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Company uses “Drew Cloud” pseudonym to promote financial products: Flash briefing for April 27, 2018

Here are the links to today’s stories:

Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real from Chronicle.com

Addepar Celebrates $1 Trillion Assets on Its Platform from LinkedIn Pulse

Tope Awotona – A Founder Story from AtlantaTechVillage.com

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Company Uses “Drew Cloud” Pseudonym

In this week’s shocking news, it turns out that you can’t trust everything you read online about personal finance.

This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that a journalist who went by the name Drew Cloud is not actually a real person at all. In it’s exposé, the Chronicle explained how a company called LendEDU made up the pseudonym of “Drew Cloud” to represent a group of authors who wrote content for Student Loan Report, a company LendEDU owns, but also failed disclose its financial interest to Student Loan Report readers!

The admission by LendEDU sheds light on controversial practices where content and influencer marketing tactics are used to lure readers into buying financial products recommended in blogs and websites sites that are actually owned by the product providers themselves, who don’t disclose the conflict of interest to their readers.

So be careful out there, you can’t always trust what you read online about personal finance recommendations!

Addepar Surpasses $1 Trillion in Client Assets

In adviser technology news, this week, Addepar announced that its comprehensive portfolio management, reporting and aggregation solution passed $1 trillion dollars in client assets on the platform. Co-founded in 2009 by PayPal alumni Joe Lonsdale, Addepar provides investment management technology to over 300 large financial institutions, wealth advisors, and family offices according to a company statement.

Calendly Solves Scheduling Frustrations

And finally, are you tired of wasting time sending emails back and forth trying to book a meeting? Then check out the online calendar solution from Atlanta-based Calendly, which has helped close to 30 million people worldwide schedule their meetings. The Atlanta Tech Village recently highlighted the story of Calendly’s founder Tope Awotona which I recommend you check out, and then see if Calendly’s might help you save time when scheduling meetings with clients and colleagues.

Just visit FPPad.com/flashbriefing to find the links to all of today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Qapital raises $30 million: Flash briefing for April 20, 2018

Qapital Secures $30M in New Financing via PRNewswire

Create personal Alexa skills in minutes via Amazon

Win gear to boost your content creation via YouTube

Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Qapital Raises $30 Million

The savings and goal-setting app Qapital announced it raised $30 million dollars in new capital this week, bringing its total fundraising to just over $47 million, according to data from Crunchbase. Qapital launched in the US in 2015 and helps users automate their savings using rules like automatic transaction round-ups, forced savings when shopping at specific stores, perhaps for your frequent coffee splurges, and also integrates with If This Then That to trigger savings for almost any event you can think of.

While its unfortunate that Qapital does not pay interest on savings held in customer accounts, the app does encourage its users to refer their friends to Qapital by paying a $5 referral fee for each new sign up.

Amazon Publishes Skill Blueprints for Alexa Skills

Do you want to try your hand at making personal skills for Amazon Alexa, but don’t know how? This week, Amazon released a new feature called Skill Blueprints, which allows Amazon Echo owners to choose from twenty pre-built skill templates to customize your own voice experience. Select from Blueprints like frequently asked questions for your houseguests, custom flash card quizzes, adventure stories for your kids, and more. The Skill Blueprints are a quick and easy way Echo owners can get more utility out of the voice command devices, which I believe is the next frontier in the client experience between financial advisers and their clients.

Win Gear for Video and Podcast Production

And finally, would you like to win some free gear to boost the production quality of your videos and podcasts? Then head over to the FPPad YouTube channel to see our videos from the 2018 NAB Show, where I’m giving away a Joby GripTight Action Kit for your mobile phone, a Grip Gear Movie Maker Kit, and a free one-year subscription to the Soundstripe music licensing service.

All you have to do is give each video a thumbs up, subscribe to the FPPad YouTube channel, and leave a comment on each video to be eligible to win.

Head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to find the links to my videos from the NAB Show as well as the other links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Marcus by Goldman Sachs acquires Clarity Money: Flash briefing for April 16, 2018

Here are the links to today’s top stories.

