More than 60 tech vendors set up booths at Schwab's IMPACT conference, and some used the opportunity to announce new partnerships and products.
Here are a few worth noting:
CAIS Brings Hedge Funds To Envestnet
CAIS, which has an alternatives investment platform, announced at Schwab’s annual IMPACT conference that it has partnered with Envestnet to give its 43,000 advisors access to hedge funds and private equity.
Matt Brown, the founder and CEO of CAIS, said his product is especially valuable for advisors looking to go independent without losing access to many of the strategies available to them at a wirehouse.
“The biggest wealth management firms in the world build similar products [to CAIS], but independent advisors are resource-constrained,” Brown told WealthManagement.com at IMPACT. “It can drop your competitiveness in the market if you decide to go from a wirehouse to independent.”
The integration will provide advisors with single-sign-on access to the CAIS portal through the ENV 2 system. Using CAIS, advisors can access a menu of high-caliber alternative investments and find product reports, white papers, and other educational material. Once a fund is selected, advisors can electronically fund a transaction without leaving the platform.
“As investor demand for alternative investment strategies continues to increase, RIAs and other advisors that rely on Envestnet can obtain streamlined access to previously unavailable funds through CAIS,” said James Patrick, the executive vice president of Envestnet’s Portfolio Management Consultants group.
A staged rollout of the integration will begin in December.
Class-Action Settlements in the Cloud
According to InvestCloud, a provider of cloud-based advisor software, financial advisors deal with significant paperwork to file a securities class-action settlement claim, whether for themselves or a client. They have to rely on mailings just to stay informed of existing settlements.
InvestCloud announced a new partnership at IMPACT with Chicago Clearing Corp., a class-action claims recovery specialist, to develop new apps that tackle this process.
In a statement, the companies said this helps advisors provide another service to clients in a more efficient manner. Chicago Clearing Corp. gathers relevant historical data, applies search criteria for all qualifying holdings, and processes settlements. The idea is to make the paper-based process entirely digital and more efficient, making it easier for advisors to retrieve settlements they are owed from a securities class action.
Riskalyze Partners With AssetMark
Riskalyze, a firm focused on helping advisors assess risk tolerance and align it with portfolios, announced Wednesday a new partnership with AssetMark, a turnkey asset management platform, that provides AssetMark advisors with discounted access to Riskalyze.
Under the partnership, all 1,200 of AssetMark’s strategies will be accessible within the Risalyze platform.
“We believe that using accurate, quantitative data is the best way to make investment decisions that are in the best interests of investors,” Charles Goldman, president and CEO of AssetMark, said in a statement. “Measuring risk tolerance is extremely important to today’s advisors.”