisors need help managing a seemingly never-ending list of tasks.
That’s where Hubly enters the conversation. The tech solution overlays on Redtail or Wealthbox to create automated task workflows. And get this: It can even auto-assign tasks to certain team members based on their role and the type of task, and it looks for ways to intelligently balance workloads across your team.
Michael Kitces’ Fintech Map may be getting larger every year, but I love to see new, innovative companies like this adding value to the advisor’s work day.
Riskalyze to Rebrand Company, Change Name in 2023
I’ll cap off today’s Fintech Five with a special bonus story.
When Riskalyze entered the arena in 2011, the Risk Number revolutionized the way that advisors measured and talked about true risk tolerance with their clients.
Since those beginnings, we’ve evolved far beyond risk questionnaires. We’ve added deep portfolio analytics, research tools, stress tests, investment policy statements, retirement maps, scenario modelling and compliance analytics.
With all of those changes, I recently shared that while our product will continue to be known as Riskalyze, we plan to adopt a new company brand early in 2023 to tell our story in a broader way.
That’s all I can share for now, but keep your eyes on the news. You may even find out about our new name right here in the Fintech Five.
Watch past episodes of the Fintech 5