Marcus by Goldman Sachs® Announces Acquisition of Clarity Money from Businesswire.com

United Capital Makes FinLife Platform Compatible with Other CRMs from Wealthmanagement.com

NorthStar Financial Agrees to Acquire FTJ FundChoice from Businesswire.com

Orion Advisor Services is one of my consulting clients. See my full disclosures at fppad.com/disclaimer

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, I’m back from spring break, so here are the top fintech stories you need to know today

Marcus by Goldman Sachs® Acquires Clarity Money

Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world, is becoming a bigger player in the personal financial management space as it just completed its acquisition of a budgeting app called Clarity Money. First reported by Bloomberg back in February, the acquisition rolls in Clarity Money’s one million users into Goldman Sachs’ direct to consumer financial services brand that goes by the name Marcus, which currently offers no-fee fixed rate personal loans and high-yield savings accounts to consumers.

Terms of the the deal were not disclosed, but Clarity Money reportedly raised $14.5 million dollars in two rounds from its investors since 2016 according to data from Crunchbase.

United Capital Financial Advisors Introduces FinLife CX

United Capital Financial Advisors, the nationwide $20 billion dollar rollup firm, announced an update to its FinLife technology platform called FinLife CX that will allow financial advisers to use the proprietary platform without having to migrate from the CRM software they already use. Introduced in mid-2016, the FinLife platform heavily leverages Salesforce and the Heroku cloud development platform, so advisers traditionally had to convert their existing CRM data to Salesforce in the first few months of adopting the FinLife platform. With the introduction of FinLife CX, United Capital hopes to reach a wider segment of advisers interested in the the firm’s consolidated portfolio reporting, client portal, and advisor dashboard tools.

Orion Advisor Services Parent Company Acquires FTJ FundChoice

And finally, Orion Advisor Services is in the news once again as its parent company, NorthStar Financial, announced the acquisition of FTJ FundChoice, a turnkey asset management firm with approximately $10 billion in assets under administration. The deal will allow Orion to complement its technology platform with a mature asset management provider under a single contract and service agreement. For more information on the acquisition, I connected with Orion Advisor Services CEO Eric Clarke:

Thank you Bill. At NorthStar and especially at Orion, we’re excited to announce the acquisition of a decade-long client partner of ours, FTJ FundChoice. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Dean Cook and his team to bring FTJ’s managed account capabilities to our Orion advisors and enterprise-level prospects.

Orion Advisor Services is one of my consulting clients, so visit fppad.com/disclaimer for my full conflict of interest disclosure, and visit fppad.com/flashbriefing to get the links to all of today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

 

Orion Advisor Services Launches Compass: Flash Briefing for March 28, 2018

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Orion Launches Compass, a Revolutionary New Resource to Help Firms Scale Compliance Operations from BusinessWire

DataPoints Launches its Comprehensive Assessment of Psychological Risk Tolerance, The Investor Profile from PRWeb

Conga Acquires Orchestrate from GetConga.com

Disclosure: Bill Winterberg provides consulting services to Orion Advisor Services. Click here to view all conflicts of interest.

Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Orion Advisor Services Launches Compass App

Orion Advisor Services is in the news once again, as the company announced the launch of a new compliance application for advisers called Compass. The new app includes an Audit Tool that retrieves portfolio and trading information from Orion and formats it in a way that meets common regulatory requests from auditors during an SEC examination, and also a Verify Tool that facilitates anti-money laundering screening with an integrations with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions. These new compliance apps can help advisers recover days of lost productivity when preparing for a compliance exam, according to the company’s press release.

DataPoints Introduces Investor Profile Assessment Tool

In behavioral finance news, DataPoints recently announced the launch of its behavioral assessment tool called Investor Profile. According to a company press release, the Investor Profile assessment gives advisors a scientific way to assess psychological risk tolerance of investors and use a consistent framework to guide clients towards recognizing and correcting for their unique investing behaviors. The Investor Profile measures five unique characteristics, including confidence in investment decision-making, behavior during times of wild market swings, willingness to try new strategies or take new chances, and more.

Conga Acquires Orchestrate

And in industry acquisition news, Conga, a provider of document automation solutions for Salesforce users, announced it has acquired Orchestrate, a workflow automation provider with a focus on financial professionals that use Salesforce in their business. The acquisition will add Orchestrate’s expertise with RIAs and wealth management firms to Conga’s suite of enterprise-grade Intelligent Document Automation solutions. With more on that, here’s Orchestrate President and Co-CTO, Joshua Van Heukelom.

At Orchestrate, our mission is to enable best-of-breed efficiency for firms that are on the Salesforce platform. So we were born out of an RIA, so we know the language, we know the industry, we know what people need. We’ve been in wealth management for a number of years, and so our tools really help solve problems we know these people have.

