Despite recent layoffs and voluntary pay cuts, growth through acquisition continues at TIFIN, which announced it acquired SharingAlpha, an international online investing community of more than 15,000 professional fund investors and analysts.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
TIFIN announced the close of a $109 million Series D funding round and new $842 million valuation in mid-May.
The next step will be integrating SharingAlpha into TIFIN’s Magnifi platform, an investment intelligence engine. This integration is meant to expand Magnifi’s reach to a more global audience of retail and professional investors.
SharingAlpha co-founder Oren Kaplan will also be joining Magnifi as a partner and will work with Jason O'Shaughnessy, who recently joined TIFIN to lead international efforts.
TIFIN previously announced it would be acquiring Qualis Capital in December after earlier in 2021 having purchased various consumer financial media newsletter brands.
iCapital in Italy and France
On the heels of its undisclosed strategic investment from Bank of America in June, iCaptial Network announced this week a strategic partnership with AXA IM Alts in France and its expansion into Italy with Mediobanca Private Banking.
With its partnership, Mediobanca Private Banking will use iCapital’s technology to provide its clients with access to a range of private markets initiatives within private equity, private debt and real assets and enhance the operational efficiency of the entire investment process in these segments.
The AXA IM Alts partnership appears more complex and includes providing AXA’s network of wealth managers and their high-net-worth clients with access to that firm's offerings through customized white label technology provided by iCapital.
In May, iCapital announced its plans to acquire competing platform SIMON Markets, a Goldman Sachs spinoff.
Schwab Updates Digital Onboarding
Schwab Advisor Services announced an update to its digital onboarding platform that enables advisors to open and fund up to 10 new client accounts in one “digital envelope.”
That in turn enables clients to authorize the accounts with a few clicks on their computer or mobile device.
This ability to open multiple accounts was built atop the digital account open tool first introduced by Schwab in 2018 and finally rolled out to advisors in 2021.
Other improvements include the ability, as part of the digital onboarding workflow process, for advisors to upload up to 16 commonly used firm documents, such as welcome letters, advisory agreements and regulatory disclosures, for new clients to view, edit, acknowledge and approve.
As part of Schwab’s announcement, the firm noted some coming features on its roadmap for later in the year ahead, including support within the digital onboarding process for other account types such as separately managed accounts as well as a wider range of asset transfers and the ability to add IRA beneficiaries.