Tag Archives: Wealthbot

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15

Posted on January 15, 2016 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Jemstep gets acquired by Invesco, rumors fly about a Snapchat robo advisor, FutureAdvisor links up with its first bank, and more.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Invesco acquires Jemstep, a market-leading provider of advisor-focused digital solutions from PRNewswire

[This week’s top story comes from Jemstep, as the B2B online investment platform was acquired by Invesco, the $800 billion dollar asset manager based a stone’s throw away from my studio right here in Atlanta.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, Jemstep’s leadership will stay onboard to run the Invesco subsidiary, and for now, the company says there won’t be any changes to existing partnerships, custodians, or asset availability in model portfolios.

Ignoring B2C acquisitions of FutureAdvisor and LearnVest, the last twelve months have seen John Hancock acquire Guide Financial and Envestnet acquire Upside.

So who are the independent B2B providers left? I see Autopilot, Trizic, Oranj, Vanare, Betterment Institutional, Motif Investing, and to some extent, the roll-your-own open source platform from Wealthbot.] Invesco Ltd. has acquired Jemstep, a market-leading provider of advisor-focused digital solutions.

Social media firms make ETF push from Reuters

[But hold on! Sending shockwaves in the retail robo space is Snapchat, as rumors were flying this week that the ephemeral chat app might introduce it’s own investment service to its 100 million active daily users.

Uh, let me explain my thoughts in a brief demonstration… Get it, jump the shark?] Snapchat is understood to be at the front of a queue of tech firms developing Robo-Advisory technology – which uses algorithms to help users develop and implement customized investment strategies for retirement planning.

BBVA Compass Teams Up With Robo FutureAdvisor from Forbes

[But wait, there’s more! In its first move after being acquired by BlackRock, FutureAdvisor announced it is partnering with BBVA Compass to roll out the automated investment tools to the bank’s nearly 700 branches in the US.

Bank customers will get access to FutureAdvisors’ digital investment management for the standard fee of 50 basis points, and you can probably bet that new accounts opened up with be held with BBVA’s broker-dealer affiliate, which is how the bank capitalizes on the partnership.] BBVA Compass, the Sunbelt subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant, has announced it will partner with FutureAdvisor to offer its customers digital investment management, popularly known as Robo Advisors. It is the first major bank to sign on with FutureAdvisor since the advisory firm combined forces with BlackRock, the giant asset management company, last year.

Robo Adviser Wealthfront Begins to Offer Free Portfolio Reviews from WSJ.com

[And if you’re not sick of robos by now, let me add news from Wealthfront who this week released a free Portfolio Review service to show investors how bad their current portfolios are and urge them to save a boat load of money by switching to Wealthfront. Whoops, did I say that out loud?

This concept is nothing new, as Personal Capital has offered a similar portfolio analyzer since 2011, and FeeX has been doing it since 2012, but here’s the deal. These VC-backed companies are spending tons of money to target your clients and prospects to get them to try out this tool, and of course, they’re going to tell clients they have suboptimal allocations and are paying high fees to their advisor.

So, expect clients to bring up fees, allocations, and performance in your next meeting, and you need to have a strong answer in the form of your value proposition, which is all the added advice, guidance, and behavior management you deliver that the automated services are incapable of providing.] In a bid to attract more assets, Wealthfront Inc. is joining other robo advisers in providing free advice to investors about their accounts at other financial institutions.

Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

New Laserfiche Release Aims to Improve ECM from CMSWire

Laserfiche just released version 10 of its enterprise content management system (ECM). Speaking at the Laserfiche Empower 2016 Conference in Long Beach, Calif., Laserfiche President Karl Chan said the new version is designed to supercharge content-driven business processes, enabling enterprises to redesign the flow of information throughout the enterprise.

LastPass Revamps Its Interface, Adds Emergency Access and Better Sharing from Lifehacker

LastPass is one of the best password managers around. Today it gets a bit better with an improved interface and a handful of new features.

