FOTechHub Bulletin: Family Office Technology News Roundup – May, 2024

Company News 

 

iCapital Launches First Blockchain Fund

• iCapital launched a new type of private fund that uses distributed ledger technology (DLT) to cut down on manual work and errors.  It aims to save clients “thousands of hours of manual data reconciliation and version sharing.” 
• The fund is distributed by UBS Wealth Management and administered by Gen II. 
• iCapital’s chief product officer Jason Broder told WealthManagement.com: “A distributed ledger is a fantastic solution that can be a single source of truth in the alts ecosystem. It could begin to drive data standardization across the industry and really solve a lot of the operational inefficiencies.” UBS declined to comment. 

 

SumIt Software Fundraise and Addepar Integration

• SumIt Software, a startup providing general ledger and accounting solutions for family offices, has completed an integration with the data aggregation and reporting giant Addepar. 
• The company also raised additional funding from family offices and, according to a note shared with FOT
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• ech, will be rolling out more updates soon.
• The firms also hired Jared Baumer as its founding customer success manager. He brings accounting and auditing experience. 

 

What is Vistarra By FirstRate (vistarra.ai)?

• According to the webpage, Vistarra’s core offering is composed principally of First Rate’s existing capabilities of data aggregation, reconciliation and reporting, catering to family offices, wealth managers and technology providers. 
• The platform promises customised experience: “trusted expertise, capabilities, and solutions” that go “beyond the noise of generic platforms.”
• It was set to be unveiled on 22 May, but the launch was postponed. 

 

PwC Becomes OpenAI’s Largest Customer and First Reseller for ChatGPT Enterprise

• OpenAI has partnered with PwC, making PwC its largest enterprise customer and first reseller partner. This collaboration will see 100,000 PwC employees using ChatGPT’s enterprise tier, which offers enhanced features such as faster interactions, unlimited usage, and customizable models. 
• PwC aims to leverage ChatGPT for core audit, tax, and consulting services. The firm identified over 3,000 potential AI use cases, like reviewing tax returns and generating reports and enhancing their consulting capabilities without increasing headcount. 
• “Our clients are going through the same journey, so we’re embarking on a reselling agreement” said Brett Greenstein, partner and GenAI leader at PwC.

 

Mercer Advisors Teams up with Opto Investments to Create Aspen Partners

• Mercer Advisors, the $60 billion RIA, is broadening its private market offerings with the new Aspen Partners platform, developed in collaboration with Opto Investments and supported by GIC, a global institutional investor. 
• The platform will provide individual investors access to private market investments with a minimum investment of $100,000 to clients with at least $5 million in investable assets.
• Mercer also plans to launch several private funds diversified across multiple managers and vintages, and focused on reducing intermediary costs. 

 

Marcum Technology Acquires CLA’s IT Enhanced Managed Services Division

• Marcum Technology, a division of Marcum LLP has completed the acquisition of the IT Enhanced Managed Services division of top-ten accounting firm CLA (CliftonLarsonAllen LLP). 
• This acquisition expands Marcum Technology’s Managed IT Services and adds additional experience to its healthcare and banking industry teams.

 

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Product Updates and Partnerships 

 

Trustworthy Introduces AI and Announces Ricoh Partnership

• Trustworthy, a family information management service, has introduced new AI features that simplify document management. 
• New features: Autopilot for automatic sorting and summaries, an Inbox for temporary document storage, Email to Inbox for forwarding documents, a Chrome extension for saving online content, and soon, Search & Queries for easy info retrieval.
• According to Trustworthy, its AI operates without using personal data to train its model.
• Trustworthy also partnered with Ricoh to help families scan paper documents into the system. 
• Trustworthy was founded in 2020 in San Francisco and helps families keep track of important things like IDs, finances, property documents, passwords, and more. 

 

Luminary Joins Forces with SS&C Black Diamond

• Luminary now integrates with SS&C Black Diamond, as well as with Addepar. This means you can easily transfer client information and investment details into Luminary. 
• With this connection, advisors can plan wealth transfers for clients more efficiently, track estate tax savings and create dynamic client presentations.  
• Once the connection is set up, everything stays up-to-date automatically with daily updates.
• Luminary also has new tools: Business Entity Visualisation helps visualize how clients own their businesses and aggregate their value. Entities linked to portfolio management platforms (Addepar and Black Diamond) will automatically have valuations synced. Luminary AI streamlines document review processes, with summaries, advanced search and dynamic digital records. 

 

Entole Knowledge Bots make Accessing Information Easy

• Entole’s new ‘Knowledge Bots‘ are smart chatbots you can talk to like a person to find information from your documents.
• A secured implementation backed by Azure OpenAI is the setup default, with the option to use a private installation of Llama or Mistral to further sandbox and secure the information.
• The bots use RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) pipeline, powered by CRBN AI and Microsoft Azure.

