BNY Mellon's Pershing launched a new Pershing X business unit it said Thursday will "design and build innovative solutions for the advisory industry" and also "accelerate Pershing's delivery of consumer grade digital experiences to its clients, as well as the broader marketplace."
Pershing X is an "extension" of the Client Experience Reimagined initiative that the firm announced in April, it said. The new division will "incubate, engineer, and deliver a comprehensive, all-in-one set of advisory capabilities" to Pershing's Wealth Solutions clients, including broker-dealers, RIAs and trust companies, it added.
The new division is a "continuation of our way of rethinking our organization design through the lens of the client," Jim Crowley, Pershing CEO, told ThinkAdvisor in a phone interview.
This is "our idea, as a custodian, to solve a significant problem for many of our" 1,300 clients that Pershing serves globally, "which is stitching together disparate technology solutions and data sets to run their advisory platforms for their advisors and ultimately their clients," he explained.
It's also a "continuation of what we started" in the spring, when Pershing realigned its business under two main segments — Wealth Solutions and Institutional Solutions — down from three segments, he explained. Pershing X will be operated "right alongside of our Wealth Solutions group, which is our RIA, broker-dealer and bank channel business," he said.
In addition to helping existing Pershing clients, "we also see this as an opportunity to serve clients who may not actually use us as a custodian or they may be multi-custodial," he noted.
He described Pershing X as a "fintech firm when you think about the technology that we're going to deliver to the marketplace" but a business that will also "offer the capability to provide investment management services on top of the platform" and also offer model management tools and BNY Mellon institutional-grade investment management product, along with lending services, he said. "It's a fintech TAMP plus plus," he added.
Pershing appointed Ainslie Simmonds as the new division's president. She is joining Pershing's executive committee and brings two decades of experience in wealth management and digital to her new role. Most recently, she was executive vice president and global head of digital at Pimco Investments. Prior to Pimco, she was executive officer and head of digital products and design at Northwestern Mutual.
Simmonds also played a key role in launching several fintech firms, including financial planning firm LearnVest and brokerage and trading software firm thinkorswim, which was acquired by TD Ameritrade in 2009.
Pershing's existing managed account business will "be lifted and shifted into Pershing X … and we will be adding to that staff and to that team to go beyond just what we've traditionally done," Crowley said.
The exact number of people the company will add to Pershing X had yet to be determined, he added, noting it's a "multi-year program" planned for the new division, with significant enhancements planned for the platform in 2022.
Pershing isn't saying how much it's spending on Pershing X but this is "one of the more significant investments that BNY Mellon is making for the next several years in this particular space," he said.
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