Fintech Bytes: Fidelity, Salesforce, RightCapital

Crazy week for financial advisors, right?

Interest rates are rising, inflation is still, ahem, blowing up, the mortgage market is doing something quite frankly beyond this humble renter’s understanding, and now the markets are taking a sharp, red dive. The fintech world was a bit quieter than usual – many companies may be preparing for a flurry of conferences coming up in October – but I’m sure financial advisors have a lot on their minds these days.

I have previously written about how prolonged difficulties in the economy will test many fintech advisors as they have never been tested before. Not only is funding tighter, but now is the time for many to prove they can actually do the things they’ve been selling advisors. Will customers stick to their plan? Did this risk assessment tool correctly measure how much loss a client can handle?

We’ll see. And if you like to share how your technology stack is helping or hurting your business, please send me an email or a tweet.

In the meantime, here are some of the advisor fintech news updates you may have missed this week.

FIDELITY INSTITUTIONAL INTEGRATES WITH SALES FUNCTION

Fidelity’s financial advisor custody business has a new integration with client management giant Salesforce to connect client accounts in Salesforce to their Fidelity accounts on Wealthscape. Advisors access account information and initiate actions directly in Salesforce. The integration was built on Salesforce’s Financial Services Cloud and is currently being tested with RIAs and family offices for a general launch in early 2023.

Many firms choose a CRM to serve as the hub of their technology stack, so it makes sense that Fidelity would want to integrate with the biggest name in the market. But what’s interesting here is that this is about making Fidelity accounts and workflows available on Salesforce, rather than bringing Salesforce features over to Wealthscape. Maybe the financial institution realizes that a technology company can build a better digital experience?

RIGHT CAPITAL INTRODUCES BLUEPRINT

Financial planning software RightCapital has a new tool called Blueprint for visualizing and organizing household financial data and goals. Advisors and clients can use Blueprint to identify missing elements or changes in the household’s financial picture; add, update or delete financial inputs and see them automatically reflected in the financial plan; see which accounts are owned individually or jointly; and share photos online for interactive discussions.

RightCapital showed some visualizations of the new layout, which includes an easy-to-understand tree of accounts and a timeline of goals. RightCapital is one of the largest financial planning fintechs yet to be acquired by an asset management firm, which appeals to many independent advisors.

CHOIRS LAUNCH VOICES, RECRUIT DANI FAVA

To help media companies increase the diversity of their coverage, Choir, the company launched by Sonya Dreizler and Liv Gagnon, has a new feature called Voices: Search. Voices aims to be a directory of people of color, women and non-binary professionals working in wealth management that journalists can use to find expert voices in their stories. The company has also added Envestnet CEO Dani Fava to its board.

Reporters are always trying to find new voices to highlight in our stories—not to tick off diversity, but to provide a wider range of viewpoints on topics that matter to our readers. But it’s harder than many people realize to find those voices, and I, for one, welcome any tool that makes my job easier and my stories more interesting. It’s also interesting to see that Choir, best known for its conference diversity certification (the company worked with Future Proof to make it one of the most diverse events in wealth management history), is now branching out into fintech.

PRACTIFI DELIVERS NEW DATA VISUALIZATION TOOL

Performance optimization fintech Practifi has a new data visualization tool called Propel for wealth management institutions, brokers and registered investment advisors. Propel includes a data management platform that organizes and captures snapshots of Practifi’s data model, and a dashboard to turn that data into actionable insights for financial advisors.

You’ve probably heard before that “data is the new oil”, but just like oil, data is pretty much useless unless you can use it to power something. “Actionable insights” is the name of the game now, and just about everyone across fintech is trying to find ways to make the insane amounts of data available into things that actually help financial advisors.

ASSETBOOK REJECTS CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT APP

Performance reporting fintech AssetBook launched a new product, Valian, to provide advisers with detailed overviews of managed and held-away accounts. Valian is available via AssetBook’s portfolio management and reporting suite, Pulse.

The industry is packed with financial portals and data aggregations, and AssetBook seems to understand this. The company hopes it can win business with some cutting-edge features like biometric ID, video conferencing capabilities and collaborative to-do lists. But with almost everyone competing to be the core client engagement platform, it remains to be seen if Valian is enough to win market share from other players.

SCIENCE LAUNCHES PRISTYLES

Advisor fintech Skience will now bundle its products into three different tiers – Edge, Elite and Elite Plus – to serve advisory firms of different sizes. All three tiers include CRM, digital account opening, risk profiling, compliance auditing and integrations with custodians, financial planning software and other fintech advisors. Elite includes custom form mapping and data consolidation feeds, while Elite Plus offers tools for advisor transitions and digital document storage.

Pricing tiers like this are ubiquitous in consumer software, and it makes a lot of sense for consulting firms as well. Especially in current market conditions, advisors are looking at technology budgets as an area where they can cut back on expenses, and no one wants to spend money on features they don’t need.

FRIEND TOGETHER WITH COIN METRICS

Venn, a portfolio analysis software from Two Sigma, has partnered with Coin Metrics to bring onboard data on cryptocurrency returns. Coin Metrics calculates data on more than 475 digital assets in both US dollars and euros, and its integration with Venn aims to help advisors and institutional investors incorporate crypto into a multi-asset portfolio.

Have you seen the digital asset markets lately? Not sure people want to be reminded of their bitcoin returns right now, and amid the broader market selloff, it’s uncertain how many advisors currently want to spend their budgets on new cryptofintech.

ELEMENTS SIMPLIFIES ONE-PAGE FINANCIAL PLANS

Elements, which describes itself as a mobile-first financial monitoring platform, has revamped its one-page financial plans. Fintech uses 12 financial “vital signs,” each a key part of personal finance, to make financial planning more relatable to investors regardless of their net worth.

Elements isn’t saying exactly what’s new or different about its “fresh approach” to one-page financial plans or how it will start attracting financial advisers if the previous approach didn’t work. I would just recommend dropping the “UP” acronym. If you’re familiar with the hip-hop group Naughty By Nature, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, I’ll let you Google it on your own.

OPTO INVESTMENTS SECURES USD 145 MILLION

Tiger Global has led a $145 million Series A funding round in Opto Investments, a fintech startup that aims to help financial advisors invest in private markets. The company says it has partnered with 80 RIAs and will use the funding to expand its business, add to its team and secure more investment opportunities.

Although venture capital investment in tech is down across the board, it’s interesting to see a startup that had been operating in stealth secure such a large bag of funding. I just wonder how many more alternative investment platforms the industry really needs.

[More: After Wealthfront, UBS dusts off plan to stress banking, tech and productivity]