To watch my full interview with Orchestrate, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Robinhood to raise another $350 million: Flash briefing for March 16, 2018

Here the the links to today’s top stories:

Investing app Robinhood is raising $350 million, valuing it at $5 billion from FastCompany.com

Salesforce launches simpler small business product, will discontinue Desk.com and SalesforceIQ from cnbc.com

Vote Now for the 2018 IA25 from ThinkAdvisor.com

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories brought to you by Morningstar

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Robinhood to Raise Additional $350 Million

Robinhood, the popular for commission-free stock trading app, could be raising another $350 million in venture funding, according to a Wall Street Journal article, valuing the company at $5.6 billion, more than four times its valuation barely one year ago in April 2017. The Journal reported that the funding is likely provided by DST Global, which also led Robinhood’s previous funding round of $110 million. Robinhood reportedly has over 4 million accounts enabled for free stock trading and has begun rolling out Robinhood Crypto to some users, allowing transactions in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.

Salesforce Launches Salesforce Essentials

Salesforce announced the launch of a simpler version of its CRM software called Salesforce Essentials, targeted to small business owners who have complained that the company’s main CRM solution is too complex and expensive for their needs. Starting at $25 per user per month, Salesforce Essentials includes Einstein Activity Capture that automatically tracks emails, calls, and meeting activity with contacts and, functionality can be expanded by apps built specifically for Salesforce Essentials on the AppExchange, but many financial advisers may find that existing tools they use, like portfolio management software, are not yet compatible with Salesforce Essentials, and require the more robust, and expensive, Salesforce CRM.

Vote for the 2018 IA25

And finally, who do you think is a key influencer in the financial services industry? It’s time to make your voice heard, as voting is now open for the 2018 IA25 list of most influential people in the industry to be published in the May edition of Investment Advisor magazine. Votes can be cast among six segments which includes Investment Advisers, Independent broker-dealers, Political and Regulatory figures, and Financial Technology, which would be perfect to recognize someone using Amazon Alexa to, oh, I don’t know, provide financial technology updates to investors and financial advisers!

To cast your vote, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Envestnet | Tamarac Clients Exceed $1 Trillion AUM: Flash briefing for March 12, 2018

Here are the links to today’s stories:

XY Planning Network serves 600 member advisers via Twitter

Tamarac Clients Exceed $1 Trillion in Collective Assets Managed from Tamaracinc.com

Morningstar expands ratings for U.S. mutual funds with Quantitative Ratings for Funds via Twitter

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

XY Planning Network Crosses 600 Members

Several big milestones were crossed in the last few days, with the XY Planning Network leading off with its announcement that the organization now serves 600 members as a part of the fee-only, fiduciary financial planning network. Founded in 2014, the XY Planning Network provides turnkey technology, compliance, marketing support and business coaching to financial planners looking to serve Gen X and Gen Y clients, many of whom offer financial planning on an hourly basis or a low-cost retainer without requiring substantial assets in a portfolio.

Envestnet | Tamarac Clients Exceed $1 Trillion AUM

Also crossing another milestone is Envestnet | Tamarac, as the portfolio management, reporting, client portal, trading and CRM software provider recently surpassed $1 trillion dollars in collective assets under management among all the financial advisers that use the company’s technology. According to a recent press release, over one-third of registered investment advisory firms that manage $1 billion dollars are using the Envestnet | Tamarac solution, and the company says it maintains a renewal rate of 97% among its clients as a result of the company’s ongoing support, training, and consulting.

Morningstar Launches Quantitative Rating for Funds

And for a new milestone in mutual fund research, Morningstar just announced that the company has launched the Morningstar Quantitative Rating for funds, which generates ratings of Gold, Silver, Bronze, Neutral, or Negative for mutual funds based on a large set of quantitative factors like fund fees, manager tenure, firm success, and much more. Historically, Morningstar has generated Analyst Ratings for mutual funds, but the number of ratings has been limited by the size of the Morningstar analyst team. The Quantitative Rating uses machine learning models to apply the analyst’s decision-making process to the list of funds not covered by the analyst team, which allows the company to generate ratings on six times more mutual funds in the United States market.

