Page 15 - Investment Advisor July/August 2022

market leader at 59%, followed by the the M&A front by acquiring multiple in deal size, particularly with the prece-
various iterations of Salesforce, includ- TAMPs, Advizr financial planning, the dent-setting acquisition of the dominant
ing overlay vendors, at a combined 11%, risk modeling platform Hidden Levers, CRM player Redtail, with 59% market
and Wealthbox at 9%. After these big and of course the megadeal of the year, share by Orion.
three, no one else has a market share the acquisition of Redtail CRM.
over 5%. Envestnet has been making similar 4. Doorway to Advisor Satisfaction
deals, which over the last decade has Rounding out the survey is the powerful
2. Growth of All-in-One Solutions acquired industry leading platforms aspect that showcases advisor satisfac-
Another key trend is the growth of the such as Tamarac portfolio management, tion with the various tools, applications
“all-in-one” solution or a “unified plat- the financial planning systems Money and platforms, enabling advisors to
form” that has multiple com- immediately see how useful a
ponents and functionality The survey had 4,500 particular solution is based on
(CRM, reporting, rebalanc- respondents who answered peer feedback. Interestingly, it
ing, planning, etc.) embed- is often the smaller players that
ded into one application vs. nearly 100 questions, making have the highest user satisfac-
stand-alone components tion. For example, performance
that need to be integrated to it one of the most robust in the reporting and billing platform
minimize data entry and sim- industry. Over 800 applications, Panoramix had the highest user
plify workflows. According rating in the entire survey: 9.5
to the authors, 20% of the services, platforms and software on a 10-point scale. According to
industry is now using an all- tools were listed showing how the authors, anything above an
in-one solution. The authors 8 is outstanding, so Panoramix’s
hedge this growth analysis, large the advisor technology results tell a very compelling
however, by pointing out story for their continued growth
that many firms using a uni- industry has grown. and success.
fied solution also bring in In the survey’s conclusion,
additional third-party technologies to Guide Pro and Finance Logix, Yodlee however, the authors highlight the point
supplement functionality. data aggregation, and multiple TAMPs that perhaps the industry is falling vic-
Traditionally, the industry had moved as well. tim to its own success.
to a “best in breed” approach so that At the same time, SS&C has been “With 36 categories featuring over
firms could better tailor their tech busy buying the portfolio management 800 technologies, advisors are faced
stacks to the services and business mod- innovator Black Diamond via its Advent with an ‘Overchoice’ dilemma, not just
els they were using. While this approach Software acquisition, Salentica CRM, the in terms of the number of fintech cat-
provides more flexibility for advisors, it trust platform Innovest and many oth- egories, and not just in terms of the
does require more work and expense to ers. Morningstar has also been looking number of fintech categories to choose
integrate the various stand-alone com- to supplement its advisor workstation from, but overchoice within categories
ponents and manage a more complex by acquiring Plan Plus financial plan- as well. Keeping up with all the different
back office. Thus, we are starting to ning, TRX rebalancing, ByAllAccounts possible service-enhancing and time-
see a movement of advisors to simplify account aggregation and more. saving options is a nontrivial challenge,
their vendor relationships by purchas- Clearly these megavendors see the and there is perhaps no more effective
ing more components from one provider opportunity in attempting to control demonstration of the scope of the chal-
and also the rise in adoption by advisors the advisor desktop to aggregate an lenge than the 67 pages of this report.”
of a unified solution. advisor’s business through their solu- To read the full report online, log on
tions, enabling them to not only earn to www.T3TechnologyHub.com.
3. Acquisitions Galore licensing revenue from software sales,
Driving this movement has been the but also to direct asset flows to their Timothy D. Welsh, CFP, is president, CEO and
unprecedented number of acquisitions investment management operations and founder of Nexus Strategy, LLC, a consulting
by leading platforms to provide a com- charge lucrative basis points. And based firm to the wealth management industry and
prehensive offering. A great example is on the survey data, this strategy is alive can be reached at [email protected] or
Orion, which has been super busy on and well, and even looks to accelerate on Twitter @NexusStrategy.

JULY/AUGUST 2022 INVESTMENT ADVISOR 13