AI firm YourStake has agreed to provide API integrations to custodian Apex Fintech Solutions.
The first such API will be YourStake’s Document-to-Portfolio, which aims to allow users to upload images or PDF files of account statements from brokerages and banks. After being scanned using AI, YourStake will then digitize this information.
As a result, users should be able to import files or take pictures of these documents with their smartphones, upload them and receive real-time financial analysis.
In addition, once YourStake imports this information, account transfer details can be automatically populated.
Gabe Rissman, co-founder and president of YourStake (and one of WealthManagement.com's Ten to Watch in 2022), said one of the significant problems they hope to solve for advisors and clients with their AI technology is the manual entry usually required to extract information from these sorts of documents. He said firms can then reduce the turnaround time for entering statements, building portfolios, running analytics and comparing current and proposed portfolios.
Connor Coughlin, chief commercial officer at Apex, said the average advisor spends a significant amount of time “on minutia and manual tasks.”
“With this API … you’re getting the best of both worlds, both in the front office to help that client and in the back office,” he said.
Rissman said the process for scanning documents with YourStake starts with Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, which “turns everything into a big blob of text.” The software then uses traditional algorithms and several AI engines to classify the document type. YourStake then offers validation checks using proprietary tools to ensure accuracy. He said they are currently at a 97% to 98% first-try success rate.
“What we do well is extract information when possible and provide the error handling to be still able to return helpful data and return what to do about it if there’s something wrong with the document itself,” he said.
Rissman said that when it comes to cybersecurity, YourStake and all the vendors it uses are Service Organization Control Type 2 (SOC 2) certified.
Coughlin said this API would be available on the Apex marketplace and additive to the custody services pricing.
YourStake was launched in November 2019 as an ESG platform for advisors by Rissman and Patrick Reed, who were both former Yale students active in the school’s fossil fuel divestment efforts. More recently, YourStake has begun providing AI statement transcription services to advisors, including applications like Advisor Core.