Wealthtech provider Amplify Platform, which is led by veterans from the $8 billion RIA Ashton Thomas Private Wealth, has launched a new tool for advisors to measure risk in client portfolios.
The new QuantumRisk algorithm has been developed by Dr. Ron Piccinini, who has a background in fat-tail risk modeling as an investment research director at both Amplify and Ashton Thomas, the latter of which is owned by Arax Investment Partners. QuantumRisk has been built off 20 years of financial research to help advisors measure risks in client portfolios to market shock-triggering events, such as president Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariff announcements made in early April.
“A good example came after the market reaction to Trump’s tweet in April. Traditional models would have treated the probability of that kind of decline as essentially impossible and they wouldn’t have flagged the exposure at all," Piccinini told InvestmentNews. "QuantumRisk, by design, recognizes that these so-called “impossible” events actually happen, and it accounts for them in a way that advisors can see and plan for."
Ashton Thomas’s founder and CEO Aaron Brodt is also a co-founder and CEO of the Arizona-based Amplify, which said in February of this year its tech platform was used by over 550 advisors totaling over $18 billion in assets under management. Amplify's chief technology officer David Hatfield is also the current CTO for Ashton Thomas Private Wealth, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“We don’t run on scenario-based assumptions. Those risks are already reflected in how markets price assets day to day,” Piccinini said. “The problem with traditional linear regression models is that they do a good job explaining the past, over 90% of it, but give little to no insights about the future. Our model is designed to capture the complex, non-linear dynamics that actually show up when those sudden shocks hit.”
Amplify’s QuantumRisk assigns portfolios and securities a risk measurement score on a scale between zero and 1,000 based on the historic tail risk of the S&P 500.
“One of the strengths of QuantumRisk is that it makes risk much easier to explain to clients,” said Amplify’s chief growth officer Vickie Lewin. “The widget visually compares a portfolio to the S&P 500, showing the range of volatility for a manager or portfolio over the last six months, alongside the full spectrum of assets from risk-free to the most risky. This means advisors can use it both as an internal decision-making tool and as a clear, client-friendly way to frame risk in conversations.”
Lewin highlighted two groups of RIAs who have shown early interest in QuantumRisk.
“One is breakaway firms looking to replace the institutional-grade risk tools they left behind,” Lewin said. “The other is fast-growing RIAs that want to scale without adding headcount. For them, risk conversations are central to client relationships and QuantumRisk gives those firms a way to connect more deeply with clients around the emotions and behaviors that drive outcomes, while also streamlining operations.”
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