Envestnet has acquired fintech firm Harvest Savings & Wealth Technologies, a provider of automated goals-based saving tools and wealth solutions to banks, credit unions, trust companies and other financial institutions.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
"The right financial advice and investment strategies can make a great difference for one's financial future. However, the path to financial wellness begins with saving," according to Dani Fava, Head of Strategic Development at Envestnet.
"It is no secret that the U.S. has a savings problem, as a recent Bankrate survey found that fewer than four in 10 Americans had enough savings to cover the cost for even a four-figure car repair bill," she said in the announcement. "Through this acquisition, our technology can now help reverse the tide, while enabling banks and credit unions to evolve and keep pace with the ongoing fintech disruption in the industry as we incubate tomorrow's advisory clients."
Envestnet is "striving to empower intelligent, connected financial lives, creating a holistic view for investments, banking, or savings account balances," according to Stuart DePina, Envestnet president.
"With this acquisition, we are one step further in delivering fully on this vision," he said in a statement. "This acquisition optimizes our API-based financial wellness ecosystem, and also helps strengthen our foothold to enable embedded finance, which we see as a key driver of the future of financial services."
Harvest's platform unifies a bank's retail and wealth offering, and offers capabilities including automated micro-savings and digital account opening. Its technology automates forms and processes, improving account success rates and compliance, Envestnet said.
"This enhanced offering will be adapted and made available to users throughout Envestnet's unified financial wellness platform," it said.
Fabe Launches SaaS Application for Advisors
Fintech firm fabe launched a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application that it said was created to help independent financial advisors and full-service firms "extract maximum value from acquisitions and sales of their business."
The new software "implements qualitative and quantitative analysis to separate core high-value and non-core low-value relationships and determine their impact on the overall valuation of an advisory business," the Mount Kisco, New York-based company said.
The application's voice-interactive capability and question sequencing "facilitates and expedites the collection of client discovery data," the company explained. "The technology calculates and displays more than a dozen profitability, productivity and client ratios of similar size firms for comparative analysis, in conjunction with" income statement, balance sheet and cash flow analysis.
"Whether it's a full-service firm seeking to maintain a competitive posture for high valued recruits or an independent advisor selling their wealth management practice, attaining comprehensive business valuation is a key concern," according to Andrew Grillo, fabe founder.
"Way too often transactions are inaccurately priced, as traditional valuation models rely heavily on current year's multiples or discount rates, failing to incorporate the true value of the client relationships that comprise a book of business," he said in the announcement.
