Invesco is bringing five of its software businesses, RedBlack, Jemstep, Portfolio Pathway, Intelliflo UK and i4C, under one entity, called intelliflo. Intelliflo founder and CEO Nick Eatock will be leading the new entity, which will support over 30,000 financial advisors—amounting to $900 billion—around the globe.
As part of the business unification, the five businesses will be rolled into four functions, with differing functionality in the U.S. and the U.K. For U.S.-based advisors, Jemstep will now be known as intelliflo office, Portfolio Pathway will become intelliflo portfolio, and RedBlack is being rebranded as RedBlack, an intelliflo solution. The fourth function, called intelliflo planning, is a rebranding of i4C and is currently available only in the U.K. It provides advisors with goals-based planning.
As the rebranded “office” function, Jemstep will deliver goal-based investing and digital onboarding for enterprises, while the “portfolio” function is an RIA-focused cloud-based solution for trading, reporting, billing and client-facing tools. The rebranded RedBlack facilitates portfolio management and rebalancing via automated workflows, pretrade compliance, order management and post-trade compliance.
With the move, Invesco is making a “decisive first step” in becoming a global brand, said Alois Pirker, research director for Aite Group's wealth management division. The varied geographies and business lines of the five companies will be challenging for some businesses. Pirker noted that planning solutions, for example, need to be localized to specific markets and advisors in some countries may not be familiar with certain Invesco offerings.
“The brand they chose is the UK or European brand,” he said. “Now you need to start making folks familiar with it.”
Last month, InvestCloud restructured some of its brands, reconfiguring leadership and refocusing its business lines. While there are similarities in strategies, InvestCloud has a head start in its global ambitions, because it was “global by design, from the get-go,” said Pirker.
As part of the combination, Invesco is working to build a single API model “to allow for deep integrations and seamless user experiences across the multiple solutions,” according to intelliflo spokesperson Warner May.
By consolidating development, maintenance and branding under the intelliflo umbrella, Eatock plans to create an open architecture product set that will make it easier for advisors to serve their clients, according to the company.
“All our data shows that the pandemic has dramatically accelerated the adoption of technology by both advisers and their clients,” he said in a statement. Advisor customers currently using any of the affected services can continue accessing them as usual, he added, noting that customers will be introduced to the full suite of capabilities by the end of the year.