Envestnet Highlights Tech Progress Amid Rumors of Acquisition Talks

News May 14, 2024 at 02:53 PM
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What You Need To Know

  • Envestnet is hosting its annual advisor conference in Phoenix this week.
  • A central theme on the agenda is the importance of customization and the increasing connection of wealth management and retirement.
  • Separately, Envestnet is reported to be considering the sale of its business, possibly to a private equity backer.
interior image of Envestnet office

Executives at the helm of the wealth management and retirement planning technology provider Envestnet told several thousand advisors gathered for its 2024 Elevate conference in Phoenix that the firm remains laser-focused on providing deeply integrated workflows, advanced insights and a unified experience that allows them to serve their clients in a more holistic way.

Addressing a selection of the firm's advisor and service provider partners, the leaders emphasized that the integration of retirement planning and wealth management has become increasingly important in recent years — and thus it is a growing focus for Envestnet. They called the trend a potential growth-booster for wealth advisors, fueled by the investing public's need to meet the changing needs of an aging population aiming to secure their financial well-being during life after work.

The firm did not comment on industry reports that Envestnet has tapped Morgan Stanley to speak with potential buyers within its detailed press release describing the opening of the conference. Instead, they put the focus on Envestnet's newly revealed integrations for MoneyGuide customers using Salesforce's Financial Services Cloud.

The goal of the integration, as previously reported on ThinkAdviosr, is to provide a unified platform for wealth advisors that addresses key pain points like operating across multiple systems and data disparity between CRM and financial planning platforms.

What's Happening at Elevate

"Elevate showcases the unique opportunities made available to advisors on our wealth management platform that are designed to help increase productivity and efficiency, and to deliver more personalized solutions to their clients, at scale," said Molly Weiss, group president of Envestnet's wealth management platform. "Through our deeply connected ecosystem, we're meeting the advisor where they do business."

As Weiss explained, key themes at this year's Elevate conference include technology consolidation and integrated workflows; delivering customization of investments and technology at scale; achieving greater productivity in advisors' practices; serving the high-net-worth market with advanced solutions and insights; and a full track of retirement planning breakouts on how advisors can incorporate retirement into their practices.

Envestnet's conference kickoff also highlighted results from a new market intelligence survey that reinforce a trend that the firm already sees playing out among its clients and partners. That is, while most advisors currently assemble their technology stacks with "point solutions," an all-in-one technology platform that serves most or all their business needs is by far the winning choice.

More News From Opening Day

According to Weiss and other executives, Elevate sets the stage for advisors to learn about Envestnet's customizable platform capabilities and integrations across tax management solutions, direct indexing, insurance, credit, retirement solution and more.

Newly revealed enhancements include an "Unleashing Overlay" initiative that seeks to reduce accounts submitted not in good order and provide transition analysis integration to the digital proposal workflow. The approach also improves the ease of uploading cost basis information, delivering enhanced account reporting, and offering tax loss harvesting of single sleeve mutual funds and ETFs.

Further, Envestnet is expanding its partnership with iconik, allowing advisors to personalize proxy voting for their clients even as new voting disclosure rules take effect this summer. In addition, new machine learning insights have been added to the firm's Insights Engine, which are now directly accessible within the wealth data platform dashboard. Firm leaders said Envestnet has seen a 47% year-over-year increase in advisor usage of such insights.

High-Net-Worth Investor Services

Other points highlighted in the conference kickoff include the fact that, by 2025, there will be nearly 9 million high- and ultra-high-net-worth individuals in the U.S., a 33% increase from 2022.

As such, according to Envestnet, 32% of advisors are looking to add or place greater emphasis on specialty services in the next year.

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