Pershing X moves into the fintech lane with new Wove platform

BNY Mellon Pershing is leveraging its annual Insite conference in Orlando, Florida, to debut its new wealthtech platform that expands the custodian into lanes currently populated by fintech names such as Orion and Envestnet.

The multicustodial platform, known as Wove, is described as an open-architecture operating system that includes a set of applications that enable advisors to connect and manage their technology on a single platform.

“Most advisors have chosen 10 or 12 applications they need to do their work, and then they will try to have them talk to each other, but it never works,” said Ainslie Simmonds, president of Pershing X, which was launched 18 months ago as a fintech business within BNY Mellon Pershing.

Simmonds, a highly regarded fintech veteran who was brought on to turn Pershing into a fintech player, said Wove solves the problem advisors face trying to get all their applications to work together.

“The applications advisors use now don’t talk to each other because they all work independently,” she said. “We’ve seen that problem and we’d like to offer an operating system that can connect things. Anything native to Wove will have the best connections, and if it’s a third party we’ll do the best we can. It can replace the apps that exist today but also offers this layer of interconnectedness.”

Simmonds said the cost to use Wove will depend on the number of applications an advisor signs up for and the amount of assets they bring to the custodial platform.

“We’ve been competitive on every application price,” she said. "The productivity benefit from all of these apps being connected provides additional value. You don’t have to copy and paste, or double-enter data. Today, an advisor has to buy applications from a half-dozen different providers. This is the operating system that will connect those things together.”

Chuck Failla, president of Sovereign Financial Group, described Wove as a sign of the direction in which custodians and fintech providers are heading.

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“This is another example of the tech-stodian idea and it seems to be really building momentum as a trend,” he said. “You have custodians getting into tech and tech players getting into custody. I view that as a positive. The highly competitive RIA space lends itself to these types of innovations that all try to increase efficiencies.”

Joel Bruckenstein, producer of Technology Tools for Today, also sees an appetite for what Wove is offering.

“Many firms want a more integrated solution,” he said. “Envestnet, Orion, Advyzon, CircleBlack and others are all trying to provide that solution, and it seems like Pershing is trying to do the same thing.”

Along with the Wove announcement, advisors will have access to direct indexing investment strategies, including the new BNY Mellon Precision Direct Indexing S&P 500. The strategy seeks to match the performance of the S&P 500 Index and enables advisors to offer clients customized solutions.

As Simmonds explained it, the former Lockwood RIA associated with Pershing was absorbed by Pershing X and “is being completely reimagined as BNY Mellon Advisors that is leveraging the $1.9 trillion of investment management expertise that BNY Mellon has.”

“It helps RIAs outsource some of the portfolio construction if they want to create specific proprietary models,” she said. “The technology will get a lot of airtime but having that complementary set of services that go with it is also important to our clients.”