 

Sattva and Asset Vantage Partnership

• Sattva Consulting and Asset Vantage join forces to help UHNW families to track the impact of their philanthropic endeavors.
• Sattva is an Indian company that advises on social issues. They work with businesses, nonprofits, and donors to achieve social and economic goals, offering a range of services, including research, strategy consulting, program design and management, and impact assessment. 
• In our last bulletin, we wrote about Asset Vantage’s AI-powered feature that allows clients and their advisors to query their data. It’s now launched and is called AV Edge. 

 

LandyTech Achieves Certification 

• Landytech got a special security badge (ISO 27001) that shows they have extra strong protections in place to fight off cyberattacks, which are getting more common.
• The internationally recognized certification covers all employees and IT infrastructure, and is verified by the British Assessment Bureau.

 

K1x Announces New Patent

• K1x has announced a new patent for their “machine learning system for summarizing tax documents with non-structured portions.”
• Additionally, they have renamed their products to better reflect their value: K-1 Analyzer is now K1 Aggregator™, K-1 Navigator is now K1 Creator™, C-TRAC is now 990 Tracker™. K1x also reintroduced K1 Exchange as K1xChange, facilitating K-1 data sharing through .k1x files. 

 

Vanilla Continues to Innovate for Lawyers and Clients

• Off the back of the news from Vanilla last month, the tech company made two more announcements. 
• Vanilla now offers Vanilla for Attorneys allowing a shift from transactional meetings to fostering ongoing client relationships.
• The platform also released new features: VAI Chat, an AI-driven chatbot providing instant estate planning answers, Estate Health Check for quick client estate assessments, support for third party settled trusts and a Balance Sheet Import tool. 

 

Canoe Intelligence Partners with InfoGrate

• Canoe Intelligence are partnering with InfoGrate to help clients choose the right tech. Together they will service a variety of clients including single and multi family offices, trust companies, boutique RIAs and other wealth advisors, and private banks.
• Founded in 1996 by Dr. Tania Neild, InfoGrate is a boutique consulting firm that provides a retained/outsourced CTO and development team for single and multi-family offices.
• Commenting on the partnership, Dr Tania Neild said: “InfoGrate provides project managers, developers, and subject matter experts to fill in any gaps and work with client vendors to leverage and complement current technology. Canoe’s solutions have already helped many of our clients to date, so a strategic partnership was the ideal next step. Our team is a tight-knit family, and we’re excited to build a similar type of relationship with the Canoe team.”

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Moving and Grooving

 

• Eton Advisors Appoint Brian Hughes as President: Eton Advisors, a US$2 billion boutique RIA based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, has brought in Hughes to drive growth.  Hughes used to run his own business development consulting firms and helped grow UHNW businesses at other MFOs. Eton Advisors was founded in 2009 and in 2015, they spun off Eton Solutions, an integrated accounting platform for family offices. Rob Mallernee, co-founder of Eton Advisors is also the CEO of Eton Solutions.
• Ron Pruitt has been named as the new president of Orion Wealth Management. Pruitt’s career includes serving as senior vice president of Nasdaq Analytics, president of eVestment and Solovis (both acquired by Nasdaq), co-founder and CIO of Placemark Investments, and executive vice president at Envestnet after it acquired Placemark in 2014.
• GreenHill Welcomes Brian Hassel as the new Chief Technology Officer: As CTO, Brian leads software development strategy, manages the tech stack and oversees IT and software development teams for the investment reporting provider. He has 18 years of experience in financial services technology roles with companies like Envestnet and SunGard. 
• d1g1t announced the appointment of David Smith as vice president of finance. David brings a wealth of experience in the SaaS, service, and distribution sectors to this role and a background in dealing with organizations undergoing change such as rapid growth, mergers, acquisitions, software implementation, opening/closing of international offices.
• Alkymi Adds Two Team Members: Carsten Otte joins as senior data solutions architect and John Peterson joins as strategic accounts director, bringing experience from Simcorp, FIS, Altvia and eFront, among others.

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New Clients 

 

• Alvearia Partners with Vyzer: The private market co-investment platform selected Vyzer as its preferred partner for investment tracking. Alvearia provides its members investment due diligence and the ability to manage special purpose vehicles (SPVs) for private markets. Vyzer was founded in 2021, with locations in Netanya, Israel and New York. It tracks diverse portfolios including crypto and offers cash flow planning, performance reporting, and peer benchmarking. 
• Prime Quadrant Signs Canoe: The CA$22B Toronto-based MFO serving 200+ wealthy families in N America will utilize Canoe Connect for document collection and Canoe Intelligence for data extraction. Prime Quadrant says they see a huge potential in automating most of their data processes after implementing the Canoe and Addepar platforms in tandem.
• Corient Selects Addepar: The US$160B wealth manager serving HNW clients will use Addepar as its exclusive portfolio data aggregation and performance reporting solution across Corient’s client portfolio. Headquartered in Miami, Corient is a subsidiary of Toronto-based CI Financial Corp, a global asset and wealth management company with approximately US$350.1 billion.
• Overlay Capital and AltExchange partner to offer RIAs enhanced access and reporting for boutique private investment strategies. Overlay is an asset manager and investment platform focused on the built environment.