Happy Tuesday, Fellow Fintechers!
There’s one more week behind us, and things are slowly getting back to the new normal for us all—or so we thought. Then our latest upheaval occurred in my hometown Atlanta over the weekend, and we also saw new cases of COVID19 re-emerge in certain hotspots. It’s like “déjà vu all over again,” in the words of the late New York Yankee great Yogi Berra. I am certain we will make it through all of this, as tumultuous as these times are, and we will be a better nation for it.
Moving right along, we begin with a look at the industry news for the past week from our wealthtech guru Vasyl Soloshcuk with updates from Act Analytics, M1 Finance, FA Match and more. We also have a new 3 Questions interview with Alastair Cairns, head of insights at Addepar. The firm has had explosive growth, and now has over “$2 trillion of assets on (their) platform managed by hundreds of family offices, RIAs, and banks globally.”
Dusty Russell from Redtail Technology has penned a piece for us this week on the case for advisor texting, given the way the pandemic has affected work environments and client communications during these times. We also have another piece contributed by industry insider Matt Reiner of artificial intelligence firm Benjamin, who shares with our audience how an AI assistant can integrate a firm’s tech stack and help “proactively push critical information to an advisor and her team.” If you think AI is just for the Silicon Valley crowd, I strongly suggest you read this article and educate yourself on one way AI is already being used by progressive wealth managers.
Chris Robbins, a Financial Advisor magazine senior editor, has penned two pieces for us this week – one looking into how the pandemic outbreak has forced advisors to go digital and another covering the updated annual “How America Saves” report from Vanguard. In the first piece, Robbins did a detailed overview on how advisors have had to shift their account onboarding, communications and more with insights contributed by senior executives at Schwab, Orion, Folio and AdvisorPeak. In the second piece, Robbins did a deep dive into the Vanguard report, which detailed how automation helped keep retirement accounts from suffering major losses during the recent downturn, in comparison to stock indexes, which saw more volatility and negative price action earlier in the pandemic.
Finally, we finish up with a piece from Jacqueline Sergeant, associate editor of Financial Advisor magazine, on the results of a new survey from Fidelity Digital Assets. Abby Johnson, Fidelity’s CEO, has long been a strong voice advocating for digital currencies and even had a bitcoin mining operation at the firm early on. The survey results noted that “digital assets such as Bitcoin are gaining popularity among institutional investors in the U.S. and abroad.” For those following the sector, this should come as no surprise, given the rise in institutional infrastructure and offerings that have emerged for investors in recent years around digital currencies. We have long advocated for this sector and will continue to, as we see digital assets and digitization of securities and commodities as the future of the investment industry.
In the meantime, we hope this finds you and yours safe and well. It’s a time of profound change in the wealth management industry and we’ll be here to help you maneuver through the implications of this upheaval for the fintech and wealthtech sectors.
Yours in Fintech,
Cindy Taylor