Articles About Financial Advisor Technology & FinTech

Welcome to the December 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that the estate planning software provider Vanilla has launched a new "Starter" subscription tier, which provides estate documents and basic estate planning tools without the sophisticated planning capabilities of Vanilla's core product – which may be an acknowledgement of the reality that the types of clients whose needs are served by technology-driven estate document creation are usually those in less complex situations that don't require high-end planning capabilities, so it makes sense to unbundle document creation from planning so that those who just need documents can get them without having to buy the entire software package.

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• FP Alpha has launched a new "NextGen Tax Insights" tool, which analyzes a client's tax return and other financial data and identifies planning opportunities, which come from a predetermined list of strategies created and vetted by tax and financial planners – offering a potential model for how more planning tools could incorporate AI that doesn't generate new planning ideas from scratch but instead simply expedites the process of analyzing data and brainstorming ideas (with the advisor still being in charge of the final recommendation)
• A new AI-driven prospecting tool called WealthReach uses "de-anonymized" data from visitors to an advisory firm's website to identify prospects who may be interested in the advisor but didn't book a meeting – although the main problem for advisors isn't usually that they're getting too many visitors who don't book a meeting, but that they don't get enough visitors to their website to begin with, which means that it might make more sense to invest in a better marketing strategy that can bring in visitors before using a tool like WealthReach
• A recent influx of investments by advisor platforms into alternative investment-related technology suggests that more advisors are adopting alternatives, making it worthwhile for platforms to build out their alternatives infrastructure (because even if alternatives make up only a small percentage of overall AUM, the basis point fees on even a fraction of that amount could generate a healthy return on the investment)

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• Why Altruist's announcement that its Hazel AI notetaker will start to pull in client custodial data from Altruist raises the question of when AI notetakers will start to usurp CRM software's traditional role as an interface between advisors and client data – and if CRM systems will even be needed if AI is able to weave together client data from all sources without needing to store it in a centralized spot?
• In light of the news that pre-AI meeting transcription service Mobile Assistant reportedly considered (but ultimately turned down) an offer to sell its meeting transcript data to other vendors for AI training purposes, it's worth it for advisors to ask their technology vendors what they can and cannot do with their clients' data, since the data privacy issues that advisors might have considered years ago when they signed their vendor agreement might be completely different in today's AI-dominated landscape

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the November 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that RightCapital has announced a new feature to streamline the process of switching financial planning software platforms by scanning uploaded PDF planning documents from eMoney and automatically importing the data into RightCapital (while for its part, eMoney has revealed that it has quietly been using the same technology to import client plans into its platform for the last year) – which on the one hand is notable in that it addresses a major pain point insofar as switching costs can be a major hurdle for advisors in switching to a different (and better) software solution, but also raises the question of why AdvisorTech providers are choosing to invest in tools designed to lower the (largely self-imposed) cost of switching, rather than simply making it easier for advisors to export and migrate their clients' data and investing more into improving their tools' core capabilities instead?

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• Advyzon has announced the upcoming launch of a new financial planning offering to complement its portfolio management and CRM tools, raising questions about whether it can continue its run of highly rated software offerings, or if it will repeat the struggles encountered by other "all-in-one" providers in getting all of their components to add up to more than the sum of their parts
• Financial planning software provider Elements has reportedly been foreclosed on by its creditors and will likely be either sold to a new owner or shut down entirely – which on the one hand reflect Elements' failure to articulate a clear value proposition for itself to advisors after numerous changes in its marketing pitch, but at a more fundamental level is indicative of how "planning light" tools struggle to solve the problems that clients actually hire their advisors to solve
• Several high-profile former AdvisorTech founders have teamed up to launch Hamachi, a new tool for quickly generating AI-created email responses to clients' investment questions – which raises the question of whether the time spent writing an email in response to a client question is better considered as an investment in the client relationship (and therefore worth the time spent), or if it could be spent more productively on other tasks (in which case it's better to automate away)?

