Altruist is a relatively new player among platforms serving financial advisors, and it bolstered its chops with today’s announcement that BlackRock, State Street Global Advisors and Redwood Investment Management now offer managed portfolios on the company’s site.

Founded in 2018 by former advisor Jason Wenk, Altruist is a Venice, Calif.-based fintech firm billing itself as an all-in-one, paperless platform enabling advisors to serve clients with low-cost, cutting-edge tools in areas ranging from opening and funding accounts to rebalancing assets and simplifying reporting.

In February, Altruist debuted its Portfolio Marketplace that features model portfolios from Vanguard and Dimensional Fund Advisors. Altruist users can also build custom model portfolios on this marketplace.

Now Altruist has expanded its Portfolio Marketplace by adding BlackRock’s Target Allocation ESG and Target Allocation ETF Series managed model portfolios, State Street’s Active Asset Allocation ETF Portfolios and Redwood’s Engineered Risk-Budgeted Series portfolios.

The addition of these asset managers is an attention grabber that boosts Altruist’s capabilities and cache, but Wenk said bringing them on board is only part of the company’s value-add for advisors.

One aspect he highlighted was the ability to trade fractional shares on the Altruist site.

“No other platform trades with fractional shares like we do,” Wenk said. “We give financial advisors more choice and flexibility, enabling them to serve a broader and more inclusive client base.”

And, he noted, Altruist builds all of the software in its technology suite that aggregates numerous functions into a unified platform.

“When someone uses Altruist, they just plug in and start working with clients,” he said. “All of the key things are there: You can open accounts online and don’t have to do paperwork. Clients can fund their accounts through a mobile account on their phone in seconds. Once an advisor has opened an account, they can build and manage model portfolios. All of the performance reporting and fee billing is fully automated through a simple desktop application.”

Altruist’s platform is free for the first 100 client accounts, and then it’s $1 per account per month after that. And Wenk claims the services it offers advisors cost significantly less than the industry average.

“For that start-up advisor who otherwise might have to spend up to $30,000 in software fees just to get up and running, they can get up and running here very quickly, scale their business and serve many times more customers because they’re not managing a lot of technology.

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