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Welcome to the May 2021 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 big news that Tifin Group has raised $22M in Series B capital, shortly off the heels of its acquisition of Totum Risk and MyFinancialAnswers and its sale of 55IP to JP Morgan, in an ongoing effort to acquire smaller AdvisorTech companies, add both capital and additional developer resources, and try to incubate them to the next level of success in a world where most AdvisorTech solutions start out as undercapitalized “homegrown” solutions from advisors themselves. The real question, though, is whether Tifin envisions packaging its acquisitions together to formulate a whole that may be worth more than the sum of the parts, or instead will function as an innovation conduit for its investors who are themselves largely potential strategic acquirers (from Morningstar to Broadridge to JP Morgan). Either way, the emergence of Tifin highlights both the opportunities in AdvisorTech for small companies to receive influxes of capital and investment to grow to the next stage, as interest in AdvisorTech innovation continues to grow.
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Ethic Investing raises $29M from investors including Fidelity as ESG-driven direct indexing continues to gain traction
- Snappy Kraken raises $6M to accelerate the growth of advisor marketing technology
- Morgan Stanley spins off E*Trade Advisor Services to Axos Financial to formulate another RIA custodian competitor to Schwabitrade
- Envestnet acquires Harvest Wealth to power the ongoing convergence of banks, wealth, and trust services
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- SEI acquires the remainder of Oranj to upgrade its own digital experience to compete for independent RIAs
- Avantax acquires Guidevine’s marketing technology tools for its own advisors
- EverPresent launches a new service allowing advisors’ clients to record their own family legacy videos (with interview scripts to make the process less morbid and challenging!)
- Skience launches a new digital repapering tool as the industry turns a greater focus to using technology to reduce the friction of switching broker-dealers
- AdvicePay launches Deliverables to facilitate compliance reviews of financial plans for enterprises trying to scale fee-for-service financial advice
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]!