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• AI notetaker Jump has announced its acquisition of the human-driven meeting transcription service Mobile Assistant, representing a shift to a new venture capital-fueled growth-by-acquisition strategy by Jump to consolidate its market share in an increasingly competitive AI notetaker market (and signaling to other notetakers that time may be running out to gain traction, or else pivot to a different strategy or perhaps be acquired themselves)
• Dispatch, a "data orchestration" solution for advisory firms, has raised $18M in Series A funding, suggesting that their solution for syncing client data across multiple technology tools (without needing to rely on point-to-point integrations or expensive data warehousing tools) could be gaining traction

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the October 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Origin has launched a new, direct-to-consumer "AI financial advisor" that gives advice on budgeting, provides investment recommendations, and creates future planning projections and suggests strategies, all for $1 for the first year and $99 thereafter – but while Origin is unlikely to threaten human advisors (since it's primarily geared towards DIYers who wouldn't be likely to hire a human advisor to begin with) the big question is whether it will be able to solve the client acquisition cost problem that has beleaguered many low-cost planning tools in the past (including the robo advisors of the 2010s)

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• Long-running equity compensation software StockOpter has been acquired by Grantd, a new startup that plans to refresh StockOpter's software with a more modern, AI-driven interface – which may be more about acquiring StockOpter's existing user base and data than it is about the software itself
• Rebalancing platform RedBlack is being relaunched in the U.S. six years after being acquired by the asset manager Invesco (and being subsequently folded into the mainly UK-focused Intelliflo platform), bringing back what is now one of the only standalone rebalancing tools on the market – raising questions about whether RedBlack will find a specific niche focus not served by more comprehensive portfolio management platforms like Orion, or whether this is simply the prelude to another acquisition that would incorporate RedBlack into another all-in-one solution?
• AI-powered prospecting tool Wealthfeed has announced a strategic partnership with Broadridge, which will take a minority stake in Wealthfeed and incorporate its AdvisorStream marketing automation tools within the Wealthfeed platform – which on one hand makes sense as a partnership that allows advisors to both identify and vet prospects and subsequently market to them as well (since not all of them are likely to say "yes" right away), but on the other hand suggests that the market for standalone prospecting tools is getting crowded enough that there is pressure to add features, partner with other solutions, and (perhaps) ultimately be acquired by more comprehensive marketing platforms

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• How standalone advisor-specific AI notetakers are beginning to experience price compression amid the debuts of Altruist's Hazel and Wealthbox's integrated AI notetaker, both of which are selling at around $50 compared to the $120+ originally charged by standalone tools – leading tools like Jump and Zocks to introduce lower-cost "basic" pricing tiers and pack more features into their premium offerings to justify their ongoing value in the face of cheaper alternatives
• How Slant is creating a new CRM that aims to use AI to help advisors build better client relationships, from surfacing "memories" of key client information at opportune moments to sending "nudges" to the advisor to follow up on pressing tasks to including its own integrated AI notetaker – showing how, by using the things that AI is good at, an AI-native CRM can be centered around actually managing client relationships rather than simply storing data

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the September 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that RightCapital has introduced RightExpress, a feature of its financial planning software that allows advisors to create narrower single-topic financial plans for prospective clients as a way to demonstrate their value without building a full comprehensive plan – which on the one hand could be an effective way for advisors to more efficiently show their value by focusing on the one or two topics that their prospects care about the most, but on the other hand could struggle (as similar 'simplified' planning tools have in the past) if it streamlines the planning so much that it loses its ability to demonstrate the advisor's value.

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• Altruist has announced the launch of a new subscription model where clients can get increased cash rates, tax loss harvesting, and discounted model marketplace funds in exchange for a 12 bps per year fee – which while being a step towards a more transparent fee model for custody, doesn't quite embrace a 'pure' fee-for-custody model that would avoid the opacity and unevenness of the traditional custodial revenue model
• Tax planning platform TaxStatus has unveiled a new lead generation solution for enterprise firms, giving advisors access to a trove of tax information directly from the IRS to better understand prospective clients' financial situation – though the question remains how many prospective clients will be comfortable sharing their IRS tax data with a financial advisor before they've even started working with them?
• "All-In-One" digital marketing platform FMG Suite has been acquired by private equity firm GTCR, signaling that FMG Suite could use its fresh capital to continue its long stretch of growth by acquisition by snapping up smaller digital marketing platforms (even though it's still figuring out how to integrate all its existing pieces in a way that satisfies its users)

