Investment research software company YCharts has acquired Zephyr, an investment analytics company known for its data on comparing separately managed account (SMA) options for financial advisors.
Since 2012, Zephyr has been owned by Informa, the British publishing and business intelligence firm that’s listed on the London Stock Exchange. Zephyr’s completed sale to Chicago-based YCharts was confirmed by a representative of YCharts, who added that the company would not be issuing a formal public announcement or providing additional comments regarding the transaction.
More than 15,000 financial professionals use YCharts, which provides data visuals on investment performance and client portfolio analysis for advisors. Zephyr has said in a previous press release that its PSN database lets advisors and asset managers evaluate more than 21,000 SMA products by comparing asset breakdowns, compliance, key personnel and more data.
“I think it's a good move. Zephyr's been around for a long time. They used to have a really good reputation, in my opinion, and were well known in the RIA space for their research on managers and SMA,” RIA technology consultant Joel Bruckenstein told InvestmentNews. “I don't think those research capabilities were being fully utilized or brought into the 21st century, so I think this merger actually makes a lot of sense because YCharts has invested heavily over the last couple of years in AI and agentic AI, completing workflows.”
YCharts announced last month that it launched a new AI agent built on Anthropic’s Claude to further automate investment analysis for advisors. Jay Coulter, CEO of the Texas-based RIA Titleist Asset Management, told InvestmentNews that he has been using YCharts since 2018.
“At first, [YCharts] was really just a tool to get great-looking charts and maybe a little bit of portfolio analysis. But it has evolved into a front office and middle office tool to run full firms and TAMPs,” said Coulter. “The addition of the Zephyr database and the PSN database that comes with Zephyr is really going to help me help advisors we work with.”
Titleist Asset Management has 28 advisors managing nearly $3 billion in client assets, according to Coulter.
“When we're working with an advisor that's looking to move to our firm or manage through existing SMAs, the biggest challenge is always the data around legacy SMA sets,” said Coulter. “And now that we're going to be able to handle that at depth on the YCharts platform, and then put their new and improving AI tools on top of it, it's just going to make the advisor experience and the client outcomes a lot stronger.”
Sean Brown has been the CEO since 2016 of YCharts, which launched in 2009 as a cloud-based alternative to Bloomberg Terminal data usage for advisors. Private equity firm LLR Partners acquired YCharts in 2020. Citywire reported last year that LLR was pursuing a sale of YCharts but then decided to end that sale process.
LPL Financial’s ClientWorks has a direct integration with YCharts, which also added a suite of private markets benchmarks from Hamilton Lane to its platform earlier this year.
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