The turnkey asset management and technology provider AssetMark announced an expanded collaboration with TIFIN this week.
TIFIN Sage is an advanced AI-powered investment platform, and by integrating it, AssetMark intends to provide its investment consultants with the ability to gather personalized client insights quickly and, in turn, more efficiently build personalized model portfolios for its client advisors.
AssetMark also announced in June a strategic collaboration with TIFIN Give, an AI-powered donor-advised fund technology platform. That partnership is meant to equip AssetMark advisors with more streamlined philanthropic management options.
In March, former BlackRock executive Brooke Juniper was hired as CEO of the Sage unit.
Betterment, Daffy Integration
Just in time for the year-end giving season and charitable tax deduction deadline, Daffy announced this week an integration with automated investing service Betterment.
Daffy is the charitable giving platform, the name being a playful take on Donor Advised Fund for You.
Using the integration, both advisors and Betterment’s direct-to-consumer customers can donate low-cost-basis securities to more than 1.5 million U.S. charities through Daffy.
For wealth managers using the Betterment Advisor Solutions platform, the integration makes it easier to help clients manage financial windfalls, avoid capital gains taxes when donating long-term appreciated assets and rebalance portfolios.
d1g1t Launches Unified Managed Accounts Framework
Advisor technology platform provider d1g1t (pronounced “digit”) announced this week the launch of its Trading Unified Managed Accounts framework. It is meant to enable portfolio managers to build and manage sophisticated investment strategies more quickly and at a lower cost.
With it, custodian accounts can be subdivided into sleeves, each linked to a specific, separately managed account model. The platform can create those sleeves manually or automatically to reflect targeted allocations across multiple models.
In September, d1g1t rolled out its own set of extensive billing features within its wealth management platform.
Advisor CRM Launches and It’s Free
A new and free CRM for advisors has been launched. It was built in-house at Advisor CRM by Leibel Sternbach, the former CTO of Dallas, Texas-based Fusion Capital Management and longtime technology executive, and engineer Bruce Ferguson.
Many of the features of the associated technology platform (for which there is a cost associated) were originally developed in and for Fusion Capital Management (the first firm using the new CRM).
The technology provides built-in compliance features, trading automation and insurance contract management features (many of Fusion’s advisors are hybrid, having started as insurance advisors). The CRM platform will be available for advisors at no charge (some advisors will recall the history of Oranj, which was later acquired by SEI).
Oranj followed a freemium model, allowing advisors to use various pieces of technology for free. The cost of these was borne by asset managers, which funded the platform and had a marketplace there.
In an email, the Advisor CRM’s founders wrote that they admired Oranj and viewed it as a “role model” for their own efforts. They noted they are able to offer the product for free because they have existing revenue coming in from enterprise clients that cover the firm’s development costs.