Morningstar is the sponsor of this Flash Briefing for the month of March.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Fidelity® Announces Multiple Advisor Technology Initiatives: Flash briefing for March 5, 2018

Links to today’s top stories:

Fidelity® Announces New Advisor Technology Solutions to Help Firms “Get Smarter and Go Faster” from Fidelity.com

Core Upgrade Brings Orion’s Dynamic, Time-Saving Reporting to Private Assets from BusinessWire

Human Interest (Formerly Captain401) raises $11 Million Series A to Serve Small Business 401(k) Market from PRNewswire

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Fidelity® Announces Advisor Technology Initiatives for 2018

Fidelity, one of the top institutional custodians for financial advisers, recently announced the planned introduction of several new technology solutions for financial advisers. In a recent press release, Fidelity said it will introduce a new account aggregation tool called Consolidated Data, a business analytics tool called Insights + Analytics, new Advanced Modeling & Rebalancing capabilities for its Wealthscape software platform, and the launch of a digital app store called the Wealthscape Integration Xchange.

Pilots of several of these new tools are scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2018, and no guidance on pricing was provided for any of the new tools announced, so expect quite a bit more concrete information over the coming months as these tools get closer to production.

Orion Advisor Services Launches Alternative Investment Platform

From Orion Advisor Services, the company announced the release of its Alternative Investment Platform tool, allowing financial advisers to offer better reporting to their clients around alternative investments like private equity, venture capital, non-traded real estate, and more.

The company press release also highlighted an update anticipated for May that adds automated data gathering for alternative assets from DTCC and other alternative data vendors.

Captain401 Rebrands as Human Interest, Raises $11 Million Series A

And Captain401 has a new name and new funding, as the company said it’s changing its name to Human Interest on the heels of raising an additional $11 million dollars in a Series A round last week.

Founded in 2015, Human Interest says it helps over 10,000 employees save for their retirement with a focus on the small business retirement plan marketplace, where it will find competition from other providers like Betterment for Business, America’s Best 401(k), as well as large incumbents like Vanguard and Financial Engines.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

XY Planning Network Partners with Capitect: Flash briefing for February 28, 2018

Clarification added February 28, 2018 at 1:38 PM ET: XY Planning Network members can use up to 20 client households in Capitect for no additional  fee. Accounts in addition to 20 require additional fees. See Capitect XYPN Pricing for details. Prior versions of this post did not specify how many accounts could be used for free.

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Acorns, the financial management service for everyone else, adds 3 million users from Techcrunch

XY Planning Network Partners with Capitect to Offer Client Portal and Performance Reporting Technology to Members from PRWeb

What’s new from Capitect | 2018 Fintech Update from YouTube

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Acorns Surpasses 3 Million Accounts

You’ve heard that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow,” right? Well, in the case of Acorns, the micro-investing app for investors, that saying rings true, as the company announced it recently crossed 3 million investment accounts on the platform, adding 500,000 of those in just the last 3 months. Acorns co-founder and CEO Noah Kerner said that the service is differentiated from Betterment and Wealthfront because it isn’t targeted to investors who already have assets to manage, focusing instead on hardworking Americans who are saving roughly 5 to 7 percent of their income each year. Fees for Acorns are $1 a month for account under $5,000 and 25 basis points a year for accounts above $5,000.

XY Planning Network Partners with Capitect

In news from the XY Planning Network, the company announced it recently partnered with Capitect, a portfolio management software provider, to offer the client portal and performance reporting software to its nearly 600 members for no additional fee. Network members will be able to use Capitect to manage portfolios, perform portfolio rebalancing with the Capitect’s Rebalance Architect, deliver performance information to through the client-friendly portal, and more.

What’s New from Capitect

So if Capitect is a name you haven’t heard before among portfolio management software providers, you’re in luck, because I recently connected with Capitect co-founder Edwin Choi to learn a little about what’s new in their technology solution for advisers:

 

Some of the newest features that we’ve added in the last few months, and are going to be adding in the coming months, are recently introducing fee billing, which has been one of our most-requested features over a long period of time, so we’re very excited to be launching that. We recently added unrealized gain loss and cost basis, that we’re able to capture from the custodians, and some of the things that we’re working on in the coming months are primarily in the integration space, so financial planning integrations, deeper CRM integrations, and essentially any other system that the adviser wants us to connect with, we’re very open about integrating with other tools.

