Happy Tuesday, Fellow Fintechers!
We hope you and yours are starting the week out safely. Here in Atlanta – and specifically, Buckhead, where I live – we had anything but a normal weekend. We started out Friday evening with a beautiful dinner outside at the Shops of Buckhead – which was hit just hours later with vandalism and looting after peaceful marches on the senseless death of George Floyd turned violent here in my city. Friday night here was rife with gunshots, fires set, helicopters overhead, and sirens going off nonstop until around 4 a.m. Stores and businesses across the street from our home were vandalized and looted. Not exactly a normal weekend, but life goes on – the sun shines this morning, the American flag is still flying, and my faith in the resiliency of the human spirit – even after the collective traumas we’ve all experienced these past months - has never been stronger.
Moving on to fintech, we begin with Vasyl Soloshchuk’s Wealthtech Weekly column, where we have news from Smarsh, Addepar and AdvicePay, among others. This week, we also have a new 3 Questions feature with Barrett Ayers, President of Adhesion Wealth which was acquired by Vestmark in 2018. Barrett predicts “both model marketplaces and direct indexing will start to take center stage” in the coming years and offers many more insights you’ll want to check out.
FA Mag Senior Editor Chris Robbins has also loaded up our docket on an explosive week in wealthtech news, where, in his words… “ETFs in 401ks. Annuities in TDFs. AI-enhanced advisor virtual assistants. Now IRAs that can hold anything. It's a great week for innovation!” He is right, and that’s where we are in the innovation cycle in wealthtech now – full out explosive growth, and opportunities galore for advisors to pick and choose from products created by great tech minds to help them run their practices more effectively.
We finish this week’s newsletter with word that Envestnet has partnered with Apprise Labs on an AI application and AdvisorStream on a marketing offering via platform integrations. Finally, we have news from Pershing that the firm has rolled out a Form CRS solution and a Tracking and Reporting solution for advisors on its platform to help them comply with the June 30 deadline on the SEC’s Reg BI directive.
All in all, this has been a huge week in wealthtech innovation. Read up and be in the know!
Yours in Fintech,
Cindy Taylor