Bundled solutions designed to help firms establish their technology stacks from the ground up and expand their wealth advisory practices
BOSTON, August 5, 2024 – Furthering its commitment to serving wealth management firms of all sizes, Fidelity Investments today announced two new technology offerings developed specifically for smaller and mid-sized registered investment advisors (RIAs) looking to establish and grow their business. The all-in-one technology stack and the advisory bundle featuring FMAX Essentials, a new, streamlined managed account platform, each aim to reduce two common technology barriers for smaller firms: resources and cost.
Fidelity’s latest Advisor Technology Stack study found that firms with less than $250M are 1.8x less likely to embrace technology best practices than firms with $1T+ AUM. This lack of technology adoption could affect the rate of growth that small and medium sized firms experience as the study also found that wealth management firms deploying technology best practices are growing significantly faster than peers. To help small and medium sized firms establish a scalable technology infrastructure, Fidelity developed an all-in-one offering that brings together key components we believe advisors need to run their business.
“Technology has incredible power as a growth driver and firms that harness it best have dedicated the time to research, evaluate, and implement it at scale,” said Noni Robinson, head of Emerging RIAs at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management Services, a division of Fidelity Investments that provides platform solutions and clearing and custody services to wealth management firms. “Smaller firms and advisors launching their own business, however, often have fewer resources, which can put them at a disadvantage. Our offering takes the guesswork out of selecting a technology stack with solutions that support front-, middle-, and back-office employees at these firms.”
Fidelity collaborated with eMoney Advisor, LLC (eMoney), an expert in financial planning solutions, and Advyzon, an expert in advisor technology, to secure access to special pricing and support models for its all-in-one technology offering. Available today, this solution aims to reduce the time leaders spend on evaluating a technology stack. It includes a variety of tools that are deeply integrated to help streamline advisors’ critical workflows:
- WealthscapeSM, Fidelity’s robust brokerage platform that allows firms to seamlessly open accounts, manage money, trade, access hundreds of integrations for further customization, and access a variety of reporting and analytics tools to optimize client outcomes.
- eMoney’s comprehensive and collaborative financial planning capabilities to help advisors map strategies to their clients’ goals, with integration points such as single sign on, document sharing, streamlined household views, and more.
- Advyzon’s suite of operational and portfolio management software, including customer relationship management (CRM), performance reporting, and billing for middle- and back-office support, as well as investment management tools such as trading and rebalancing offered by Advyzon Investment Management (AIM), a subsidiary of Advyzon. Its integration with Wealthscape also supports digital account opening, single sign on, and APIs to view account positions and balances.
Reducing Barriers for Holistic Wealth Management
For firms looking to grow their advisory capabilities, Fidelity is also introducing an advisory bundle that includes Wealthscape, eMoney, and a new product, Fidelity Managed Account Xchange® Essentials (FMAX Essentials).
FMAX Essentials offers end-to-end wealth advisory capabilities with a streamlined investment lineup of both Fidelity and third-party products. This provides a lower cost platform for firms looking to expand access to sophisticated managed account solutions like model portfolios, as well as deepen their investment advice and financial planning capabilities.
The FMAX Essentials investment menu includes roughly a quarter of the options found on the FMAX platform, FIWA’s larger scale customizable advisory offering, including a variety of mutual funds and exchange traded funds (ETFs), as well as model portfolios, separately managed account (SMA), and unified managed account (UMA) wrappers. FMAX Essentials is currently available to firms that custody with Fidelity and will introduce additional features and investment options over time.
Wealth management firms of all sizes will maintain access to Fidelity’s à la carte menu of platforms, tools, and integrations for fully customized technology solutions that can grow with them. Integration Xchange, Fidelity’s open architecture digital store for wealth management firms, offers integrations with more than 200 fintech companies and API analytics to make it easier for firms to discover, evaluate, and implement new tech stack components.
To learn more about Fidelity’s technology solutions, please visit https://clearingcustody.fidelity.com/campaigns/emerging-advisor.
About Fidelity Investments
Fidelity’s mission is to strengthen the financial well-being of our customers and deliver better outcomes for the clients and businesses we serve. Fidelity’s strength comes from the scale of our diversified, market-leading financial services businesses that serve individuals, families, employers, wealth management firms, and institutions. With assets under administration of $14.1 trillion, including discretionary assets of $5.5 trillion as of June 30, 2024, we focus on meeting the unique needs of a broad and growing customer base. Privately held for 78 years, Fidelity employs more than 75,000 associates across the United States, Ireland, and India. For more information about Fidelity Investments, visit https://www.fidelity.com/about-fidelity/our-company.
