Fintech bytes: Envestnet's Bill Crager wants to fix tech's disconnection dilemma

Three technology companies are staking their positions in the wealth management software market, each targeting a different facet of the same underlying challenge: the fragmented, disconnected infrastructure that independent financial advisors navigate every day.

Envestnet's Bill Crager launches new data-focused venture

Field, a new wealth management technology company led by Bill Crager, co-founder and former chief executive of Envestnet, launched with the goal of creating an integrated data layer underneath the tools advisory firms already use.

The company's platform ingests data from the range of systems a firm relies on — portfolio management, financial planning, CRM, compliance, and billing – and translates it into a unified framework.

Field was formed through two acquisitions made via iAltA, an investment firm co-founded by Scott Ganeles and Laurence Tosi, who previously co-founded Ipreo, a capital markets data infrastructure company. Those acquisitions are BridgeFT, a wealthtech API platform offering multi-custodian data connectivity, and Precept, whose technology connects data across custodians, planning tools, and alternative investment platforms, including an AI integration layer.

Read more: iAlta acquires BridgeFT to make custodial connections for its 'Envestnet For Alternatives'? 

"The advisor has been the one holding it all together, manually, every day," Crager said in a statement. "Field puts the picture in one place. The firm sees itself whole."

Crager framed the launch as a structural fix rather than an incremental product upgrade. "The tools got better every year," he said. "But the ground beneath them still hasn't been properly built. Field exists to be that ground."

The company positions the current moment in wealth management as analogous to earlier coordination phases in other technology sectors – arguing the next wave of innovation will come not from individual applications but from how those applications share and act on information together.

Virtual family office Strad forges tie-up with FIG

Strad, a virtual family and business office platform, announced a partnership with FIG, a financial services organization that supports independent advisors across the country.

The arrangement gives FIG advisors access to Strad's platform, which allows them to offer clients a centralized environment for organizing assets, documents, insurance policies, professional relationships, business interests, and multi-generational family structures.

The virtual family office model is designed to extend capabilities historically available only to ultra-high-net-worth households – those wealthy enough to support a dedicated family office infrastructure – to clients at lower levels of wealth.

Strad also enables advisors to coordinate with a client's broader network of professionals, including tax advisors, estate attorneys, and insurance specialists.

"Advisors today need growth strategies, not just more technology," said Russell Dow, founder and chief executive of Strad. "This deeper level of engagement strengthens client relationships, improves coordination with a client's other professionals, and helps advisors build more valuable, succession-ready practices."

Nicholas Ross, FIG's chief strategy officer, said the partnership is aimed at helping advisors differentiate in an environment where investment management alone is increasingly difficult to distinguish. "Our partnership with Strad gives FIG advisors access to a powerful platform that helps them differentiate their practices, deepen relationships with clients, and position their firms for long-term success," he said.

The platform is SOC2 Type 2 compliant and is built to integrate with existing advisor technology stacks.

Faced with mounting pressure to grow their practices, advisors are increasingly pushing toward family office-style services for mass-affluent and high-net-worth clients, particularly as fee compression continues for those offering basic portfolio management.

Read more: Thomas Ruggie on the Rise of Multi-Family Offices

Slant and CurrentClient integration connects CRM to phone comms

Slant, an AI-native CRM platform built for financial advisors, announced an integration with CurrentClient, a compliant phone system for advisory firms. The partnership connects phone calls and text message conversations – channels that often fall outside of standard CRM data capture – into Slant's centralized client data repository.

Through the integration, Slant users can place calls or send texts directly from within the CRM. Calls can be recorded automatically or, in states requiring two-party consent, following disclosure to the client. The combined platform is designed to give advisors a more complete picture of every client interaction, regardless of the channel.

"Advisors connect with clients across every channel – email, phone, video, and in person – and the details shared in each of those moments are vital to building a real relationship," said Thomas Clawson, co-founder of Slant. "Our partnership with CurrentClient puts virtually every detail a client has ever shared at an advisor's fingertips."

Slant already offers an AI-powered meeting notes capability, which the CurrentClient integration extends to phone-based conversations. Slant says its AI can then use those notes to power automated workflows, including scheduling recurring client review meetings and drafting meeting-prep emails in the advisor's voice.

CurrentClient's platform also enable compliant archiving either within its own system or through several third-party platforms used by its advisor, according to the wealth tech firm.