Vestwell and Bambu Team Up on Participant Advice

Vestwell, a digital recordkeeping platform, and Bambu, a global robo-advisory technology provider, are teaming up to help Vestwell and its provider partners personalize investment strategies for their clients based on actionable retirement goals.

The new relationship played a role in Vestwell’s recently released adviser managed account offering with Franklin Templeton. Together, they are rolling out an offering using the latter’s Goals Optimization Engine.

“As workplace investor expectations evolve, it’s vital to deliver [to] participants the types of personalized solutions they’ve become accustomed to in all other aspects of their lives,” says Ben Thomason, executive vice president of revenue at Vestwell. “Working with Bambu and Franklin Templeton has made it possible to create a seamlessly data-integrated, low-friction, bespoke managed account experience at a reasonable price.”

In addition, Bambu has developed a wealthtech application programming interface (API) to supply investors with information useful in retirement saving. The retirement API has features targeting U.S. retirees’ needs, which considers Social Security benefits investors will receive, tax status and retirement goals. The investing platform starts with the user’s current status in terms of savings amount and lifestyle. Then, the proprietary engine presents the person with an overview of various options, including investment strategies that may be appropriate based on his answers to a targeted risk tolerance questionnaire.

“With the rapidly changing landscape of retirement planning in America, it is important for financial institutions to provide a seamless experience that helps individuals save and plan their future,” says Ned Phillips, Bambu founder and CEO. “Being able to offer API as an option along with the enterprise and white label solutions has been beneficial. It allows clients, who already have technical resources at their disposal, to build a wealth management platform more quickly by using our APIs for end points such as retirement goal calculators and portfolio projections.”

Bambu has a library of more than 70 wealthtech APIs designed to make wealth management easy for companies wishing to create a robo-advisory platform. These can be categorized by financial planning; country and fund data; machine learning; transactions allocations; and performance monitoring. No set up is required.