Fintech Bytes: FMG launches marketing tool, Riskalyze integrates with financial planning startup

A roundup of the rest of the week's fintech headlines, including news from Tidal Financial, FA Match and Aspida.

Adviser fintech conference season is upon us.

After Future Proof a few weeks ago in California, XYPN Live, which always has a lot of fintech present, will kick off this weekend in Denver and virtually. Then eMoney will host its own conference virtually this year.

Later in the month is Riskalyze’s annual Fearless Investing Summit in Salt Lake City, where CEO Aaron Klein has teased he’ll make some significant product announcements. Then in early November, Charles Schwab’s Impact conference returns to Denver, where a lot of attention will likely be on one of the biggest stories in adviser fintech — the ongoing integration of the TD Ameritrade and Schwab’s brokerage platforms.

I’ll be heading to all of these events (well, XYPN I’ll attend virtually) to bring you as much coverage as I can, so be sure to follow InvestmentNews and me on Twitter for all the updates.

Are you attending any conferences this year? If so, which ones, and what are you hoping to see? Drop me an email to let me know.

CHOREO, FMG PARTNER ON NEW DIGITAL MARKETING TOOL

Digital marketing firm FMG Suite is partnering with Choreo, an RIA, to launch Canvas, a digital marketing and communications platform. Choreo’s network of financial advisers can use Canvas to plan and execute personalized marketing campaigns to drive new business growth.

The Canvas platform sounds as if it has everything advisers need for marketing in 2022: a central portal, social media automation, preapproved and shareable content, and compliance review. Whether this helps Choreo advisers stand out from the pack remains to be seen.

RISKALYZE INTEGRATES WITH MONEYTREE

Wealth fintech company Riskalyze’s latest integration is with financial planning fintech Moneytree Software. Moneytree claims its “robust calculation engine” simplifies the complexities of financial planning for advisers and improves its platform.

Like Income Lab, Moneytree is a new entrant to the planning fintech arena that offers one-page financial plans. According to XY Planning Network co-founder Michael Kitces, these are growing because of advisers’ need to more clearly demonstrate the value of ongoing planning after the initial session.

TIDAL FINANCIAL SECURES $32 MILLION

Private equity firm FTV Capital led a $32 million investment in Tidal Financial Group, an fintech designed to help wealth managers and RIAs to develop, launch and market private-label ETFs. Tidal plans to use the funding to expand its team, unify its brands and digitize products.

The idea of assisting independent advisers to build and launch their own ETFs sounds like a good one, I’m just wondering how popular it will be in an era where digital direct indexing is becoming much more accessible. Why using something like Tidal to build and market a fund when you can easily customize a portfolio with hundreds of underlying stocks?

FA MATCH LAUNCHES CAREER SEARCHING

Advisers using FA Match, the digital recruiting platform, can now anonymously search through open positions across more than 500 firms with a new feature called Advisor Test Drive. The tool is free and an accessible to any financial adviser.

According to CEO Ryan Shanks, FA Match is trying to break down the “recruiter paywall” that guards the some of the best career opportunities for financial advisers. “Advisor Test Drive eliminates the high-stakes friction that advisors often feel when they decide to take the first step,” he said. “The keys are fully in the hands of the advisors now.”

ASPIDA CHOOSES FIRELIGHT

Aspida Life Insurance Co. announced Thursday that it would use FireLight, a digital sales technology from Insurance Technologies, to distribute its WealthLock suite of annuity products to broker-dealers. The technology claims it can power easy digital data collection, improves in-good-order sales, increases efficiency and meets regulatory requirements.

Although many independent financial advisers aren’t big fans of annuities, there’s some data showing they are warming up to them in response to client demand. Much of the insurance industry is still behind the times, so improved products like this should help those advisers looking to find life insurance.

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