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Welcome to the August 2022 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!
This month's edition kicks off with the news that Envestnet has acquired Redi2, one of the most widely used ‘revenue management’ systems in broker-dealers that facilitates the flow of dollars coming in and being paid out to advisors in all the various increasingly complex ways they can get paid (from upfront commissions via various product types to trails to advisory fees to standalone planning fees), along with its BillFin solution for independent RIAs doing standalone AUM billing.
The deal is well timed to a recent Risk Alert from the SEC about advisors engaging in (unwittingly) incorrect billing due to a lack of strong billing systems and processes. But arguably, it also signals a broader trend, particularly amongst broker-dealers, towards increasingly complex revenue models (with various combinations of third-party products, in-house products, advisory fees through a wide range of SMAs and TAMPs, home office models, and Rep-as-PM portfolios, and fee-for-service financial planning) that necessitates increasingly sophisticated billing systems to handle the growing complexity, as the industry continues its evolution from product sales to advice fees (and the messy middle that comes in the midst of that transition).
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Catchlight offers up a new system that scans information about prospects online to determine which ones are ‘qualified’ and worth pursuing further
- AssetMark acquires Adhesion Wealth from Vestmark as TAMPs continue to seek scale for both technology development and distribution
- CapIntel raises an $11M Series A round to bring its proposal generation tools from Canada to the US
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- Independent Advisor Alliance partners with ‘We Handle Tech: 4 Advisors’ as advisor demand grows for Managed IT Services providers to outsource IT support
- Income Lab and MoneyTree both launch new ‘One-Page Financial Plan’ summary reports as advisors continue to demand more tools to demonstrate the ongoing value of financial planning after the upfront planning process is complete!
In the meantime, we’ve also made several updates to the beta version of our new Kitces AdvisorTech Directory, to make it even easier for financial advisors to look through the available advisor technology options to choose what’s right for them!
And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” as well!
*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!