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• AI-driven prospecting provider FINNY has announced several new tools to ease the process of identifying, qualifying, and contacting prospective clients – although it's an open question as to how many advisors are really looking for a better prospecting experience, when most advisors are focused on getting to the point where they don't need to do outbound prospecting to begin with?
• As enterprise advisory firms that have grown and merged over the years have an increasing need to address their "technical debt", an emerging use case of AI is in making meaningful efficiency improvements without the cost of rebuilding systems from scratch – although the persistence of the underlying technical issues means that AI might simply serve as a short-term patch for a longer-term problem

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the August 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that Nitrogen (formerly Riskalyze) has launched its own native AI meeting notes tool, becoming the latest in a series of existing technology platforms to offer its own embedded AI notetaker – while putting more pressure on the host of standalone AI meeting note solutions that have cropped up in the last two years, since there is becoming less and less reason for advisors to use a third party notetaking tool when they already have solutions embedded in the technology that they already use.

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• New research has shown that while increased efficiency through better integration capabilities make advisors happier and more satisfied with their technology, those efficiency gains don't necessarily translate into productivity in terms of increased revenue per advisor or team member – suggesting that while advisors dissatisfied with their technology should seek out tools with better integration, those who want to be more productive should instead focus on better leveraging their staff support and/or providing higher value advice (to clients who are willing to pay for it!)
• Meeting management technology provider GReminders has launched what it describes as an AI agent to help streamline meeting preparation and follow-up tasks, but what it seems to do in reality is to simply automate a series of already defined and systematized – raising the question of how much advisors really need 'agentic' AI that can handle unstructured tasks when so many of their processes are already structured enough to be automated by simpler technology?
• Anthropic has released an enterprise-grade version of its Claude AI platform specifically for financial services and investment research, which could be a bad sign for the many AI investment research startups that have appeared over the last year as they could find themselves squeezed between Claude on the institutional side and Morningstar, YCharts, and Kwanti on the independent RIA side, leaving them with little remaining market share for themselves

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• EncorEstate Plans has announced a new partnership with virtual estate planning firm eLegacy to provide state-specific attorney review and legal advice for the estate documents created on its platform, suggesting that EncorEstate is further leaning into the human-driven approach it has taken to technology-enabled estate plan creation (in contrast to other platforms like Wealth.com, Trust & Will, and Vanilla which have focused more on automated document creation with less human involvement)
• MyStockOptions.com has launched a new advisor referral service on its website, allowing readers of its technical articles on equity compensation planning to search for and contact advisors who can help them with their specific needs, underscoring the opportunity that financial media platforms have in referring leads to advisory firms that would prefer to pay someone to provide leads to them over going out to find leads on their own

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the July 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that CRM provider Wealthbox has sold a majority stake in itself to PE firm Sixth Street, marking a new phase in its growth from having a customer base primarily concentrated among small and midsize RIA firms to an increasing focus on larger enterprise firms – which on the one hand is a necessary step in the growth cycle of a technology startup as its existing users grow larger and much of its untapped market lies among bigger enterprises; but which also raises the questions of what changes it will make to compete with platforms like Salesforce among enterprise firms (e.g., enhancing its customization or workflow capabilities), as well as whether focusing more on larger firms will cause it to lose some of the innovative spark that came from rapidly iterating based on the feedback from individual users (which was part of what helped it grow so popular to begin with)!

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• Envestnet has agreed to a deal to sell the data aggregation provider Yodlee, which Envestnet bought for $590 million in a much-scrutinized deal 10 years ago – which both encapsulates Envestnet's struggles to make its many technology acquisitions add up to more than the sum of their parts (which Envestnet is now starting to undo by divesting from those acquisitions under its new owner Bain Capital) as well as the broader failure of data aggregation to live up to its early promise
• Canadian financial planning software Conquest Planning has raised $80 million as it aims to make inroads into the U.S. market while differentiating on its AI-driven "Strategic Advice Manager" that automatically suggests (and even recommends) planning strategies based on client inputs – which could serve as an interesting test as to whether U.S. advisors will have any interest in AI-embedded financial planning software or whether they see it as encroaching on their own value proposition
• NerdWallet has purchased an RIA to serve clients who find NerdWallet via its trove of personal finance content, while also rolling out an "advisor matching" lead generation program to refer prospects out to other advisors, which both highlights the huge business opportunity in lead generation (in that a platform that can effectively bring in prospective clients can monetize them both by funneling them to its own RIA and by selling them to other advisors), but also raises questions about the conflicts of interest that occur when an advisor matching program matches clients with its own in-house advisors!

