Welcome to the May issue of the latest news in Financial Advisor #FinTech – 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 and wealth management!
This month’s edition kicks off with the surprising news of two major (and unexpected) leadership changes at the leading financial planning software firms, with Advicent CEO Phil Cunningham and MoneyGuidePro President Kevin Knull both stepping down from their positions this month. In Advicent’s case, the news comes as NaviPlan and Profiles continue to lag in market share, and Figlo is not yet making substantial inroads since its 2014 acquisition, while word has emerged that owner Vista Equity Partners is shopping the company for new ownership (after a 6-year hold since EISI’s acquisition in 2011). On the other hand, Knull’s departure from MoneyGuidePro comes on the heels of major enterprise successes, including a big deal last fall with Cetera (which beat out eMoney Advisor despite former eMoney Advisor CEO Edmond Walters being a Cetera board member!), and the adoption of Knull’s brainchild, MyMoneyGuide, as the backbone for Schwab’s Intelligent Advisory offering… suggesting that Knull is leaving on a high note (and given his history, will likely resurface in a leadership position somewhere in the industry again soon). In the meantime, though, this means that two of the top three financial planning software companies are experiencing leadership turnover at a critical juncture for the industry, which further opens the door to new players in the current hyper-competitive environment.
From there, the latest highlights also include:
- A fascinating new advisor software survey, that looks at not only advisor adoption, but also user ratings, and reveals how often advisors stay with technology they’re unhappy with (ostensibly due to the lack of data portability and the challenges of data migration?)
- Major new product rollouts from TrueLytics, Orion, MaxForAdvisors, and Snappy Kraken
- Oranj acquires TradeWarrior rebalancing software, and AdvisorEngine acquires Kredible
- Quovo raises $10M in Series B financing
- Investopedia expands its Advisor Insights Q&A platform, even as NerdWallet shuts down their Ask An Advisor solution
- Morningstar announces it will launch a Model Marketplace in 2018 to compete with the likes of TD Ameritrade and Riskalyze (and of course, Envestnet itself)
You can view analysis of these announcements and more trends in advisor technology in this month’s column, including the emergence of new “robo-for-advisors” platforms Investment POD and ActiveAllocator (which don’t appear to be substantively differentiated from today’s TAMP and rebalancing software solutions), how doing tax prep is becoming big client lead gen business (and not just for financial advisors getting referrals from CPAs), how Wealthfront is stretching for revenue by rolling out a Securities-Based Lending solution (while telling consumers to stop “getting hung up on the disclosures”), and that XY Planning Network will be running its second annual FinTech competition for financial advisor software (deadline for those who wish to enter: May 31st).
I hope you’re continuing to find this new 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 TechNews@kitces.com!
source https://www.kitces.com/blog/the-latest-in-financial-advisor-fintech-may-2017/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-latest-in-financial-advisor-fintech-may-2017
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