Products October 11, 2022

Adviser Product Partnerships

OneAmerica and intellicents collaborate on client offering; AdvisorEngine introduces data visualization dashboards; Savvy Ladies receives grant to develop mobile portal advancing women's financial literacy; and more.

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RBC Wealth Management, Transamerica, FuturePlan Introduce New Pooled Plan Solution

RBC Wealth Management is teaming up with Transamerica and FuturePlan by Ascensus to introduce a pooled plan retirement solution for U.S. business owners called RBC Group Retirement Plan.

Open to both existing and startup 401(k) plans, the RBC GRP will be distributed solely through RBC Wealth Management in the U.S. RBC Wealth Management will also act as the GRP’s 3(38) investment fiduciary. FuturePlan will serve as the third-party administrator and 3(16) plan administrators, while Transamerica will be the plan’s recordkeeper.

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Participating employers will have access to a combined team of plan professionals not otherwise available outside of the pooled arrangement. The RBC GRP also includes the FuturePlan Fiduciary Assistant program, a proprietary 100-point payroll data integrity check designed to prevent most common plan errors flagged in Department of Labor and IRS audits. Fiduciary Assistant works in conjunction with Transamerica’s PayStart-approved payroll vendors.

OneAmerica, intellicents Collaborate on Client Offering

OneAmerica and intellicents have announced a customized offering from intellicents, which brings together two OneAmerica services for select retirement plan sponsors and participants.

The intellicents offering will include bioni(k), an intellicents-branded managed account service that enables participants to receive tailored retirement savings and investment plan advice. The service leverages Morningstar Investment Management LLC’s adviser managed accounts platform and interface.

OneAmerica acts as recordkeeper and integrates the platform into its recordkeeping system, allowing for a seamless experience for intellicents’ clients and participants. The service also allows plan sponsors to delegate fiduciary responsibilities, with intellicents taking responsibility for fund selection and portfolio creation, and Morningstar Investment Management taking responsibility for the participant portfolio alignment process.

In addition to bioni(k), the intellicents offering will include intellicents-branded intelli(k) that will now also be offered through OneConnect, a OneAmerica retirement plan solution. The intelli(k) offering combines the investment fiduciary services offered by the adviser with 3(16) administrative fiduciary services provided by OneAmerica, enabling plan sponsors to offload fiduciary liability while maintaining complete plan design flexibility. OneConnect is available for all plan types, including 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans.

intellicents launched the dual product offering to select clients last month. Both OneConnect and adviser managed accounts are currently available from OneAmerica.

AdvisorEngine Introduces Data Visualization Dashboards

AdvisorEngine has announced new data visualization dashboards that provide insights tailored to specific roles across key wealth management focus areas.

The dashboards leverage the same modern technology architecture and design-thinking approach employed to transform Junxure CRM into AdvisorEngine CRM earlier this year.

Critical business information is presented in modern, real-time visuals, removing the need for static spreadsheets. Curated ‘visualization’ templates form a library, allowing users to adopt the technology quickly. For more control, users can easily reconfigure their dashboard to create their desired experience.

Features include ‘drag-and-drop’ customization, in-line editing, automatic data population, advanced filtering, one-click drill-down to detailed data, and enterprise permissioning to control information access. Department-level features include:

  • CEOs and executive teams can gauge important business drivers such as net new assets, client retention, client segmentation, client demographics and adviser productivity
  • New business development roles can stay focused on growth by visualizing their sales funnel, tracking close rates and gaining insights from ‘won’ and ‘lost’ opportunities
  • Financial advisers can review the status of client requests, see upcoming action items, and gain insights into their new client opportunities
  • Department leaders can run their team meetings based on accurate, real-time dashboards versus manually creating presentation pages using static spreadsheets
  • Operations personnel can see their daily tasks in prioritized order, ensure that client service standards are being met and identify process bottlenecks

Design process and rollout:

Revenue growth, operational excellence and client service are key focus areas for the dashboards.

AdvisorEngine developed these focus areas through a design process that involved interviewing 430 professionals across the full spectrum of wealth management roles—including CEOs, financial advisers, operations leaders and their team members.

Participants shared common pain points with their current solutions: data discrepancies, data integration issues, time-consuming manual analysis, and the high cost of outside consultants to set up and maintain quality reporting. In contrast, AdvisorEngine CRM dashboards allow users to begin seeing insights quickly.

The dashboards are being launched using a staged rollout process. A select group of AdvisorEngine CRM clients have already begun to received access.

The Pacific Financial Group Partners with CapIntel to Empower the Advisor-Client Relationship

The Pacific Financial Group, a wealth management firm focused on self-directed brokerage account management, has announced a partnership with CapIntel, a Toronto-based financial technology company that improves fund analysis, proposal generation, and day-to-day workflow efficiency for financial advisers. CapIntel is a modern, intuitive platform that delivers instant, powerful analytics and easy-to-understand and highly visual reports.

CapIntel seeks to address the needs of financial advisers and asset managers by offering a flexible, customizable solution that prioritizes a personalized client experience. The goal of the partnership is to enhance TPFG’s technology stack and provides the firm with a fully customized performance reporting tool for its suite of model strategies.

TPFG technology affiliate RiskPro continues to provide enterprise-level risk tolerance screening and surveillance for all PFG funds and model portfolios. RiskPro also provides compliance and surveillance capability that enables registered investment advisers and broker-dealer firms to quantify and monitor risk associated with adviser as portfolio manager models and accounts, to create what the firm calls “Perpetual Suitability.”

