eMoney Rolls Out Financial Planning and Wellness App: Tech Roundup

Fidelity Investments' eMoney Advisor says it has launched Incentive, its client-led financial planning and wellness application that recently was tested by six firms.

Incentive is available now for use through retirement plan advisors, and the app can be downloaded at the App Store and Google Play.

The tool — eMoney's first mobile app — is aimed at educating a broad audience about basic planning concepts and encouraging behavioral changes to help users achieve their goals.

The goal of the app is to motivate participants to make incremental improvements by accessing basic financial pillars and rules of thumb, spending challenges and relevant financial literacy topics.

Although Incentive is "client-led, it is still delivered through a financial professional," Jess Liberi, eMoney head of product, said during an eMoney Summit keynote in October.

"The application of Incentive is far-reaching, and while we are focusing our initial efforts on working with advisors and advisory firms that focus on the employer retirement plan market, we see it reaching much, much further in the future," Liberi told viewers at the time.

That remains the plan. "It's our goal at eMoney to increase access to personalized financial planning experiences and provide a full spectrum of planning solutions to our clients," Chad Porche, vice president of product innovation at eMoney, said Thursday.

Broadridge Partners With Fligoo on Analytics

Broadridge Financial Solutions is collaborating with artificial intelligence firm Fligoo to develop a suite of proprietary predictive analytics software products for the wealth management industry.

The new software solutions will help wealth management firms and banks "transform their business performance by harnessing vast amounts of data to accurately predict the needs of each client, creating a more personalized and customized client and investor experience," the companies said in a joint announcement Wednesday.

Fligoo Sharp AI Enterprise Suite software provides "exponential business value through state-of-the-art advanced analytics, monitoring, closed-loop feedback and decision science," the companies said.

The first product under development with Broadridge will enable financial advisors to "take a data-driven approach to optimizing and enhancing their relationship with investors, both personalizing service and delivering in a manner and time preferred by clients," they said.

They also predict the "hyper-personalization of investor needs will increase both client satisfaction and asset growth for the long term across the entire investor base."

DPL Raises $26 Million in Funding

DPL Financial Partners announced a $26 million combined equity capital investment from its initial investor, Eldridge, and Atlas Merchant Capital, the private investment firm founded by Bob Diamond and David Schamis.

The insurance network for RIAs plans to invest the proceeds in the development of technology and infrastructure to "support its growing advisor base of more than 10,000 advisors and continue to bring commission-free annuity and insurance products to their clients," it said.

In connection with the investments, representatives from Atlas Merchant Capital and Eldridge will join a newly formed board of directors for DPL that will also include David Lau, CEO and founder of DPL, and two independent members to be named later.