Fintech veterans launch operating company for RIAs

Three wealth technology veterans have launched Singularity Financial Partners, an operating company for registered investment advisors that helps established firms with a unique ownership model.

The Henderson, Nevada-based company, which officially launched this month, was founded in February by Michael Roth, Oleg Tishkevich and Jim Zimmerman, whose careers include senior roles at InvestCloud, Envestnet and Microsoft.

Singularity is looking to carve out a unique position in the market, describing itself as "not a plugin, not software, not a consultancy and not an aggregator." Instead, the company says it takes ownership positions in established firms, placing its own staff inside them to run operations, hiring and technology.

“Most advisory firms were built by exceptional advisors who never set out to be operators,” Roth, CEO and co-founder of Singularity, said in a statement announcing the launch of the company. “They can see the growth. They cannot reach it, because the technology, the hiring and the operations all land on the same few people." 

Read more: New report spotlights operational drag hobbling mid-sized RIAs

Roth co-founded retirement planning software RetireUp prior to its 2020 acquisition by Tegra118, which later got consolidated into the InvestCloud platform. At InvestCloud, he was chief product officer and chief revenue officer of Digital Wealth.

Tishkevich, managing partner and co-founder at Singularity, was the founder of financial planning platform Finance Logix. That was bought in 2015 by Envestnet, where Tishkevich served as chief technology officer of Financial Planning.

Zimmerman, Singularity’s chief technology officer, previously led Azure Red Hat OpenShift at Microsoft and is Invent’s chief AI officer.

Singularity's structure borrows from operating companies that have already taken root in the fields of accounting, law, healthcare and IT services, according to the company, with economics that are tied to each firm’s results rather than to a software contract or consulting fee. The way it takes skin in the game varies, with ownership positions that can come through capital, operating work or both.

A February survey by F2 Strategy found 79% of wealth firms have plans to change their operating model within the next 12 to 24 months. While those firms aren't necessarily falling behind on technology, F2 found a consistent need for integration, data and product management specialists who can get those platforms working together.

Read more: For RIAs, tech integration is still the hard part

“There are very few things that we do that everybody across the industry needs to be thinking about, but everyone has an operating model, said Scott Lamont, senior managing director and head of bank trust at F2 Strategy. "Creating one that works most effectively is a problem that everyone shares.”

Singularity says its technology runs on a proprietary interface and AI agent framework that connects a firm’s data, custodians and third-party tools, with advisors and staff kept in the loop. Its data layer sits on a data lakehouse built by Invent, the wealth data company Tishkevich founded and leads.

The overall objective, as Singularity explains it, is to drive growth and efficiency by providing additional capacity wherever a firm sees constraints, including business development, operations, and technology.

The company said it has completed its first transactions and is already working inside those firms.

"Every good firm will be efficient in three years. Efficiency is the price of admission, not the prize. The prize is growth," Roth said. "We come in as owners, not vendors, and we build the firm around the people who built it.”