Morningstar launched the Annuity Intelligence Center on Wednesday.
The suite of features is now available through the firm’s Morningstar Advisor Workstation, which is used by thousands of advisors in the US.
With annuities becoming more popular among advisors and clients, the Annuity Intelligence Center is meant to simplify an advisor’s process of buying annuities on behalf of clients.
The technology is provided by Luma Financial Technologies, which is an independent, multi-issuer structured products and annuities platform.
Simply put, the platform covers the lifecycle management needs around annuities, from pre-trade, trade and post-trade and ongoing monitoring of product performance. The platform also supports different types of annuities, including fixed index, registered index-linked and variable annuities.
In addition to the transactional aspects of the platform, advisors and clients can collaborate to compare annuities and their features and there is a repository of updated educational material. Advisors can also find annuity training and research materials.
This is not the first rodeo for the two firms this year. The two signed an agreement that would provide advisors with structured notes data and analytics through Advisor Workstation in March.
NaviPlan Gets a New Leader at InvestCloud
A venerable Canadian import that has changed hands several times has a new leader at the helm.
NaviPlan, the cash flow–based planning engine, will now be overseen by Michael Roth, who has been named president of digital planning at InvestCloud, the software’s latest owner.
Roth came into the InvestCloud world with that international firm’s takeover of Tegra 118 in a reorganization and recapitalization by majority owners Clearlake Capital and Motive Partners (Tegra 118 had acquired RetireUp, a provider of integrated retirement income planning tools, of which Roth was the CEO in 2020).
In the announcement of his new role, Roth will be “charged with driving the growth of InvestCloud’s Digital Planning proposition to support even the most complex planning scenarios—such as tax, estate, cash flow and succession planning—while tailoring solutions to meet the unique jurisdictional requirements in geographies around the world.”
Over the course of the past two years, InvestCloud has been adding NaviPlan’s capabilities to its Digital Warehouse, where they can complement the firm’s goal-based planning applications.
NaviPlan continues to be used by more than 140,000 financial professionals across 3,000 firms worldwide.
NaviPlan came out of Emerging Information Systems Inc. of Winnipeg, Manitoba, and was first rebranded as Advicent when acquired by Vista Equity Partners in 2011. InvestCloud acquired Advicent and NaviPlan in May 2021.
Docupace Rolls Out RIA Productivity Suite
Cloud-based document management provider Docupace announced the launch of its RIA Productivity Suite, which has been designed for advisory firms of any size to streamline, digitize and further automate their operations.
Docupace worked with the Ezra Group technology consultancy in developing the new suite with several “out-of-the-box” capabilities.
The integrated tool kit, which has built-in integrations with CRM providers Redtail, Wealthbox, Salesforce (and Salesforce Financial Services Cloud) and Practifi, has a simplified new account opening process and new client onboarding features.
It also has a new rules-based workflow engine and straight-through processing for “work items,” improvements to its ADV form management features, among others.
The suite is preconfigured with custodial form validations and bundles for Axos, Pershing Advisory Services, Charles Schwab, Pershing and Fidelity Institutional.
Docupace previously announced several executive hires and promotions in September.
AssetMark Completes Acquisition of Adhesion Wealth
Turnkey asset management platform AssetMark announced the completion of its acquisition of unified managed account platform and model marketplace Adhesion Wealth on Thursday. The acquisition was first announced in June.
Adhesion, with over 400 asset managers on its platform, provides outsourced overlay portfolio management services, client engagement technologies and tailored managed accounts to advisors. It will operate as a stand-alone business and will keep its brand.
With the acquisition, AssetMark acquired total billable assets of $7.3 billion as of Nov. 30, 2022, and paid $46 million plus transaction costs and contingent payments.
Earlier this year, AssetMark launched WealthBuilder Prospecting and a new suite of marketing tools for automating email campaigns, customizing integrations with advisors’ websites and pushing out client-facing content, provided and built by FMG Suite.
It has more than 8,500 advisors on its platform.