Welcome to the July 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!
This month’s edition kicks off with the news that CRM provider Wealthbox has sold a majority stake in itself to PE firm Sixth Street, marking a new phase in its growth from having a customer base primarily concentrated among small and midsize RIA firms to an increasing focus on larger enterprise firms – which on the one hand is a necessary step in the growth cycle of a technology startup as its existing users grow larger and much of its untapped market lies among bigger enterprises; but which also raises the questions of what changes it will make to compete with platforms like Salesforce among enterprise firms (e.g., enhancing its customization or workflow capabilities), as well as whether focusing more on larger firms will cause it to lose some of the innovative spark that came from rapidly iterating based on the feedback from individual users (which was part of what helped it grow so popular to begin with)!
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
- Envestnet has agreed to a deal to sell the data aggregation provider Yodlee, which Envestnet bought for $590 million in a much-scrutinized deal 10 years ago – which both encapsulates Envestnet’s struggles to make its many technology acquisitions add up to more than the sum of their parts (which Envestnet is now starting to undo by divesting from those acquisitions under its new owner Bain Capital) as well as the broader failure of data aggregation to live up to its early promise
- Canadian financial planning software Conquest Planning has raised $80 million as it aims to make inroads into the U.S. market while differentiating on its AI-driven “Strategic Advice Manager” that automatically suggests (and even recommends) planning strategies based on client inputs – which could serve as an interesting test as to whether U.S. advisors will have any interest in AI-embedded financial planning software or whether they see it as encroaching on their own value proposition
- NerdWallet has purchased an RIA to serve clients who find NerdWallet via its trove of personal finance content, while also rolling out an “advisor matching” lead generation program to refer prospects out to other advisors, which both highlights the huge business opportunity in lead generation (in that a platform that can effectively bring in prospective clients can monetize them both by funneling them to its own RIA and by selling them to other advisors), but also raises questions about the conflicts of interest that occur when an advisor matching program matches clients with its own in-house advisors!
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
- As technology providers are increasingly building or acquiring AI notetaking tools to integrate into their own solutions (often for no extra cost beyond the base subscription for the underlying software), there is becoming less and less need to use a standalone AI notetaker – which means that the existing standalone providers will likely need to find more ways to enhance their value, or face struggles amid the increasing commoditization of AI notetaking
- The proliferation of new AdvisorTech solutions over the years has led many to speculate that the industry is overdue for consolidation or contraction – and yet the more likely scenario is that the pace of growth increases going forward as no-code developing tools lower the barriers to building and releasing software… which on the one hand will make it even more difficult to navigate the software options on the market, but on the other hand will help to better highlight the gaps where existing solutions are failing to serve advisors’ needs and increase the overall quality of AdvisorTech going forward!
And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!
*And for #AdvisorTech companies who want to submit their tech announcements for consideration in future issues, please submit to TechNews@kitces.com!