Savvy Ladies Receives Grant to Develop Mobile Portal Advancing Women’s Financial Literacy

Savvy Ladies, a non-profit organization providing free financial education for women, including a national “Free Financial Helpline,” has announced it has received a grant from The Nasdaq Foundation. The grant will support Savvy Ladies’ expansion of the Free Financial Helpline through the creation of a personalized, digitized mobile portal experience for women to readily access financial education resources. Furthermore, the mobile portal will provide access to volunteer advisers who will help women create roadmaps to achieve financial security and build wealth. 

Savvy Ladies will work with Salesforce Non-Profit and Agile Cloud Consulting to build the mobile portal, which will leverage technology to advance the capacity of the Savvy Ladies Free Financial Helpline resource, allowing for ongoing support and quarterly check-ins with the advisers, strengthening the empowerment and independence of women who seek financial guidance.

FinTron Launches Next Version of its Investing App

FinTron, Inc., a financial technology company promoting financial literacy and freedom for the mobile-first Millennials and Gen Z, has introduced FinTron 2.0, an enhanced version of its education-based, commission-free brokerage application. Highlights of FinTron 2.0 include a new rewards engine to incentivize users to learn personal finance and practice healthy financial habits, an expanded education portal, and greater functionality overall.

FinTron 2.0 Highlights

Investing features:

  • More than 2,000 commission-free, fractional stocks and exchange traded funds, permitting investors to buy into big-name companies such as Amazon and Apple for as little as $5 a share instead of paying full share prices that can reach more than $1,000.
  • Automated tools for deposits, budgeting and repeat investment

Incentive-driven rewards (new with FinTron 2.0):

  • Rewards center to encourage users to set and achieve budgeting and deposit goals
  • Redeem points (e.g., by completing education modules or meeting budgeting and deposit goals) to earn gift cards to popular brands such as Apple, Airbnb and Delta Airlines

Education:

  • FinTronU, a free education portal, offering nearly 1,000 modules on dozens of financial topics such as investing, saving, taxes, retirement and credit cards
  • Simulated trading game for users to learn and practice investing with simulated cash

Philanthropy:

  • FinTron has committed to dedicating 5% of its post-tax profits to create financial literacy programs for high schools, colleges and universities throughout the U.S.
  • The FinTron team, through FinTronU, has voluntarily presented financial literacy and entrepreneurship programs to thousands of U.S. high school and college students across the country.
Products October 11, 2022

New Venture Seeks to Make FinTech Socially Responsible

Financial Finesse Ventures seeks to erase the trend of predatory practices and close the financial literacy gap.

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Financial Finesse, an independent provider of financial wellness coaching as an employer-paid benefit, has announced the launch of Financial Finesse Ventures—a venture arm for socially responsible FinTech.

Financial Finesse seeks to bridge the financial literacy gap by delivering unbiased, life-changing financial coaching to millions of Americans. The goal of Financial Finesse Ventures is to support a new era of FinTech that is strictly aligned with the best interests of consumers, the company said in a press release. The new venture arm, company-backed and led by Liz Davidson, Financial Finesse founder and CEO, will seek investments in purpose-driven companies dedicated to driving positive social impact.

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The explosion in FinTech has led to an escalation in services that place profit above purpose—with a recent surge in companies selling high-interest-rate loans, encouraging irresponsible investing, or connecting investors with overly expensive financial products and services in exchange for high commissions. This trend is not only concerning for consumers who could fall for these predatory practices, but also business leaders who worry about problematic service offerings being embedded into employee-facing platforms.

Financial Finesse Ventures seeks to change the trajectory of the industry, support companies that both consumers and employers can trust, and inspire other firms to begin investing in innovation for good, the release states.

In an interview with PLANADVISER, Davidson says that Financial Finesse Ventures will work directly with employers to reach adults in the U.S.—however, she adds this is a trend that the industry has been moving towards as customer acquisition costs have continued to rise. Establishing relationships directly with plan sponsors, recordkeepers and advisers and being installed in their platforms is easier than reaching consumers at scale.

But with so many retirement firms and different technologies in the market, the challenge has been how to vet them and ensure they can be a trusted partner, Davidson says.

“We know that there is absolutely a need for many of these point solutions,” Davidson says. “But how do we know who’s going to be in business? How do we know that this company is operating in a way that is transparent, is pro-consumer, is socially responsible that our brand is not going to be compromised by partnering with the wrong firm?”

Financial Finesse Ventures reviews a combination of factors when choosing companies, Davidson says. For the social responsibility part, the team is looking at if the firm is not overcharging, providing fee transparency and has smooth internal operations. For the social impact part, she says Financial Finesse Ventures looks at firm’s technologies to determine if they could be transformative to consumers, putting money back in their wallet that they could use to pay down debt, invest or increase their financial security.

“Our business model has always been B2B, [where] the employee pays nothing. We’re not selling any products or services. It’s very mission-based,” Davidson says. “We have a very good sense of what works in this space in terms of having a business model that was set up to be in the employee’s best interest and by extension, the [best interests of the] employer or the recordkeeper.”

Financial Finesse Ventures announced in the release that it has identified a number of early-stage companies with pro-consumer models and will announce its first investment this quarter. Beyond funding, Financial Finesse Ventures will help incubate its portfolio companies, leveraging Financial Finesse’s relationships and expertise.

“While there is increased discussion about social responsibility and some encouraging macro trends in the ESG space, FinTech is significantly lagging in these areas,” Davidson says. “We are at a critical crossroads—what we do now as investors, employers, and consumers has the potential to change the trajectory of the industry. With Americans facing significant financial challenges, there is a lot hanging in the balance. FinTech has the potential to be a powerful solution; we want to do our part to make sure it is.”

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