Several investing apps announced new rounds of fundraising this week, with the biggest announcement coming from Robinhood, the commission-free stock and cryptocurrency trading app. Robinhood said it officially raised $363 million in Series D funding, valuing the company at $5.6 billion, confirming a report published by the Wall Street Journal earlier in March. Robinhood says it now services more than 4 million stock trading accounts and has rolled out cryptocurrency trading to users in ten states, although the company declined to say how many users pay for the Robinhood Gold premium membership or whether the company is profitable.
Acorns Raises $50 Million in Round Led by BlackRock
Another company raising new capital is Acorns, as the spare change investing app announced it raised $50 million in a round led by Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager with more than $6 trillion dollars in assets under management. According to a company press release, Acorns now has over 3.3 million investment accounts on its platform and says Blackrock’s participation won’t influence the allocations among the exchange-traded funds in customer portfolio allocations, which include a mixture of ETFs from Vanguard and Blackrock.
BillPort Supports Complex Adviser Fee Billing
And with all these free apps available for investing, consumers are getting much more sensitive to paying fees, including the they pay for financial advice from their financial advisers. So if you’re a financial professional, how are you managing the different fee schedules you want to support overwhelming your staff with custom spreadsheets to monitor your billing. I recently connected with Hemant Moré to learn more about how his solution called BillPort can address nearly every method an adviser wants to use to calculate fees:
There are some clients who like to prorate the fees, there are some clients who like to provide credits, write offs, discounts, minimum fees, maximum fees, minimum or maximum fees on tiers. So there is a whole different kind of way that each firm behaves, and BillPort can handle many of those situations.
To view the full promotional demo of the BillPort solution, visit fppad.com/flashbriefing for 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.
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.
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.
On today’s broadcast, Redtail is the beneficiary of two announcements, MoneyGuidePro releases G4, and see the latest audio and video solutions to enhance your online content
[This week’s top story is a two-for-one about Redtail Technology, as the CRM provider was first mentioned by Morningstar as the company is further expanding its integration with the popular CRM for advisors. Two years ago, Redtail users started accessing Morningstar research and analytics directly in the CRM, and with the latest integration, users of both solutions can transfer data between the two systems, reducing the amount of manual data entry as well as synchronizing client and account data viewed in Redtail CRM.
The second story from Redtail is the announcement of a new integration with Zapier, a popular web automation application. The connection with Zapier means that Redtail users can use triggers in Redtail, such as a new activity or a new contact in the CRM, to create an action in another program, which includes over 500 popular services like Slack, Google Docs, MailChimp and many more.
Other providers, including Wealthbox CRM, have been hinting at soon-to-be-released integrations with Zapier and others for several months now. So if you’ve been frustrated with the lack of direct integrations within your CRM, you’ll soon be able to build your own custom trigger and action workflows using apps like Zapier.] Redtail CRM is now available publicly in Zapier’s App Directory in beta version.
[Next up is news from MoneyGuidePro, as the financial planning software provider officially released the fourth generation of its software, aptly named G4. Advisors will definitely notice an updated look and feel to the user interface, but G4 largely retains many of the core features present in the prior version, G3, such as the Play Zone, Social Security Maximization, and the What Are You Afraid Of? modules.
One of the more significant changes is the addition of five pre-built workflows called “conversations” which are used to streamline the creation of an initial financial plan. Advisors can complete the conversation data entry alone or together with clients in a meeting, or decide to grant clients access to an online portal where they enter data completely on their own.
The pre-built workflows limit the amount of data needed to create a plan so that the entire process isn’t overly tedious. With a preliminary plan created, advisors can then drill down into more specific areas of the plan.] PIEtech’s vision, “Everyone needs and deserves a quality financial plan,” has never been truer – for both advisors and clients. Today, PIEtech released the fourth generation of MoneyGuidePro® to help financial advisors develop and deliver quality financial plans on an unprecedented scale.
[And finally, I want to wrap up this week’s broadcast with a heads up about the videos Steve and I made at the NAB Show last week. We featured the top video, audio, and technology gadgets, as well as whatever that thing is, from over 1,800 exhibitors that you can use to start making your own online content. You’ll learn about 360º cameras, wireless microphones, lighting, production resources and more that are all affordable and easy for you to use.]
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Advisors striving to improve the client experience by providing offerings tailored to their entire financial picture can now seamlessly aggregate their client’s data into a fully customized online wealth management platform.
Data Points announced today the release of its Predicting Wealth™ platform, which provides the financial services industry a scientific way to identify clients with the highest potential for building wealth across all market segments. The platform delivers analytics on the financial behaviors of clients and predictive assessments to drive financial success.
