Welcome to the October 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 DPL Financial Partners has raised $20M of capital to continue scaling up its marketplace of no-commission annuities for RIAs, as the ongoing development of new fee-based products – combined with deepening tech integrations for annuities into existing RIA systems – is leading to a steady rise in the use of annuities by RIAs, with more than $1B of new flows via DPL in just the past 12 months alone.
And notably, the fresh capital comes in the midst of a recent rise in interest rates that may, for the first time in nearly 15 years – since before the financial crisis – give annuity products enough yield to be able to innovate new offerings and more competitive pricing. While the growth of DPL’s marketplace may itself usher in a greater level of annuity competitiveness, as companies are forced to compete for RIA attention not by offering the biggest commissions but by offering the best features and benefits to get through the RIA-as-gatekeeper.
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Ethic Investing raises a $50M Series C round as values-based “personalized indexing” through direct indexing tools continues to gain momentum
- Wealthfront’s acquisition deal with UBS falls through as incumbents still show they’d rather build than buy (at least at robo-advisor valuations)
- Morgan Stanley rolls out a held-away account aggregation feature for its 401(k) plan advisors to provide more holistic advice within the plan to participants (before they ever have a chance to roll over to an independent advisor in the future!?)
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- RightCapital launches a new ‘Blueprint’ feature to create an Asset-Map-style visualization of the client’s financial household
- Elements creates a “One Page Financial Plan” solution, not to replace the traditional financial plan, but to more meaningfully engage clients and even prospects with a better financial monitoring process (until it’s time for their next financial plan update)
In the meantime, we’re also gearing up later this month for several new updates to our new Kitces AdvisorTech Directory, including Advisor Satisfaction scores from our Kitces AdvisorTech Research and Integration scores from Ezra Group’s research!
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 TechNews@kitces.com!
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