Clients of the financial technology platform InvestCloud got a letter this week telling them that fees for the service would increase by 5%, effective immediately.
“This adjustment reflects prevailing market conditions and the increasing costs we are facing due to inflation and other factors,” stated the letter.
Jason Pereira, senior partner and financial planner at Woodgate Financial in Toronto, said he was surprised to get such an impersonal communication just months after his firm renewed its annual contract with InvestCloud in January.
“There’s a tone-deafness to a form letter,” he said. “I know people with much longer contracts who got that same letter. … This just got slapped on them. That’s not great.”
Pereira also said there had been little to no meaningful development to InvestCloud’s Naviplan financial planning application in many months. In fact, a Naviplan by Investcloud website still listed Anthony Stich, who departed Investcloud in May of 2022, as chief operating officer.
In raising its prices, InvestCloud joins fellow financial technology company Orion Advisor Solutions, which announced a nearly 9% increase earlier this month.
“In an environment where the cost of labor and service is high, these fintech vendors are also facing higher operating costs themselves,” said William Trout, director of securities and investments practices at Datos Insights. “They’re eager to redistribute the flow of dollars and capture some of that revenue that the advisor has managed to capture.”
InvestCloud’s upper management has recently seen significant turnover as Jeffery Yabuki was appointed its new chairman and CEO in January. Yabuki succeeded Richard Lumb, a director on the company’s board of directors, who served as interim CEO since April 2022 when John Wise, the co-founder and CEO of InvestCloud, exited the company.
Most recently were the departures of chief revenue officer for the Americas Pete Hess, and chief product officer of the company’s APL unit Frederick Duden, as reported by RIABiz and Citywire.
Hess, in a message sent to WealthManagement.com via LinkedIn, took issue with the characterization he did not leave on his own terms.
"I have been working collaboratively with Jeff Yabuki to transition out for months. I chose to leave given my desire to get back into a CEO role, and I could not commit to InvestCloud for another three to five years and also potentially take a new role as CEO in a new yet-to-be-identified company,” he wrote, noting he planned to spend the next six months off with his family.
Datos Insight's Trout said Yabuki's moves made sense.
“They are doing a top-to-bottom re-assessment of what it takes to be successful in an environment where they are facing competition,” said Trout.
Alois Pirker, founder and CEO of Pirker Partners, said the price increase was an expected result of bringing in new leadership at InvestCloud.
“Having a new CEO, they’re trying to increase revenue,” he said. “It will be a double-edged sword if they raise prices while also under pressure. Time will tell if they’re successful.”
Hess, unaware of these analyst’s opinions, wrote positively about the new CEO’s efforts.
"Jeff Yabuki is the real deal and perfect for InvestCloud. He and the new management team are the right people and I believe IC clients and the market will see a lot of progress quickly," he wrote.
Pereira said the fee increase by InvestCloud wouldn’t necessarily cause his firm to switch vendors, primarily because of how labor-intensive that would be.
“I’m going to have to live with it,” he said. “The migration from a financial planning software to another financial planning software involves work, time and effort. Anyone who is seriously using the software is not going to on a dime say, ‘I’m done.’”
Pirker said the internal turmoil at InvestCloud could cause some clients to turn away, but doing so may not be worth the effort.
“It’s hard to replace a digital process that you have built or a data platform that you’ve leveraged,” he said. “Those are very sticky capabilities. They’re highly customized and once it fits, it’s blood, sweat and tears going into implementing it. You don’t want to change it once you start using it.”
InvestCloud representatives had not responded to requests for comment prior to publication.