About eMoney
eMoney Advisor, LLC (“eMoney”) provides technology solutions and services that help people talk about money. Rooted in comprehensive financial planning, eMoney’s solutions strengthen client relationships, streamline business operations, enhance business development and drive overall growth. More than 109,000 financial professionals across firms of all sizes use the eMoney platform to serve more than 6 million households throughout the U.S. For more information, please visit: www.emoneyadvisor.com.
About Advyzon and Advyzon Investment Management (AIM)
Advyzon provides comprehensive, intuitive, cloud-based, wealth management technology for independent financial advisors and registered investment advisors (RIAs) and currently serves over 1,500 advisory firms. The Advyzon technology platform integrates Advyzon Investment Management’s turnkey asset management program (TAMP) within Advyzon’s technology suite of portfolio management, customizable performance reporting, trading and rebalancing, client web portals, CRM, client billing, and document storage. AIM's managed portfolio solutions and high touch service model paired with Advyzon’s technology suite empowers financial advisors to achieve operational efficiencies along with comprehensive investment selection and modeling. AIM is a registered investment adviser registered with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, and a wholly owned subsidiary of yHLsoft Inc., doing business as Advyzon ("Advyzon"). All investment advisory services are provided by AIM, while some technology and administrative support services are provided by Advyzon. AIM's advisory services are available to financial advisors for use in managing assets for their clients only, and do not provide advisory services directly to retail investors. To learn more about Advyzon, visit www.Advyzon.com. To learn more about Advyzon Investment Management, visit www.AdvyzonIM.com.
Statements made by Fidelity in this communication that indicate approval, support, or recommendation of AIM are considered endorsements. These endorsements are made by representatives of Fidelity, and Fidelity has a business relationship with Advyzon and AIM. No cash compensation was paid to these parties for their statements; however, Advyzon receives compensation from parties that engage their technology services through this program. In addition, AIM receives compensation from Fidelity to cover the cost of AIM’s administration and monitoring of their Models/Strategies included in AIM’s Model Marketplace program. If advisors engage with AIM, both AIM and Fidelity will receive compensation when advisers employ their strategies.
About FMAX Essentials and FIWA
Fidelity Institutional Wealth Adviser LLC (“FIWA”)® is a registered investment adviser and an indirect, wholly owned subsidiary of FMR LLC. FIWA is the platform provider of the Fidelity Managed Account Xchange® Essentials program (“FMAX Essentials”). FMAX Essentials is a comprehensive wealth management platform consisting of advisory tools, programs and services, and investment products from Fidelity and other affiliated and unaffiliated 3rd parties. FMAX Essentials offers dedicated Fidelity service & support teams and a simplified client experience. FMAX Essentials provides investment advisory platform services for a fee. FMAX Essentials is offered by Fidelity Institutional Wealth Adviser LLC, an affiliate of Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC and National Financial Services LLC. FMAX Essentials is not a brokerage product.
About Fidelity’s 2023 Financial Advisor Community – Technology Stack Survey
The study was an online blind survey (Fidelity not identified) and was fielded during the period November 9 through 24, 2023. Participants included 426 advisors—including some firm leaders, partners, and other technology decisionmakers—who work with individual and/or small business investors and are licensed and credentialed. Advisor firm types included a mix of RIAs, national brokerage firms (commonly referred to as wirehouses), other broker-dealers, with findings weighted to reflect marketplace headcount by channel, as reported by Cerulli. The study was conducted by an independent firm not affiliated with Fidelity Investments.
Digitally empowered firms were identified using statistical clustering analysis based on advisors’ responses about their firms’ use of technology. While the factors that most drove differentiation of these firms versus others were using technology to differentiate client experience, immediately implementing new features, having a process to evaluate tech based on strategy/need, and providing adequate training/resources to advisors, these firms scored higher than their peers on nearly every technology best practice that we asked about. Digital empowerment is a goal state to strive for, rather than an actual condition. As such, references to “digitally empowered firms” are intended to reflect those firms that stand out as more digitally empowered than their peers.
eMoney Advisor LLC is a Fidelity Investments company and an affiliate of Fidelity Brokerage Services LLC and National Financial Services LLC.
ETFs are subject to market fluctuation, the risks of their underlying investments, management fees, and other expenses.
The Fidelity Advisor SMAs (“SMA Models”) are made available to financial intermediaries on a non-discretionary basis by Fidelity Institutional Wealth Adviser LLC (FIWA)®, a registered investment adviser, including intermediaries referred to FIWA by its affiliate Fidelity Distributors Company LLC (FDC), a registered broker-dealer that is compensated by FIWA for such services. Financial intermediaries compensate FIWA for utilizing the SMA Models.
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