Riskalyze has long since outgrown its roots as a digital risk questionnaire and will soon update its branding to reflect its growing role in financial adviser fintech.
Speaking at Riskalyze’s annual Fearless Investing conference Thursday in Salt Lake City, CEO Aaron Klein told 1,000 in-person attendees (as well as another 1,000 who dialed in virtually) that the company is on the hunt for a new name. As with Facebook and Meta, or Google and Alphabet, in 2023, Riskalyze will become a product name under a larger fintech umbrella.
“We have just built a lot, in terms of the platform. We broadened it, we’ve made it a lot deeper,” Klein told reporters after his keynote presentation. “I think if Amazon had called it ‘TheOnlineBookstore.com,’ they would regret that decision, right? We don’t regret the decision to name our company what we did, but we just have come to realize that it’s a fantastic product name for that part of the product portfolio, and we kind of need something to tell a broader story for the future.”
In addition to assessing client risk tolerance, Riskalyze now provides technology for portfolio analytics and research, trading, compliance and an investment model marketplace. The fintech has tapped the firm responsible for naming well-known consumer brands like Sonos, Subaru Forrester and Apple’s Powerbook to find a name that can encompass all that.
But Riskalyze has no plans to become an asset management platform — the route taken by competing adviser fintech companies like Orion Advisor Solutions and InvestCloud — and will remain a “pure-play technology company,” Klein said. Nor does it plan to enter financial planning or client relationship management, two areas of the adviser fintech market already dominated by a few significant companies.
“I’m convinced we have invented a fourth pillar in wealth tech: the growth platform,” Klein said.
Though many thought Riskalyze would eventually launch a TAMP (it will continue to make third-party investment strategies available to advisers on its model marketplace), staying out of the business lets it remain nimble in software development and avoid the increased regulatory scrutiny that comes with managing assets. It also helps create some clarity about the strategic direction of the company, Klein said.
“Many of our clients are enterprise broker-dealers or large RIAs, and that’s part of the business they provide to their advisers. And many of our partners like Orion and Envestnet and AssetMark, that’s the core business that they’re in,” he said. “There is big space in this profession for a company that is laser-focused on delivering technology that drives growth.”
“Our customers know that they’re always going to have the best technology and it's not going to be tied to whether or not they’ll give us their assets to manage,” Klein added.
The fintech executive also announced several enhancements that he said will boost Riskalyze’s ability to drive growth at asset management firm. A new “check-in” feature sends a quick email to clients asking them how they feel about markets and how confident they are in their financial future. Available as a free upgrade to all Riskalyze clients, the check-ins will help quickly gauge clients’ psychology and show advisers who could use their attention, Klein said.
Riskalyze is also upgrading its proposal generation tool to show tax liabilities triggered by capital gain distributions, giving advisers a new way to demonstrate value to prospects.
Advisers are also getting new ways to organize and categorize accounts, and a feature to search for bonds and separately managed accounts in Discovery, Riskalyze’s investment product search engine. Finally, Riskalyze board member Tricia Rothschild introduced new features available in Command Center, the compliance hub introduced in August that let firms quickly sift through thousands of accounts to identify compliance issues before they become problems.
“When you reach a certain scale, you do need to set some systems in place to ensure you’re in compliance,” Rothschild said.
As for the new company name, Klein wasn’t willing to share any details yet, but whatever it is will represent the company’s new focus on helping firms grow.
“At our core, we’re a technology company that drives growth for wealth management firms. That’s what the name is going to encompass,” he said.
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