Welcome to the December 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 Savvy Wealth has raised an $11M Series A round to compete in the new category of ‘tech-enabled RIA’ – where the firm will use the bulk of its capital to develop its own in-house fully-integrated advisor tech stack, in the hopes that a better technology experience will both attract advisors to work for the firm, attract consumers to want to be clients of the firm, and enable their advisors to service more clients (and be more productive) with the firm.
Notably, though, the reality is that while few would argue that today’s ‘best-of-breed’ approach of cobbling together independent advisor technology solutions is perfect, advisory firms on average have continued to run remarkably healthy 25% – 30% profit margins, suggesting that while the technology may not be perfect, it’s not that broken, either. With a select number of ‘all-in-one’ solutions that form a consistent hub (around which the rest of the advisor tech stack is at least reasonably integrated), and a subset of tasks that can be solved with just a little extra administrative support, it’s not clear whether firms like Savvy can build technology that really materially alters the productivity and profit margins of a tech-enabled RIA. Not to mention that for most firms, the biggest inhibitor to expanding reach and growing faster is not its back-office technology efficiencies, but the cost of attracting new clients in the first place… which raises the question of whether Savvy is bringing (or raising capital to fund) an operational solution to what is still first and foremost a marketing problem?
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- DPL Partners launches a new advisor-matching solution to solve for the inbound demand of consumers increasingly seeking out a new crop of no-commission annuity products
- InvestCloud launches a new Advisor Connect solution that will allow larger advisor enterprises to embed an advisor-matching system into their own websites (presuming that the enterprise has a steady supply of prospects to go through the matching process!?)
- IncomeLab’s LifeHub wins the ‘Best-In-Show’ award from the XYPN AdvisorTech Expo with an interface that consolidates the client’s entire financial life down to a single screen (that clients can then engage with to drill deeper)
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- eMoney Advisor launches a new Explore feature that helps clients move past just planning for their goals and instead have the opportunity to see what other goals might even be possible in the first place
- BlackCloak offers a new ‘concierge cybersecurity’ solution for the most affluent clients of financial advisors who may want to spend a little more to protect themselves as potential ‘high-value’ highly-visible targets for hackers.
In the meantime, we’re excited to announce several new updates to our new Kitces AdvisorTech Directory, including Advisor Satisfaction scores from our Kitces AdvisorTech Research, and the inclusion of WealthTech Integration scores from the Ezra Group!
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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