News

On today’s broadcast, Financial Engines acquires the Mutual Fund Store, updates from the T3 Enterprise conference, ShareFile integrates with Smarsh, and more.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

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Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Financial Engines to Acquire The Mutual Fund Store to Expand Independent Advisory Services for 401(k) Plan Participants from Financial Engines

[Financial Engines, a leading independent investment advisor, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Mutual Fund Store, LLC, a prominent nationally-branded independent Registered Investment Adviser, from Warburg Pincus and management for total consideration of approximately $560 million, including cash and stock.

First up this week is late-breaking news that Financial Engines, one of the original automated asset allocation tools for 401(k) accounts, announced it acquired the Mutual Fund Store, a $9.8 billion dollar RIA based in Kansas City.

Financial Engines is paying roughly $560 million in cash and stock, and will gain 345 employees spread across 125 retail locations that advise over 39,000 households. This deal adds a salvo of human advisers to Financial Engines’ online tools which, for now, are centered around retirement assets.

So, if you don’t have the technology that supports your own digital advice delivery to clients, you are falling behind. However, you are in a position to add value because you advise your clients on their total financial picture, not just their retirement accounts, so use this as your advantage while it lasts.] Financial Engines, a leading independent investment advisor, today announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Mutual Fund Store, LLC, a prominent nationally-branded independent Registered Investment Adviser, from Warburg Pincus and management for total consideration of approximately $560 million, including cash and stock.

In bed with giants, T3 software entrepreneurs go to Florida to swear they are still more independent than thou from RIABiz

T3 Enterprise 2015 live interview replays on Katch.me

[Now I want to transition to a quick recap of the T3 Enterprise conference held in Weston Florida earlier this week, where fintech veteran Joel Bruckenstein assembled 45 of the industry’s top technology providers to demonstrate their solutions for the broker-dealer and enterprise RIA marketplace.

Some of the significant news includes Riskalyze CEO Aaron Klein, who introduced the Real-Time Wealth Management Enterprise™ ecosystem, which combines Riskalyze, Autopilot Enterprise, and Compliance Cloud all into one solution and updates from eMoney’s Drew DiMarino who confirmed the company will be unbundling the eMoney dashboard and financial planning components.] MoneyGuidePro’s Bob Curtis flipped the bird at potential VC cash-bearers as Fidelity-owned eMoney vowed it was still a scrapper

ShareFile + Smarsh = Better compliance and convenience from ShareFile.com

[Next up is news from ShareFile, as the online collaboration provider announced an integration with Smarsh, widely known for their email and social media archiving platform. Under the new integration, Smarsh can now automatically archive documents exchanged via ShareFile without any manual intervention or paying for a separate solution that handles those online documents.

So, why is this important? Because when you send a document to clients, regulators want to make sure you have an archive of that document that you can’t modify after the fact, something ShareFile calls “immutable retention.”

If you don’t somehow archive documents you send to clients, you could be getting into some pretty hot water if you changed, say, a fee schedule document, after delivering a prior version to your client. That’s why the immutable retention is so important.] Need a more robust and complete way to archive? ShareFile has a new integration with The Archiving Platform™ from Smarsh, the popular comprehensive archive platform, to create the only solution that meets the regulatory requirements for both online file sync and share and immutable retention.

Blueleaf Partners With Quovo to Deliver Smarter Data to Financial Advisors Nationwide from Marketwired.com, and

Jefferson National Partners with Quovo to Provide RIAs and Fee-Based Advisors with High Quality Data Aggregation for Tax-Advantaged Investing from Jefferson National

[And finally, wrapping up this week is news from Quovo, as the account aggregation provider, strike that, data science company announced it has partnered with Blueleaf, a financial relationship management platform.

This news comes on the heels of a partnership with Jefferson National announced a few weeks ago, allowing Quovo to obtain direct data feeds of variable annuity sub account information which, based on what I hear from you, has traditionally required manual data gathering because aggregation couldn’t handle similar sub account names that had different prices based on the annuity wrapper.] Blueleaf, a financial relationship management platform for advisors and their clients, today announced its partnership with Quovo, the leading financial data science company that addresses the needs of the wealth management industry. Blueleaf has selected Quovo as their data partner for the smarter aggregation of their clients’ held-away accounts.

Big Banks Lock Horns With Personal-Finance Web Portals from WSJ.com

[And speaking of account aggregation, let me finish by pointing out a Wall St. Journal column on account aggregation issues affecting Chase and Wells Fargo customers. Sites like Mint.com couldn’t aggregate those accounts for over a week, and I’m afraid that if these institutions don’t like the idea of third-party aggregators accessing their customer data, then high quality aggregation might get harder to come by, become more expensive, or both, so I’m going to keep an eye on this developing story and let you know what else you need to know as this story develops.] J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. are snarling the flow of data to popular websites that help consumers manage their finances, according to people familiar with the matter.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for November 6, 2015