Recent developments in the Family Office technology world

Company updates & People moves

3 April - Paul Freeland joined PwC’s Private Family Enterprises team based in Cincinnati as partner, bringing 25+ years of fintech experience. Before joining PwC, Paul was Managing Director, SEI Family Offices Services which owns the Archway platform for accounting, investment management and reporting for family offices and financial institutions. Paul was a founding executive of Archway Technology Partners, acquired by SEI in 2017.

April - Bob Shepro announced a relaunch of his consulting business to provide FinTech strategy, right-scale technology selection, best practices and implementation services to family offices and fund managers.  He will primarily be working in collaboration with Erin Hulse’s Deviate Consulting, a boutique software consultancy for family offices. Most recently, Bob was partner and product architect at Eton Solutions, and prior to that he headed up the private capital group at SS&C Technologies.

6 April - LGT Wealth India, a private wealth management firm and part of the LGT Group, has partnered with Asset Vantage to provide a full stack digital family office & portfolio analytics solution for UHNWIs and private offices. The platform aggregates wealth and accounting data across geographies and for family investment entities like individuals, limited liability partnership companies, public limited companies, and trusts. The solution assists in comparing the performance as well as identifying risk limits for the portfolio. It offers data reconciliation, investment analytics, performance matrices, and investment tax details through an integrated accounting ledger system.

11 April - Brassica secured $8 million in seed funding led by Mercury Fund and unveiled a new web 2.5 Investment Infrastructure API designed for the alternative assets industry. Meanwhile, the company's subsidiary, Brassica Trust Company, received a Trust Charter from Wyoming State Banking Board. By offering comprehensive API-enabled custodial and transfer agent services, Brassica aims to become a "one-stop shop" for institutional-grade backend solutions in the alternative assets space. Founded by experienced entrepreneurs Youngro Lee and Bob Dunton, Brassica aims to modernize backend infrastructure, enabling secure and compliant business building amid evolving regulatory environments. The funding will support scaling teams, launching new services, and establishing trust operations in Wyoming, as the company collaborates globally to bridge traditional and decentralized finance.

13 April - Opto Investments, a technology-enabled private markets platform for independent investment advisors, has created an advisory council that brings together seasoned financial services entrepreneurs and thought leaders (see members at the above link). The announcement comes on the heels of a $145M Series A funding round announced last September, which included Tiger Global, 8VC, Michael Dell’s MSD Capital, Clocktower Ventures, Fin Capital, HOF Capital, and other firms.

18 April - Citywire RIA reported that InvestCloud’s CEO John Wise, chief corporate development officer J.P. Whelan and president of sales operations and integration Fiona Francois have all left InvestCloud in a 'sudden' management shakeup. For some additional colour on this story see this post from Craig Iskowitz. A few days later, four more InvestCloud’s top executives and co-founders left as well and even more departures followed in May.

18 April - BILL, a cloud-based accounts payable (AP) solution, hired Ken Moss, tech industry innovator, as chief technology officer. Moss reports directly to CEO and Founder, René Lacerte. Moss’ experience includes roles such as: CTO at Electronic Arts, VP of marketplaces technology, science and data at eBay and general manager, director of development, and founder of Internet search (aka Bing) at Microsoft.

25 April - Proteus, an alternative investment platform, was selected by Primark Capital, a private markets-focused registered investment adviser, to deploy a technology-enabled co-investment market. Primark and Proteus will make co-investment opportunities (identified, sourced, and reviewed by Meketa Investment Group, an OCIO firm) available to Primark’s clients: wealth advisors and their investors through evergreen feeders that Proteus will form and operate. This is expected to allow Primark clients to build portfolios of co-investments with only having to execute a single subscription document, regardless of the number of co-investments in which they participate. They will receive a single periodic statement and annual K1 reflecting all their co-investments made through the platform.

24 April - First Rate, the growing wealthtech, acquired performance reporting and portfolio management assets from InvestEdge, and announced a strategic partnership with InvestEdge to offer its regulatory compliance software suite - ComplianceEdge - to First Rate’s clients.

25 April - Addepar launched Addepar Research led by Dr. Ashby Monk, executive and research director at Stanford Long-Term Investing. Topics will include updates on market and portfolio trends, foundational investment practices and in-depth, peer reviewed reports. Research reports and insights are available to Addepar clients via a private site. Select excerpts are available on a public-facing site. Most content requires registration. See more here.

28 April - London based early stage fintech, 1fs Wealth, has secured the backing of Singularity Capital - Arizona based venture capital arm of the Jaggi Family Office, which, along with its affiliates, has invested over $3bn across the venture capital and real estate industries. 1fs Wealth’s platform allows wealth owners to consolidate assets, manage risk, complex structures, and analyse the performance of complex global portfolios. In late 2022, 1fs Wealth secured an investment from angel investor Dominique Cerutti. The amounts were not disclosed.

Earlier in April, 1fs Wealth announced the appointment of wealth management veteran, Craig Lewis, to its strategic advisory board. Lewis has previously led international investment teams covering key clients and family offices for major wealth managers, including Credit Suisse, Barclays, and Edmond de Rothschild.

April - Asora, a Dublin, Ireland-based data aggregation and consolidated reporting startup for single and multi family offices, announced the appointment of Martin Coughlan to its advisory board. Mr Coughlan, who is also an investor in Asora, is joining to help scale the business and build out its presence in the US.

1 May - Matt Sonnen joined Coldstream Wealth Management - an employee-owned wealth management firm. Sonnen is joining as chief operating officer to optimise the back-office and oversee operations, information technology, performance reporting, client service, and salesforce CRM teams. Prior to joining Coldstream, Sonnen was founder and CEO of PFI Advisors - operations-focused RIA consultancy firm.

