Envestnet Tamarac announces new client portal features and financial planning

Turnkey asset management platform Envestnet announced a slew of new features coming to Tamarac, the company’s technology suite for financial advisers, on Wednesday at the 2018 Envestnet Advisor Summit in New Orleans.

Tamarac is updating its client portal with an automated client onboarding process (currently in a pilot program to open accounts at TD Ameritrade Institutional and Charles Schwab), a digital risk tolerance questionnaire, a client proposal generator and improved data aggregation using technology from the Yodlee team.

Yodlee will also power new budgeting tools in the client portal that track a client’s spending habits and makes behavioral recommendations. Even for wealthy clients who don’t need much in the way of day-to-day budgeting, Tamarac president Stuart DePina said the tools can help with large financial decisions, such as a mortgage or getting appropriate insurance.

(More: Envestnet Tamarac rolls out Yodlee app to show outside assets, liabilities)

“Investors are looking for a digital experience that matches how they manage other aspects of their life,” Mr. DePina told InvestmentNews at the firm’s conference.

Tamarac is updating its portfolio management application, Tamarac Reporting, with new cash flow and goals-based financial planning tools built with technology acquired in Envestnet’s purchase of Finance Logix.

Financial planning is a significant focus of Tamarac moving forward, Mr. DePina said. In addition to the proprietary tools, Tamarac will continue to support and improve integrations with popular third-party technology like eMoney and MoneyGuidePro.

“We think about the financial adviser as being more than just wealth management, narrowly focused on performance and portfolios. It’s broader than that,” Mr. DePina said.

About 40% of RIAs with more than $1 billion AUM use Tamarac, as well as a third of firms in the $500 million to $1 billion range, Mr. DePina told conference attendees.

Now the company is looking to automate even more of its trading and workflows to help expand Tamarac’s footprint among smaller RIAs.

Envestnet chairman and CEO Jud Bergman said the updates to Tamarac are part of an effort to help advisers of all kinds thrive under pressure from changing technology, consumer demand and regulations.

“Fewer firms and fewer advisers will manage even more assets,” Mr. Bergman said in his presentation, adding that the appetite for goals-based planning, ESG and impact investing, and advice-centric wealth management will continue to grow, especially among investors not traditionally served by the industry.

“We see tremendous untapped opportunity in the $2 trillion mass [affluent] market,” he said.

In addition to the Tamarac updates, Envestnet announced a new enterprise data management product called Envestnet Envision, which the company said will use machine learning and advanced analytics to deliver new client insights. A corresponding tool, Envision IQ, will allow advisers to use a desktop computer, mobile devices and even Alexa voice commands to ask questions and receive immediate answers.

Envestnet president Bill Crager also announced the company is working on client-facing artificial intelligence tools and is adding a new marketplace of insurance products to the TAMP called the Fiduciary Exchange.