To watch my full interview with Edwin Choi, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Wealthfront Launches Risk Parity Mutual Fund: Flash briefing for February 23, 2018

Links to today’s top stories:

Investing Just Got Better with Wealthfront from Wealthfront

Robo-adviser Wealthsimple raises $51 million to expand service from Reuters

What’s new from RobustWealth | 2018 Fintech Update from YouTube

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Wealthfront Adds Risk Parity Fund

Wealthfront, the Silicon-Valley based automated investment service, announced it is introducing its own Wealthfront Risk Parity mutual fund into the asset allocations of customers who qualify for the PassivePlus investment strategies, which requires an account balance of $100,000. The Risk Parity mutual fund is modeled after giant hedge fund Bridgewater Associates and carries an expense ratio of 50 basis points. In a move stirring controversy on social media, Wealthfront is automatically opting in eligible customers to the Risk Parity fund for up to 20% of their allocation unless they specifically opt out in their account settings.

WealthSimple Raises $51 Million

In other automated investing news, Toronto-based Wealthsimple announced it raised another $51 million US dollars from Power Financial Corporation, bring its total investment to $131 million. Originally started in Canada in 2014, Wealthsimple expanded to the US and UK markets in 2017 and now manages $1.45 billion dollars for approximately 65,000 customers. Fees for accounts under $100,000 are 50 basis points, while fees for larger accounts at 40 basis points.

RobustWealth Offers White-Labeled Automated Investment Solution

And finally, financial advisers are also looking for solutions that rival the customer experience delivered by automated investment services, so I recently met with Ryan Horvath of RobustWealth to learn more about their white-labeled solution:

So now advisors can come on and completely launch their own white-labeled robo advisor. So this is great for small accounts, millennials, and what the advisor can actually do is customize their risk tolerance questionnaire, put a link on their website, so now the client can come on, take that risk tolerance questionnaire, sign the electronic advisory documents all in the platform, get assigned to a model that’s customized by the advisor, open up accounts, all electronically, and get invested in their model, so it’s making life really easy to optimize those smaller accounts.

For more details on the automated investment solution from RobustWealth, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com, be sure to check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Hackers Latest Trick to Steal Tax Refunds from Taxpayers: Flash briefing for February 21, 2018

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

IRS Scam Leverages Hacked Tax Preparers, Client Bank Accounts from KrebsOnSecurity.com

Quovo Announces “Cue,” a Data-Driven Alert Engine for Financial Services Firms from PRNewswire

What’s new from RIA in Box | 2018 fintech update from YouTube

[Note: I have provided creative marketing services to RIA in a Box in the last 12 months. See my full disclosures here]

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Hackers Tricking Taxpayers Demanding Payments of False Tax Refunds

Hackers are using more elaborate techniques to steal money from taxpayers, according to a new report published by security researcher Brian Krebs. In this latest scheme, hackers are breaking in to tax preparation firms to file fraudulent tax returns that result in large refunds deposited directly into taxpayer bank accounts. The attackers then posing as debt collection agencies to contact the taxpayers, demanding that the tax refunds be returned. The demands appear very legitimate, as the hackers know the dollar amount of the refund because they created the phony tax returns. The IRS says that taxpayers who receive such inquiries should contact their financial institution to potentially close the affected accounts as well as their tax preparer who likely had their systems compromised.

Quovo Announces “Cue” System

In account aggregation news, Quovo recently announced the introduction of a new alerts feature called Cue, which applies data science to monitor connected accounts for changes in balances, significant money movements, and even identify the chances clients may have additional accounts that their financial advisers do not yet know about. Currently, the Cue system can generate email notifications for advisors or be integrated directly into CRM software by leveraging the Quovo API, and is currently in a pilot phase with several large financial institutions for a rollout later this year.

RIA in a Box Electronic Employee Trade Monitoring

And speaking of aggregation, how do financial advisers make sure they stay on top of their compliance requirements to monitor personal stock trading by employees? I recently spoke with GJ King of RIA in a Box to learn more about how the company is using technology so simplify trade monitoring for compliance:

Our latest new feature we’re rolled out in the last few months is what we call automated employee trade monitoring, and how we think about that is most advisory firms today, maybe they don’t want to admit this but it’s true, where most people are still tracking personal employee trading through paper brokerage statements. You walk into an advisor’s office, you’ll generally see a stack of paper statements, maybe hidden in the corner, but they exist, we’re trying to bring that into a digital experience. It’s not rocket science, but we’re taking what used to be a paper experience and making that all automated and electronic through our system.

For more details on employee trade monitoring by RIA in a Box, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com, be sure to check back in with me later for more fintech news.