Amicus.io, a fintech company that created a platform for donor-advised fund management, is expanding its services to more firms, the company announced today.
The company’s philanthropic platform for donor-advised funds is designed to make it easier for advisors and donors to manage donor advised funds and to make it simpler to integrate the philanthropic planning with the rest of the portfolio, Cor Hoekstra, co-founder and CEO of Amicus.io, which is based in Charlotte, N.C., said in an interview.
The Amicus.io platform, launched in 2017, allows wealth advisory firms to bring the philanthropic planning, through one firm-branded dashboard, into the planning with other assets. Advances in technology have now made this possible, he said.
“In the past, philanthropic planning was not offered as part of the same custodial platform along with other assets in the portfolio,” Hoekstra said. “An investor would be ill advised to leave the philanthropic planning out of a holistic financial plan, but typically these assets go to another custodian for management.”
The Amicus.io philanthropic platform enables all assets to be managed by one advisor, which increases the share of wallet for the advisor and increases revenues for the firm, he said.
Advisors who can offer single-source management of all assets have more loyal clients, he said. “This planning deepens the relationship between the client and the advisor,” Hoekstra added.
According to a Fidelity study, clients who receive charitable planning are 37% more loyal and likely to recommend their advisor, compared to those who don’t.
At the same time, 88% of affluent households donated to charity last year, but only 44% had a strategy for giving in 2020, according to the 2021 Bank of America Study of Philanthropic Charitable Giving by Affluent Households.
Amicus.io, which is one of the first firms to make this donor-advised fund platform available, most recently contracted with Ingalls & Snyder, an investment management firm based in New York City, to offer its clients custom managed donor-advised fund accounts starting in early 2022. The platform will offer the Ingalls & Snyder clients seamless philanthropic planning and easier to handle charitable giving options, the firm said. The platform will allow clients to create and monitor their donor-advised fund accounts through the Ingalls & Snyder client portal, a capability that was not offered previously.