Welcome to the July 2024 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 AI meeting support solution Jump has raised $4.6 million in venture capital, as meeting support has increasingly shown itself as a leading use case for AI as it applies to financial advisors given the sheer amount of time advisors spend on meeting preparation and follow-up tasks between multiple systems and the ability of AI tools like Jump to quickly scan through meeting notes and transcripts and produce meeting summaries, draft follow-up emails, and assign tasks.
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Digital prospecting solution AIdentified has raised $12.5 million in Series B funding as it looks to further develop and scale its solution for finding qualified prospects for referrals among an advisors’ network in order to drive more organic growth – though it remains to be seen how many advisors are ready to engage in a more proactive prospecting approach to the extent that it makes sense to adopt a new technology solution for doing so.
- AI-driven investment research solution Brightwave has raised $6 million in seed funding for its digital “investment analyst” – although in a tech landscape where solutions tend to cater either towards ‘active’ advisors who seek out investment opportunities on their own or ‘passive’ advisors who focus more on educating clients to keep them in the markets, it isn’t clear where on the divide Brightwave lies (or whether advisors will want to pay for a solution that seeks to do both, given that most advisors fall in either one camp or the other)
- The state of Missouri has joined Washington state in scrutinizing advisors’ use of third-party technology like Pontera to access and trade in clients’ held-away accounts – which on the one hand, is striking in that those tools seem to be widely popular among clients and advisors alike due to their ability to give advisors secure access to client accounts, making it confusing that regulators would choose to scrutinize them; but on the other hand may be understandable given how quickly the technology to trade held-away assets has emerged, leaving regulators to find any way they can to pump the brakes on further development until they can come up with an acceptable regulatory framework
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- A new technology solution, RIA Growth Catalyst, has launched as a tool for firms to identify potential Mergers & Acquisition partners by using current and historical public Form ADV data to gauge which firms actually have a solid track record of organic growth and productivity metrics
- A new survey shows that around 21% of advisors use direct indexing in their practice, which on the one hand, indicates that a large majority of advisors and clients aren’t yet sold on the tax efficiency and other benefits of direct indexing (at least enough to make up for the added complexity it introduces), but on the other hand reflects how at least some advisors see direct indexing as a way to more effectively serve high-net-worth clients and values-based investors, leaving the question about whether it will eventually see more widespread adoption than those specific use cases
And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!
*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to TechNews@kitces.com!