7 May - Keebeck Wealth Management has selected Venn by Two Sigma to help with portfolio risk and investment decision making.

3 May - Canoe Intelligence announced the opening of an office on London’s Embankment as part of its expansion strategy for EMEA, where some 20% of its clients are located. Canoe has had a presence in London for the past two years and it plans to continue hiring staff based there to complement its US-based teams. This news is followed by new client announcement. SwanCap, Munich-based investment boutique, will leverage Canoe to automate the collection and management of documents for its capital calls, distributions, and account statements.

In early April, Canoe announced five senior appointments to roles in data strategy, marketing, finance, information security and enterprise architecture & scalability. Canoe's technology automates manual workflows related to alternative investment document and data management, extraction and delivery.

9 May - GreenHill Investment Reporting, a provider of investment performance reporting services, announced an enhanced solution for registered investment advisors (RIAs).

11 May - Eton Solution expanded on the proposition of its recently launched Administrative Family Office (AFO) for family offices with less than $1 billion in assets (with $25 million in AUM and above). AFO, with implementation period of only 30 days, combines Eton’s integrated AtlasFive technology platform with the company’s professional services, creating a “fully functional virtual family office”. Eton manages the technology and administrative services, while the family retains the flexibility to use their preferred advisory services providers. Families only pay for services on an as-needed basis. See also this press release from 25 May.

20 May - WealthVP, a standout SaaS investment platform, said it achieved 100% quarter-over-quarter revenue growth. The firm aims to revolutionize venture capital by providing personalized fundraising via a matching platform, community networking, and tailored support for founders and investors. Future plans involve expanding into real estate investments for greater diversification.

23 May - Accelex, a SaaS platform for alternative investments, launched an advanced analytics and reporting tool for institutional investors. The platform offers features for portfolio analysis, audit trails, exposure assessment, and historical comparisons. Portfolio analytics is part of Accelex's integrated alternative investment data solution to automate the acquisition, extraction and analysis of data on funds. The analytics dashboards are available via an online portal and data can also be fed directly into any middle- and front-office software solution.

May - PCR Financial Aggregation, portfolio management and reporting software, brought Sonya Dhar as director of client solutions. Her experience includes strategy, data and risk management roles at F2 Strategy, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

Product updates

11 April - Alkymi announced that it introduced a new GPT-powered product: Summarization Pattern, which ‘can instantly summarize any document in over 95 languages’. This follows the introduction of GPT-powered Question Tool a few weeks earlier. The firm has plans to introduce many more features harnessing the power of large language models (LLMs, such as GPT) to help financial services firms process and interact with unstructured data. Alkymi also now offers a European shared cloud deployment to support customers around the world and deliver their GPT-powered features internationally, including in countries where GDPR requires data be hosted in Europe.

12 April - Northern Trust launched a mobile app for Android and iOS for its Front Office Solutions platform serving complex asset owners and other institutional investors. Front Office Solutions is an integrated, cloud-based service investment lifecycle platform that enables investment offices to view and analyze portfolio and investment information across all asset classes in a unified framework.

18 April - Addepar announced a new integration with AltExchange, allowing its users to aggregate alternative investments and send position and transaction data to their Addepar instance via API. Addepar also introduced a visualized portfolio ownership structure and a new Global Security Master Entity Name attribute that enables users to “see total portfolio exposure to a specific company or set of companies”.

19 April - Asset Vantage announced its integration with BILL. The integration automates and streamlines the AP processes and eliminates the need for manual payments, check writing and data entry. Asset Vantage clients can easily transfer their AP data from BILL to Asset Vantage, where the transactional data is automatically categorized into the appropriate general ledger and entity with minimal manual intervention.

25 April - Here are Dynamo Software’s latest innovations in fund accounting for General Partners and liquidity management for Limited Partners.

26 April - Morningstar Wealth, a wealth technology and investment management provider, added a Portfolio Analytics feature to ByAllAccounts, its data aggregation product. The new feature applies analytics to aggregated portfolios through a turnkey integration with Morningstar Licensed Data that appends fund and equity attributes, such as regional breakdowns, asset allocations, equity and fixed-income sector exposure, and equity and fixed-income style boxes.

11 May - Entole announced the release of V2.0 of its Family Command Center platform. This version introduces channel partner account functionality, additional financial integrations to QuickBooks, a data export feature and improved reporting. Entole v1.0 was officially released in June of 2022, targeting early adoption from high-net-worth Individuals and single-family offices.

15 May - Tamarind Learning launched an enhanced dashboard for its family wealth stewardship platform and they have produced a 10 min video summary of the new features. The Tamarind Learning platform is designed to educate wealthy families’ heirs in a safe, secure, remote, and self-paced environment.

15 May - Altoo AG added a private equity reporting module to their platform that consolidates complex wealth. The report includes relevant industry figures like distributions, paid in capital or open commitments, and it is able to calculate cumulative TVPI and IRR performance for any set of your private equity assets. It can filter investments by vintage, sub-asset class or custom tags and compare J-curves of your PE investments.

17 May - Abbove (formerly PaxFamilia) released a mobile web app. Abbove is a Brussels based collaborative wealth planning platform connecting advisors, their clients, wealth data and technology.

23 May - SS&C announced updates across its full line of Advent Solutions, including Advent Portfolio Exchange (APX), Advent Genesis, Advent Managed Services, Geneva, and other related platforms. See the announcement and details on updates here.