Today, United Capital Financial Advisers, LLC (“United Capital”), a Financial Life Management firm, announces the launch of FinLife Partners, a turnkey advice and planning platform that allows independent advisers access to the firm’s proprietary Financial Life Management system, including adviser-branded client experience tools, digital workflow technology and personalized on-demand coaching.
The SEC has a long to-do list, but ensuring that advisors and other registrants are protecting clients’ sensitive information from cyber threats is right at the top, and more enforcement actions are expected.
Acorns, the investing app, is announcing a $30 million strategic investment from PayPal, with participation from the Rakuten FinTech Fund. This brings the team’s total funding to $62 million.
After 12 months of building the best way to save and discover mobile live streams, it is with great disappointment that we must announce that Katch will be shutting down.
Docupace Technologies LLC, financial services’ premier digital compliance and cyber security company, announced today that it will pursue growth independently of investment from RCS Capital Corporation
On today’s broadcast, Google ups the ante among office mobile app providers. Will the enhancements be enough for you to leave Office 365? Dropbox and Amazon want your cloud file storage business. Find out who has the features and pricing that are right for your firm. And, creating time-lapse videos just became a whole lot easier. Learn how you can use a new iPhone app for an interesting twist on your website’s contact page.
Today’s episode is brought to you by the 2014 T3 Enterprise Conference, exclusively designed for the technology needs of broker-dealers and financial enterprises.
If you’re looking for the best place to monitor trends in broker-dealer technology, you need to come to Atlanta November 11th through 13th. Reserve your spot today by visiting t3enterpriseconference.com
[This week’s top story comes from Google, as the Internet search giant released a new app for iOS devices called Slides. Originally contained inside the Google Drive app, Slides is now the latest stand-alone app from Google to round out its mobile office productivity suite, which includes the previously-released Google Docs and Google Sheets apps.
This now rounds out Google’s mobile office toolkit, matching, at least in basic functionality, the Pages, Numbers, and Keynote apps from Apple, and the Office 365 apps of Word, Excel and PowerPoint most advisors know, and may or may not love.
The apps are free to use if you have a Google account and are included in Google Apps for Business subscriptions, priced at $50 per year per user. So if you don’t need any of the complex features in the Microsoft Office apps, the Google office apps may be everything you need to manage your business on the go at an affordable price.] Google on Monday released presentation app Slides alongside updates to existing iOS apps Docs and Sheets, offering a free Web-connected alternative to similar productivity suites from Microsoft and Apple.
[Next up is news on two cloud file storage services, Dropbox and Amazon Zocalo. First up is Dropbox, which announced this week that the company is upgrading it’s Pro plan to offer better security controls when sharing files and folders with others. Also new is an improved remote wipe feature. Before this update, any files synchronized to a device that later became unlinked from a Dropbox account would still stay on the device. Now with the updated remote wipe feature, that’s no longer the case.
And the storage space of the Dropbox Pro plan was increased to one terabyte with pricing remaining at $9.99 per month.
But a new service competing directly against Dropbox Pro users is Amazon’s Zocalo, which is now available for the general public after being in a limited preview for a few months. Designed with enterprise users in mind, Zocalo can integrate with Microsoft’s Active Directory services for user permissions and administration. Pricing for Zocalo starts at $5 per month per user for 200 gigabytes of data, and with all these options now for cloud file storage, it’s hard even for me to keep everything straight. But if you head over to fppad.com/138, I’ve linked to a handy chart from Gizmodo with the details of many of the top cloud file storage providers.] We first launched Dropbox to help you simplify your life. Since then, you’ve told us that Dropbox does more than just that — it enables anyone with an idea, project, or passion to create amazing things.
[And finally, my last story will give you something to do to add some creativity to your weekend. Earlier this week, Instagram released a new app for iOS called Hyperlapse. The Hyperlapse app allows you to record several minutes of video on your iPhone and condense down to a quick time-lapse video with some added video stabilization. So why is this relevant to you as an advisor?
Here’s one idea on how you can use the Hyperlapse app in your business. The next time you drive to your office, mount your phone to your dashboard and record the route you take to get there. The hold your phone while you walk into your building and go to your office, and then create a Hyperlapse video from that footage. Post that Hyperlapse video next to your address on your website’s contact page. That way, anyone who is going to visit your office for the very first time can actually see where they should park and what door to enter, all in cool Hyperlapse video.] Instagram’s latest standalone, Hyperlapse, is simple, elegant and actually really useful. The app, which rolled out Tuesday, allows users to quickly and easily create on-the-go time-lapse videos— something that hasn’t been easily and effectively accomplished on mobile, until now.
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