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• As technology providers are increasingly building or acquiring AI notetaking tools to integrate into their own solutions (often for no extra cost beyond the base subscription for the underlying software), there is becoming less and less need to use a standalone AI notetaker – which means that the existing standalone providers will likely need to find more ways to enhance their value, or face struggles amid the increasing commoditization of AI notetaking
• The proliferation of new AdvisorTech solutions over the years has led many to speculate that the industry is overdue for consolidation or contraction – and yet the more likely scenario is that the pace of growth increases going forward as no-code developing tools lower the barriers to building and releasing software… which on the one hand will make it even more difficult to navigate the software options on the market, but on the other hand will help to better highlight the gaps where existing solutions are failing to serve advisors' needs and increase the overall quality of AdvisorTech going forward!

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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Welcome to the June 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!

This month's edition kicks off with the news that FinmateAI has announced a new integration with PreciseFP, which will allow financial planning data that's collected in advisory meetings (like balance sheet, cash flow, and savings information) to be pushed out to PreciseFP, and from there be sent on to financial planning software like eMoney and RightCapital (and specialized planning tools like Income Lab and Holistiplan) via PreciseFP's existing integrations – which represents one of the first steps by an AI meeting note tool to integrate with advisor technology outside of CRM and email platforms, and raises the question of whether more meeting note providers will follow suit (or build their own direct integrations to financial planning software rather than doing so indirectly through PreciseFP)?

From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:

• AdvicePay, a provider of client billing solutions for flat-fee advisors, has acquired AdvisorBOB, which helps RIAs efficiently calculate and facilitate payouts to their advisors, giving AdvicePay a solution that covers the entire client revenue cycle (from the time the client is billed until the fee is split and paid out to the advisor and RIA) and also covers a larger segment of the RIA market (since while AdvicePay only covers flat-fee billing, AdvisorBOB can handle payouts for both flat-fee and AUM models)
• Betterment has acquired Rowboat Advisors, a direct indexing and tax optimization technology provider, as part of a broader push to serve higher-net-worth clients of financial advisors through more flexibility and tax-aware portfolio management features – although the question going forward is whether advisors will really want to bring their HNW clients to Betterment given its reputation as a platform best suited for less-complex clients (or whether it's even a good idea for Betterment to diverge from its well established brand to compete with the likes of Addepar and Black Diamond)?
• Zoe Financial has announced a $29.6M Series B fundraising round, highlighting how Zoe has found an effective way to monetize its ability to generate leads not only by referring them to advisors (for which advisors pay 15%-35% of the revenue that they earn from the leads who sign on as clients) but also by serving smaller clients itself (who otherwise wouldn't be able to work with most of the firms on Zoe's platform) via its robo-TAMP platform

Read the analysis about these announcements in this month's column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:

• CFP Board has announced the launch of a new CFP Practice Exam App, a bank of AI-generated (and human-reviewed) practice questions for candidates studying for the CFP exam – which is helpful as an exam prep tool to either supplement or serve as a less-expensive alternative to other comprehensive review programs, but also raises questions about whether CFP Board intends to start competing with third party exam prep providers (which could quash competition in that space since most candidates would likely opt for the "official" CFP Board version)
• Vanguard is testing out a new feature that allows advisors to generate client-friendly bullet-point summaries of Vanguard's quarterly market commentary, including the feature of giving advisors several dropdown options to choose from to tailor the summary the way they want it (e.g., client's financial acumen, age, and formal or conversational tone) – which is helpful for advisors who would rather not use an open-ended chatbot interface to generate client communication (which requires learning and practicing the prompts necessary to get the output that the user needs)

And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular "Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map" (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!

*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.

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