Fidelity launches a new company conceived to trade cryptos and a new digital marketplace to help advisors deepen existing integrations. Envestnet | Yodlee Risk Insight Solutions will be integrated with Freddie Mac. Edmond Walters joins AdvisorStream’s board of directors. CAIS will bolster BB&T Securities’ alternative investment offerings. Redtail rolls out advanced AI capabilities. Vestmark acquires Adhesion.
Fidelity Investments is launching a new company to offer custody and trade executions of cryptocurrencies and other digital assets.
The goal of Fidelity Digital Asset Services is to make things like bitcoin more available to sophisticated institutional investors such as hedge funds, family offices, and market intermediaries, according to Abigail Johnson, chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments.
Fidelity Digital Assets will launch in early 2019 with support for bitcoin and ether, and will offer over-the-counter trade execution and order routing. Functionality for independent registered investment advisers is on the roadmap for next year.
More information here.
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Fidelity Institutional has integrations with more than 100 third-party technology vendors and now it’s launching a new digital marketplace to help advisers make sense of all the tools available.
First announced in February, the Wealthscape Integration Xchange features a menu of technologies, such as financial planning, portfolio management, and client relationship management, that explains what integrations are available. There are about a dozen third-party tools on the Integration Xchange currently, and Fidelity said it is adding more tools and deepening integrations with existing providers.
More information here.
Envestnet | Yodlee (NYSE: ENV), a leading data aggregation and data analytics platform powering dynamic, cloud-based innovation for digital financial services, today announced its Envestnet | Yodlee Risk Insight Solutions will be integrated with Freddie Mac automated income and asset assessment capabilities. Freddie Mac will leverage Envestnet | Yodlee’s Risk Insight Solutions to help lenders improve the borrower experience, loan pull through, operational efficiencies and per loan profit margins.
The automated income and asset capabilities are available in Loan Product Advisor®, Freddie Mac’s automated underwriting system. The Envestnet | Yodlee Risk Insight Solutions integration with Loan Product Advisor leverages a previously ordered Risk Insights verification of assets, delivering greater automation and transparency in the loan production process allowing Freddie Mac’s clients to originate loans with a single system of record using data that stays in sync between Envestnet | Yodlee and Freddie Mac.
More information here.
Marketing automation platform AdvisorStream will add Edmond Walters to its board of directors, the company announced. The founder and former CEO of eMoney Advisor, which was sold to Fidelity in 2015, will be joining the board effective immediately.
Walters has spent more than two decades in the financial services industry and has positioned himself as a defender of the financial advisor, once promising to “kick the crap out of the B2C robos.” He will be joining AdvisorStream as it positions itself to expand across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, targeting registered investment advisors and broker/dealers.
Walters’ experience with growing advisor technology companies and understanding advisors’ tools will benefit AdvisorStream, said company’s Founder and CEO Kevin Mulhern.
More information here.
CAIS was selected by BB&T Securities to bolster its menu of alternative investment offerings. With CAIS, BB&T Securities, a wholly owned subsidiary of BB&T Corporation, will gain access to premier hedge funds, private equity and debt, real estate and other non-traditional investment strategies for its financial advisors.
More information here.
Redtail Technology (“Redtail”), a leading provider of client relationship management (CRM) solutions for financial services firms, announced the rollout of advanced artificial intelligence capabilities that will enable advisory firms of all sizes to access valuable data and trends about current and prospective clients directly within the CRM.
Redtail’s machine-learning features will make natural language processing accessible and affordable for the advisory community. Using the concept of “transfer learning,” Redtail can utilize smaller amounts of data to begin the learning process. The system then analyzes emails, notes and text messages to predict and estimate client needs, create better outcomes, and discover important connections that enable all parties to make better financial decisions.
More information here.
Vestmark, the leading provider of portfolio management and trading solutions for financial advisors and institutions, announced the acquisition of Charlotte-based Adhesion Wealth Advisor Solutions (Adhesion).
Adhesion, a Vestmark client since 2008, has successfully served the RIA market with an outsourced investment solution that leverages Vestmark’s wealth management platform, VestmarkONE. Adhesion has built tools and services on top of VestmarkONE, enabling RIAs to easily offer SMAs and UMAs by taking on their entire investment process with a high-touch service model.
This acquisition enables Vestmark to immediately become competitive in the rapidly growing RIA market. It also makes Vestmark’s manager marketplace one of the largest in the industry, providing asset managers with increased visibility and broader distribution of their investment models and strategies.
More information here.
