Sustainalytics Archives

Stash raises $37.5 million in Series D funding: Flash briefing for February 16, 2018

Posted on February 16, 2018 by Bill Winterberg in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Simplified investing app Stash raises $37.5 million Series D as it heads into banking from TechCrunch

Yahoo Finance Expands Offerings as Only Free Provider of Sustainability Scores, across Desktop and Mobile Web from Sustainalytics

What’s new from Envestnet | Tamarac from YouTube

Note: Coverage from the TD Ameritrade Institutional National LINC conference was sponsored by Envestnet | Tamarac. Click here to view my full disclosures.

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

Yahoo! Finance Adds Sustainalytics ESG Ratings

How socially and environmentally friendly are the companies you invest in? Well, it just became a whole lot easier to find out, as earlier this month, Yahoo Finance announced it will now display Environmental, Social and Governance, or ESG scores, for more than 2,000 publicly traded companies, powered by data from Sustainalytics. The Yahoo Finance Sustainability quote pages will show scores ranging from 1 to 100 for each of the three ESG categories, as well as a company’s ESG performance relative to its peer average in the same category. In the coming weeks, Yahoo said that ratings for over 28,000 mutual funds and ETFs will be available with data powered by the Morningstar Sustainability Rating™ for funds.

Stash Raises $37.5 Million in Series D Funding

In low-cost investing news, Stash announced that the company raised an additional $37.5 million in Series D funding this week, bringing its total funding to just over $116 million. Stash offers low-cost automated investing to over 1.7 million clients, up from 850,000 last year, and recently introduced support for IRA accounts with its Stash Retire product. The company also announced plans to introduce its Stash Banking product in the near future with support for free accounts with no fees and no minimum balance requirements, which is intended to broaden Stash’s appeal as a diversified financial services company instead of competing in the narrow automated investment marketplace.

Platform Updates to Envestnet | Tamarac

And finally, Envestnet | Tamarac continues to make enhancements to their platform for advisors, so to learn more about what’s new from Tamarac, I met with Managing Director Brandon Rembe at the National LINC conference earlier this month.

There’s a lot of different things we’re working on, a few key areas we’re working on is digital client engagement, our client portal, things like client on boarding, tasking, calendaring, all of those things to provide a more digital experience if the client wants to do that as well as provide more service for clients and family offices, things like that. We’re also doing a few things with artificial intelligence, to help with predictive analytics on spending, budgeting, how much you’re going to spend later on in life, we’re doing that with our partnership with Yodlee, and a few other things are automated workflows in the back office, to not only help the end client but also help the advisor run a more efficient practice.

For more details on Tamarac’s enhancements, 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.

Brokerage websites go offline during market volatility: Flash briefing for February 7, 2018

Posted on February 7, 2018 by Bill Winterberg in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Fidelity Reports Web Issues After Robo-Adviser Sites Crash

Personal Capital Adds Socially Responsible Investing to Serve Rapidly Growing Client Base

What’s new from AdvisoryWorld, 2018 Fintech Update from YouTube

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

Brokerage Websites Offline During Market Volatility

With huge increases in market volatility this week, brokerage customers have experienced unresponsive websites from some of the largest providers like Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Vanguard as well as smaller automated investment services Betterment and Wealthfront. According to Bloomberg, brokerage companies acknowledged that customers did lose access for short periods of time on Monday, but as trading activity subsided, account access was restored to all customers by Tuesday morning.

Personal Capital Adds Socially Responsible Personal Strategy®

In socially responsible investing news, Personal Capital is hopping on the responsible investing bandwagon with the addition of its new Socially Responsible Personal Strategy®. The strategy screens US equities based on environmental, social, and governance factors powered by Sustainalytics data to generate investment strategies that align with customers’ socially responsible preferences. Personal Capital joins Betterment, Wealthfront, Motif Investing, OpenInvest, and many others to help investors align their portfolios with their socially conscious preferences.

AdvisoryWorld Update on ACQUIRE Solution

And how do you stay up to date on what’s new this year in fintech? Well if you visit the FPPad YouTube channel, you’ll see the first batch of dozens of interviews filmed with fintech solution providers at last week’s National LINC conference, including a conversation about an updated from Advisory World called ACQUIRE. Here’s AdvisoryWorld COO Mike Wilson with the details.

We continue to work on what we refer to as ACQUIRE, which is our digital onboarding component. With that, advisors are able to embed links on their websites and social media accounts that helps get new business through the doors. It’s a questionnaire that points, again, to a model.

More interviews are being uploaded to the FPPad YouTube channel every day, so visit fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.