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Welcome to the October 2020 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 continues with new co-author (and AdvisorTech guru) Craig Iskowitz, along with guest contributor Kyle Van Pelt, and kicks off with the launch of eMoney Advisor’s next-generation planning tool “Project Avocado”… which as it turns out, has been pivoted into an app now dubbed “Incentive” to provide financial wellness in the 401(k) channel instead, a boon to advisors looking to compete with the growth of 401(k) providers increasingly offering financial advice to 401(k) participants (before independent advisors ever have a chance at capturing the future IRA rollover), but also a potential competitor as Fidelity signals it may begin to use eMoney’s Incentive itself as a ‘direct-to-consumer’ solution with its own 401(k) plan participants to provide them in-house Fidelity advice before they ever retire out of a Fidelity 401(k) plan to an independent advisor.
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Facet Wealth follows the path of LearnVest as it raises a $25M Series B to pivot into the employee financial wellness channel
- NextCapital raises a $30M Series D as it expands its white-labeled digital advice solution for 401(k) providers
- Mega-RIA Wealth Enhancement Group grows impatient with financial planning software and builds its own “Next Best Action” solution
- Pershing expands its biometric multi-factor authentication to desktop NetX360 as a passwordless future looms large
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including Envestnet’s Tamarac launching an integration with Flourish as off-platform cash becomes a hot asset class, Edward Jones builds a new matchmaking tool for consumers to differentiate amongst a sea of (its own) similar advisors, Fidelity expands its Integration XChange API capabilities as even single-custodial advisors are increasingly seeking multi-technology-vendors, YCharts expands into SMA analytics, and Executor Assist launches as a somewhat ‘low-tech’ way to compete with other high-tech estate planning tools for financial advisors.
And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular new “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” as well!
I hope you're continuing to find this column on financial advisor technology to be helpful! Please share your comments at the end and let me know what you think!
*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to [email protected]!