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Fidelity Unveils New Digital Experiences For Next-Gen Investors: Tech Roundup

By Jeff Berman

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What You Need to Know

  • Fidelity's Pancake Empire Tower Tycoon introduces users to real-world money situations using pancakes, while Bloom-o-rama is a new metaverse experience.
  • Orion Advisor Solutions announced the launch of its new website.
  • Morningstar Wealth added a Portfolio Analytics feature to its ByAllAccounts product.

Fidelity Investments on Thursday announced two new digital experiences it said were designed to help the next generation of investors “grow their financial know-how and build healthier money habits.”

The first new digital experience is Pancake Empire Tower Tycoon, an educational Roblox experience that introduces users to real-world money situations of spending, saving and investing using pancakes.

Fidelity’s Bloom-o-rama, meanwhile, is a new metaverse experience in Decentraland guiding users through quests and challenges to “cultivate a more mindful approach to money,” the firm said. Decentraland is a browser-based metaverse backed by the Digital Currency Group.

“To extend the experience beyond Decentraland, Fidelity is also launching an accompanying mobile experience called Money Melodies, a real-time audio and visual meditative experience that reflects and interprets market data, which also serves as the custom soundtrack for Fidelity’s Bloom-o-rama,” the company noted.

The introductions represent the “next step in its ongoing effort to provide relevant financial education,” Fidelity said.

Those who visit Money Melodies will be able to earn an exclusive reward that can be redeemed only in Decentraland.

iCapital Adds Structured Investments via Envestnet

iCapital launched a holistic structured investment ecosystem within Envestnet’s platform that includes full proposal generation and the trading workflow, iCapital said Tuesday.

“iCapital and Envestnet are focused on making it easier for advisors and clients to reach their financial goals,” said Jillian Altamura, managing director and head of platform partnerships at iCapital, adding that the integration “brings structured investments into an advisor’s suite of investment solutions and gives them a 360-degree view of client finances.”

The integration with Envestnet’s platform, powered by SIMON from iCapital, “enhances advisors’ capabilities by streamlining the proposal-to-execution process for structured investments and offering access to analytical features,” iCapital said.

Via SIMON from iCapital’s learning center and marketplace, advisors and clients can also benefit from multimedia educational resources, including a library of more than 90 videos, on-demand asset class education and customized compliance-tracking tools.

The learning center and marketplace are now available via Envestnet’s Launchpad, a virtual ecosystem that centralizes the advisor experience for financial planning.

Also launching through this partnership is the Structured Investments block available in MyBlocks by Envestnet | MoneyGuide for investor education. Clients can use this block to understand the potential impact of these products on an investor’s portfolio.

The announcement was made during the recent Envestnet Elevate conference in Denver. The two-day event hosted more than 80 conference sessions, including a keynote by Bill Crager, Envestnet CEO and co-founder.

Orion Launches New Advisor Website

Orion Advisor Solutions announced the launch of its new website that, according to the company, reflects “recent integrations and workflows designed to drive efficiency across Orion’s technology ecosystem, including Redtail CRM, Orion Risk Intelligence and Orion Compliance.”

The new website was developed by a team of in-house and external UX designers and programmers around defining brand research and insights, Orion said.

A key component of the new website is Orion Advisor Academy, an on-demand learning platform launched in February 2023, that the firm said “provides practical, actionable education for advisors to improve and grow their businesses, while earning continuing education (CE) credits.”

The website also incorporates an enhanced Careers experience to support the company’s expected future growth.

Future iterations of the website currently being tested include a “single sign-on experience for Orion’s 2,300 advisory firms.”

Morgan Stanley at Work Integrates With Pave

Morgan Stanley at Work and Pave, a provider of real-time compensation benchmarking and planning solutions, announced the launch of an integration with the Shareworks application programming interface.

The integration will allow Morgan Stanley at Work Private Markets clients to “seamlessly access real-time compensation benchmarking and planning solutions,” it said.

The announcement followed several initiatives by Morgan Stanley at Work aimed at bringing relevant and important data seamlessly to clients. These included integrations with all major accounting firms, including KPMG, Deloitte/GAIN and Ernst & Young.

Morningstar Wealth Unveils Portfolio Analytics Enrichment

Morningstar Wealth added a Portfolio Analytics feature to its ByAllAccounts product.

ByAllAcounts is Morningstar’s data-aggregation solution that focuses on the unique demands and challenges of financial advisors, investors and the platforms supporting them, it noted.

The Portfolio Analytics feature “applies a deep level of analytics to aggregated portfolios through a turnkey integration with Morningstar Licensed Data,” the company said. The feature also “streamlines advisor workflows by unlocking highly enriched investment data for proposal generation, portfolio exposure and risk analytics, allowing advisors to optimize wealth through new investment opportunities.”

Daniel Needham, president of Morningstar Wealth, stated, “At Morningstar Wealth, we have plans to continue to innovate the ByAllAccounts product to exceed advisors’ expectations. With more than 20 years of dedicated investment experience and the industry’s highest quality of aggregated data, Morningstar Wealth will continue to inform and drive advisor success.”

ByAllAccounts with the new Portfolio Analytics feature, will provide a deeper level of data analysis combining machine learning with knowledge-based processes.

Cerulli: Advisors’ Front-Office Tech Is Here to Stay

Advisor use of front-office technology has “evolved significantly over the past three years,” according to Cerulli.

New research, from the firm’s State of U.S. Wealth Management Technology 2023, found that front-office tech had made a lasting impact on client satisfaction and advisor productivity.

The technologies most frequently cited by respondents as benefiting the client experience included e-signature (77%), video conferencing (75%) and client portals (64%).

The technologies most frequently cited as benefiting advisor productivity included video conferencing (75%), e-signature (73%) and CRM (70%).

EncorEstate Hires Riskalyze Co-Founder as CTO

Fintech firm EncorEstate Plans, which provides estate planning software for advisors, said it hired Riskalyze co-founder Matt Pistone as its first chief technology officer.

Pistone will “focus on building out the company’s technology strategy to serve its growing enterprise business,” the company said. He will be responsible for the firm’s software development, including UI/UX design, API development and implementation and product roadmap.

Before joining EncorEstate Plans, Pistone served 10 years as CTO at Riskalyze, growing its engineering team from zero to more than 50 employees across three offices in two countries.

Lumiant Buys Genivity

Lumiant, the operator of an advice and client engagement platform, has acquired Genivity, a longevity and health planning solution for financial advisors.

Heather Holmes, Genivity CEO and founder, will join Lumiant’s executive leadership team as chief evangelist officer and be appointed to the Lumiant board as an executive director, the firm said.

Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

“Integrating Genivity into Lumiant’s platform gives advisors a complete picture of a client’s life, enabling them to tackle difficult or emotional conversations around health risks and care costs,” the firms said Wednesday.

Lumiant also plans to “deeply integrate Genivity’s proprietary algorithms throughout its platform to provide lifestyle and health overlays across its advice engagement tools,” according to the companies.

(Image: Shutterstock) 

Jeff Berman

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