Dashlane 4 Makes Changing Passwords on Hacked Sites Easier, Adds a New Interface, and More from Lifehacker

Dashlane is one of our favorite password managers, and today the service updated with a new, consistent interface across all devices, an updated “password changer” that lets you change passwords on a site without even visiting it, new languages, and more.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15, 2016

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12

Posted on June 12, 2015 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Pershing partners with a new company for your digital advice delivery needs, Wealth Access continues its growth in the PFM space, and find out how open source code called Wealthbot could pose a serious challenge to automated investment services.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

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

Pershing Implements Multi-faceted Digital Enablement Strategy to Help Advisors Embrace the Digital Revolution from Pershing, and

Pershing Introduces Managed360™ to Help Advisors Efficiently Grow Their Managed Accounts Business from Pershing

Marstone Digital Wealth on the web

[Let’s jump right in to this week’s top story with a recap of the Pershing INSITE conference held in Orlando last week, as one of the top institutional custodians for advisors made several technology-related announcements. First up is news of a partnership to allow advisors to offer their own white-labeled online investment service which will be powered by a company called Marstone.

Now if the name Marstone doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry, because it’s only the second time I’ve even heard of them after a chance encounter I had with company executives at the IBM World of Watson event last month. In fact, the company is so new that their latest Form ADV disclosure shows assets of just $15,500 held in two clients accounts. That’s right, two accounts.

Now the few screenshots available from the Marstone website show a reasonably attractive interface, but with a retail investor offering that’s still in beta and an advisor solution that has yet to roll out, it’s just too early for me to say whether or not Marstone is going to gain wide adoption among advisors, especially when there are more seasoned competitors out there like Jemstep, Betterment Institutional, Oranj and more.

But, Marstone will be the first of several anticipated solutions that will integrate with Pershing’s NetX360 platform for advisors as well as the NetXInvestor solution for end clients.

Pershing also announced a new managed account solution called Managed360 that will leverage investment strategies and managed portfolio offerings from Lockwood Advisors, which also happens to be an affiliate of Pershing. Also coming in the future is a Pershing API store which is a catalog of APIs along the lines of the TD Ameritrade Institutional Veo Open Access platform, allowing third-party providers to more easily integrate with the Pershing ecosystem.] At its INSITE™ 2015 conference, Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company, today announced a multi-faceted digital enablement strategy designed to revolutionize how advisors and investors work together in 2015 and beyond.

Wealth Access Hires 7 Veterans to Continue Growth from PRWeb

[Next up is news from Wealth Access, the Nashville-based provider of a personal financial dashboard for high net worth clients, as this week the company announced the growth of its business with seven new hires in the last few months, as well as a 350% year-over-year increase in total assets aggregated in the platform, a figure that now exceeds $20 billion.

You know that merger and acquisition activity in the personal financial management space this year has been on a tear, with Fidelity acquiring eMoney, Northwestern Mutual scooping up LearnVest, and John Hancock picking up Guide Financial, so Wealth Access is pretty much one of the last independent PFM platforms out there serving advisors that has no direct custodial or insurance company connection.
So like I’ve said in previous broadcasts, you would be wise to keep an eye on this company.] Wealth Access, an innovative high net worth personal financial management platform for advisors, announced growing momentum in the adoption of the Wealth Access technology solution by advisors, with record year over year growth and the hiring of seven senior technology and financial services veterans.

Wealthbot.io from GitHub

[And finally, wrapping up the week is an interesting discovery I made on the Internet called Wealthbot. Now stick with me on this one. Wealthbot is open source code published on the GitHub repository that can be used to create your own wealth management platform.

Not satisfied with the commercial wealth management solutions available today? That’s right, you can now build your own robo advisor, I mean, automated investment service. Now developers should get excited about the possibilities here, but advisors using Wealthbot directly? Well, that’s probably not going to happen without significant help from programmers.

But here’s the thing: online services like Wealthfront, Betterment, Future Advisor, even Schwab Intelligent Portfolios have attracted huge amounts of attention and venture capital for their software-based investment algorithms. So what happens to the value of those companies when code that mirrors their functionality is published on the Internet, for free?

Could Wealthbot be the next WordPress, OpenOffice, or Firefox of robo advisors? That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you’re watching FPPad Bits and Bytes.] Wealthbot.io makes it easy to launch a Wealth Management Platform. Build and customize your very own version of a robo-advisor.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12, 2015

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12, 2015