I’ve covered the advisor technology beat on and off for over 17 years.
When I started covering this area there were, at most, around three to four dozen third-party technology providers.
Fast forward to today and we have hundreds.
The flow of incoming pitches and press releases is unpredictable.
There are occasional slow times, at the beginning and end of the year and during the dog days of summer, for example.
At other times, such as this week, it becomes a deluge.
Here are some summaries of a few announcements that have survived the filtering process, and that I look forward to diving more deeply into in the near future.
Datalign Advisory
Describing itself as an “AI-enhanced platform” that creates one-to-one matches between consumers seeking a financial advisor and an advisor, Datalign Advisory will join a long list of prospecting and lead generation platforms I’ve covered over the years.
In its latest announcement this week, marking its second anniversary, the little incubated startup of just over a dozen employees is touting some impressive numbers: in 2023 the firm states it facilitated referrals to RIA firms totaling more than $14.8 billion in assets.
Of that, firms working with Datalign converted $2.8 billion to assets under management.
Reading between the lines of its latest announcement, a couple of online blog entries and its employee profiles, I see some of what lay behind those numbers is how the company appears to be selective in deciding what advisory firms to work with (instead of based on whatever advisor signs up and pays, or by geography, for example)
The firm then applies artificial intelligence and data analytics, likely based on machine learning and matching algorithms, to make matches within the selected kettle of advisor fish (so to speak).
Datalign’s co-founder and board member John Wernz is the former chief marketing officer of Wealth Enhancement Group, “a prolific acquirer of registered investment advisory firms” that had, by the end of 2023 grown to $71.7 billion in AUM.
After years of reporting on and being frustrated by lead generation, prospecting, and marketing platforms, and, let’s face it, gimmicks, it is refreshing to see firms that at least boldly put statistics out there.
Part of a Cambridge, Mass.-based startup incubator called Cogo Labs, Datalign also hired Satayan Mahajan as CEO in the second half of 2023. A serial entrepreneur and technologist, he previously spent more than eight years at Amazon as general manager and head of product.
Arcus Partners And Finity360 AI
On the heels of writing about a new set of Salesforce products for small-to-midsize advisory firms, I received another promising announcement related to that aforementioned giant CRM provider.
Specifically, I’m referring to the availability of Finity360 AI, which is meant to act as the sinew binding a suite of eponymous Salesforce AppExchange applications together.
The Finity360 suite purports to manage documents, data and workflows for an advisory firm using the Salesforce CRM platform.
The artificial intelligence engine portion analyzes client communications, including emails, notes and other messages, and extracts things like client preferences and financial goals.
It is also supposed to churn through, classify and tag all an advisory firm’s documents, perform compliance monitoring, provide contextual insights and generate automated report summaries.
Advisors are also in need of better mechanisms for searching all this within their firm. So, it supposedly provides context-aware searching and can be configured to launch workflows around certain processes as well.
Part of what interests me with Arcus too, are a couple of its partner companies, including the forms automation and straight-through-processing company Quik! (I had a long conversation with founder Rich Walker at the recent T3 conference) and digital signature firm SIGNiX, whose principals I’ve interviewed on a number of occasions.
Advyzon Partners With Nebo Wealth
Finally, I’m pretty selective about covering partnerships themselves as news, but I’ve written about the Advyzon platform for years and Nebo since it launched last year.
The two this week announced a partnership whereby Advyzon Investment Management now powers and serves as a turnkey platform for Nebo Wealth, which helps RIAs streamline and automate the delivery of personalized portfolios for each of their clients and do so at scale.
In theory, it makes for a very interesting and potentially compelling combination that includes—in addition to the automated creation of personalized client portfolios—automated trading and rebalancing, performance reporting, billing, advisor and client portals, and back-office support for account opening and administration.
With this column I’m seeking input from you, the advisor reader, on what you would like to read more about, so email me or leave a comment on these or other topics, technologies and questions: [email protected]