At CircleBlack’s heart is a wealth and portfolio management platform designed to work across multiple custodians with ease.
Sauickie is trying to market CircleBlack to four main segments: RIAs; aggregators and turnkey asset management programs; custodians and large institutions like major independent broker-dealers; and banks.
“The two areas we’re experiencing a lot of success in right now are the custodians and the banks,” he said, noting that one of the firm’s largest clients is RBC. “This model resonates really well in what they’re looking to offer to their clients, which interestingly end up being the small to midsize RIAs, the clients who have the greatest need for technology solutions like ours. We do have a direct business, but custodians and banks are supporting those clients in mass quantities.”
Custodians, TAMPs and banks in particular are looking for unique, customizable technology stacks that they can offer to advisors and potential clients, said Sauickie.
That gives CircleBlack a leg up on all-in-one technology providers, he said.
“It’s not that they don’t want to do what we’re doing now, but all-in-ones usually have a technology debt that’s measured in years and decades because they failed to pursue integrations for so long,” he said. “Our technology is more modern and open in a way that some larger companies haven’t been able to keep up. In order to do what CircleBlack does, they would have to start from scratch.”
For that reason, CircleBlack is not looking to grow into an all-in-one solution via acquisitions and mergers, said Sauickie.
In addition to adding to CircleBlack’s universe of integrations and adding new clients, Sauickie has also been expanding the firm’s management team.
“I’ve been lucky to inherit a great team,” he said. “Everybody who was here as part of the original management team is still here because they are already really good at what they do. In addition, we’ve filled roles like chief revenue officer, chief financial officer, head of marketing, head of product management, and we expect additional leadership on the technology and development side as well as operations over the next one to two months.
“I had some big shoes to fill, and I was sensitive to that coming into this situation,” he said of his predecessor. “We still want to execute on his vision, and we’re all kind of rowing the same way. It was that vision that brought me to CircleBlack.”
Sauickie said the platform’s users should look for improvements to CircleBlack’s investor application in 2021, including additional reporting for clients to enable more co-planning across different devices between advisors and the end client.