A couple years ago, as Riskalyze surged from four to 200 employees, it’s CEO Aaron Klein realized that they were “like the cobbler’s kid who didn’t have shoes” when it came to a 401(k) plan. But with a closer look at retirement products, he quickly realized that there was a bigger opportunity for advisers.
“The 401(k) industry is ripe for disruption,” he said during his keynote presentation at Riskalyze’s Fearless Investing Summit on Thursday.
Mr. Klein introduced Riskalyze Retirement Solutions, a joint offering from Riskalyze and Vestwell, that is designed to be an end-to-end digital 401(k) solution built around Riskalyze’s risk number. Advisers have been using Riskalyze’s “retirement plans feature to serve plan participants at scale, but now will be able to serve the plan itself with a risk number-centric managed account offering.
Launching later this year, Riskalyze Retirement Solutions will be available to all advisers with a Riskalyze license at no additional cost. “If we’re going to empower the world to invest fearlessly, we need to reach the 401(k) and equip advisors to serve plans,” Mr. Klein said.
Aaron Schumm, Vestwell’s CEO, said during the keynote presentation that advisers will be able to log into the Riskalyze platform to generate 401(k) proposals and onboard clients electronically. In addition, plan participants will be able to pinpoint their Risk Number to help them target the proper asset allocation for each client.
“At Vestwell, our number one priority is providing financial advisors with retirement technology that removes the administrative burden of implementing and servicing retirement plans,” Mr. Schumm said.
During his keynote presentation, Mr. Klein also announced other upgrade to Riskalyze’s platform, including upgrades to its robo-platform AutoPilot and a new educational platform called the Riskalyze Academy, which will be rolled out to advisers Thursday or in the next few weeks.
One upgrade that stood out was a new tool called Scenarios which is designed to help advisers compare multiple portfolios, indexes, benchmarks, portfolio models, and individual securities, across any market timeline.
Mike McDaniel, Riskalyze’s chief investment officer, said during the keynote on Thursday that this was designed to help advisers better explain to clients to why their portfolio isn’t matching market performance.
He said Scenarios will “make math the bad cop” as advisers set custom date ranges, display historical visuals, and includes an all-new forecasted stress-test.
