Fidelity announces new comprehensive, advisory tech offerings for smaller RIA firms

Smaller and mid-sized registered investment advisor firms are the focus for two new technology offerings from Fidelity Investments.

The firm’s recent research found that wealth management firms with a strong technological orientation see significantly better growth, improved client experiences, and enhanced advisor satisfaction compared to their less digital-focused counterparts, but that firms with less than $250M are 1.8x less likely to embrace technology best practices than firms with $1T+ AUM.

Its new offerings are designed to enable RIAs to embrace technology to establish and grow their business with both an all-in-one tech stack and an advisory bundle.

Learn more about a software called RIA tech stack that can provide exceptional service to current and/or potential clients in this guide.

The all-in-one offering was developed in collaboration with financial planning experts at eMoney Advisor, LLC, and advisor technology experts at Advyzon and aims to streamline advisors’ critical workflow and includes:

• Wealthscape, Fidelity’s robust brokerage platform that allows firms to seamlessly open accounts, manage money, trade, access hundreds of integrations for further customization, and access a variety of reporting and analytics tools to optimize client outcomes.
• eMoney’s comprehensive and collaborative financial planning capabilities to help advisors map strategies to their clients’ goals, with integration points such as single sign on, document sharing, streamlined household views, and more.
• Advyzon’s suite of operational and portfolio management software, including customer relationship management (CRM), performance reporting, and billing for middle- and back-office support, as well as investment management tools such as trading and rebalancing offered by Advyzon Investment Management (AIM), a subsidiary of Advyzon. Its integration with Wealthscape also supports digital account opening, single sign on, and APIs to view account positions and balances.

Fidelity has worked with its two collaborators to offer special pricing and support models and says that the comprehensive package will cut down evaluation time for advisors contemplating a technology stack.

ADVISORY BUNDLE

The new advisory bundle brings together Wealthscape, eMoney, and a new product, Fidelity Managed Account Xchange Essentials (FMAX Essentials).

FMAX Essentials draws on the larger, recently launched FMAX offering from Fidelity Investments Wealth Adviser, offering around one quarter of its options including a variety of mutual funds and ETFs, as well as model portfolios, separately managed account, and unified managed account wrappers. It’s available to those who use Fidelity’s custodian services.

Along with third-party products, the advisory bundle is intended for those firms that are looking to expand their managed account offerings, with a lower cost.

“Technology has incredible power as a growth driver and firms that harness it best have dedicated the time to research, evaluate, and implement it at scale,” said Noni Robinson, head of Emerging RIAs at Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management Services, a division of Fidelity Investments that provides platform solutions and clearing and custody services to wealth management firms. “Smaller firms and advisors launching their own business, however, often have fewer resources, which can put them at a disadvantage. Our offering takes the guesswork out of selecting a technology stack with solutions that support front-, middle-, and back-office employees at these firms.”