According to Vigrass, the API strategy is a huge part of what they do. The company provides a full set of REST APIs that allows third parties to integrate with the platform and get the full functionality of the Folio site. This includes everything from account opening APIs to trading APIs, information on cash movement APIs, etc.
“The third parties that are interested in integrating with us via API are typically companies that are very conscious of the experience that they are trying to promote and provide to their clients. They want to be able to maintain and reinforce that, and still get the full functionality of the Folio platform.”
With a great number of third-party integrations, Folio tries to provide generic APIs so that they don’t have to support a number of custom installations. Greg said, “One of the things we’ve found is that if we’re able to simply support a generic set of APIs, we do so on a consistent basis. Then the quality is much higher. We’re not in a position of having to do a lot of customer one-offs. We simply provide the specification.”
To maintain a high standard of APIs, each one goes through a rigorous testing set. This allows Folio to provide clients with the current, top-quality version of the API set.
The primary consumers of Folio’s APIs are enterprises, larger institutions, and financial advisors. Greg explained, “We have a number of advisors operating on the platform who do so exclusively on an API basis. They’re trying to create and maintain a very unique experience for their users. From an enterprise basis, some enterprise firms that we work with, the API is purely an efficiency tool. For them it’s far more efficient to interface with us on an API basis. So there’re a number of firms that are taking maximum advantage of APIs, that do virtually everything on an API-driven basis.”
Folio Institutional is consistently expanding its APIs to provide API support for all the existing and new functionality. In the near future, tax optimization and training tools are going to be supported by APIs. “We have something called the Tax of Football, which is a patented inventory tax optimization tool. We will add APIs to support that. We also do a lot with model-based training. We’ll continue to add APIs as additional trading methodologies.”
Vestwell
Vestwell facilitates a lot of API integration. For example, the Riskalyze retirement solution was built by Vestwell and its partners. This solution is centered around a risk number based on a series of questions. The whole process is carried out with end-to-end (E2E) APIs.
The company also uses APIs to design retirement plans and structure legal documents required by their record-keeping partners.
According to Aaron Schumm, CEO at Vestwell, its APIs are created to work with its partners behind the scenes, and are not outwardly focused.
When working with other firms, whether on the advisory side or on the end-user portal, Vestwell’s API framework allows the company to provide data to its partners and receive data augmented by its partners’ experiences.