I am always happy when some technology offering I have gotten enthusiastic over during a demonstration -- or one that I've kicked the tires on -- ends up being adopted by larger providers.
So I was able to experience a bit'o happiness this morning when it was formally announced by Envestnet president Bill Crager that third-party macroanalytics technology provider HiddenLevers is being added as an integrated partner to the firm's platform.
While not yet directly accessible through the Envestnet wealth management platform, development work is underway and will be fully production-integrated in June.
What that means is advisers on the Envestnet platform will be able to perform portfolio or security-level stress tests to measure macro-level risk on them.
Praveen Ghanta, founder, chief executive and programming guru at HiddenLevers, has, in a nutshell created a series of dozens of hypothetical macro-level risk formulas based on world events that can be applied-to and plugged-in to the firm's algorithm, for example, how a middle eastern oil "shock" rise in prices might affect a client portfolio.
In total the HiddenLevers platform correlations between 130 macro-economic indicators, industries and securities.
"HiddenLevers has developed a unique macro-economic scenario-based portfolio testing methodology that delivers portfolio insight that is easy to use and explain to clients," said Bill Crager in a prepared statement released today during Envestnet | Tamarac's Advisor Summit being held in Chicago.
The Summit itself is being attended by 1100 advisers and asset managers, a fairly even mix of both. It is the first time the combined firm has held a joint conference. There are also some 90 exhibitors, the majority investment product vendors.
In terms of educational content the conference itself also represents a mix of training, introduction-of-new-features sessions as well as expert speakers and panel discussions that fall across the combined firm's business units.
These include sessions on the Tamarac Advisor Xi platform used by registered investment advisers and tracks devoted to the Envestnet platform used mainly by asset managers.
There are also sessions on practice management topics and a great deal of discussion about the newly available mobile version of Envestnet's platform known as ENV 2.
It is being rolled out to client firms over the remainder of the year.
I'm not going to go into detail about HiddenLevers, which is based in Manhattan, though Mr. Ghanta resides in the Atlanta area. It is the quintessential virtual firm and leverages technology to allow its employees to work remotely.
I have written about HiddenLevers on a number of occasions so you can read more about them here.
I will add though that this is the first formal announcement related to Envestnet Intelligence, which is a set of features and application integrations that will help guide advisers on the platform in communicating proactively with their clients.
I plan to flesh this out more extensively in next week's column so stay tuned. Right now I need to get back to some of the sessions.
Related stories:
Technology helps advisers tap insight on global scale (HiddenLevers Part 1)
A bit more on how the HiddenLevers core model works (HiddenLevers Part 2)
