WealthTech Safari — Week of August 28, 2026

11 minutes ago
6 min read

DBS sees millennial affluent clients nearly triple in Singapore

DBS, Singapore’s largest bank, reported that millennial customers moving into its DBS Treasures affluent tier tripled in the first half of 2026, with overall retail-to-Treasures progression up 180% year-on-year.
The bank is backing that momentum with more than 600 new hires, 18 new wealth centers, and AI tools that have already cut wealth-client onboarding time in half — a marker of how fast digitally led wealth platforms are scaling in Asia.

Knote: Not strictly WealthTech, but tangential evidence of the WealthTech growth we are seeing in the East. And the DBS Treasures platform is probably one of the most digitally advanced of the majors.

Apex and Gemini team up on regulated crypto prediction markets

Apex Fintech Solutions, the clearing and custody engine behind dozens of brokerages, signed a letter of intent making Gemini Titan the exclusive regulated venue for crypto event contracts distributed through Apex’s Futures Commission Merchant.
Coming two weeks after Apex’s Kalshi announcement — and announced before the agreement is final — the deal shows prediction markets hardening into a distribution race, with Apex positioning itself as the pipes for whichever venues win.

Knote: I'm not sure if this is aggressive offense or vigorous defense, but this is the second predictions market announcement out of Apex in two weeks. Also, they are announcing this before the final agreement is in place, which seems somewhat unusual (and a little risky). This suggests to us that timing is of the essence.

Marloo lands in the US gunning for the traditional advisor CRM

Marloo, an AI platform for financial advisers that has onboarded more than 900 firms across eight countries in the past year, launched in the US with SOC 2 Type II certification, US data residency, and zero retention of customer data for AI training.
By automating meeting prep, advice documents, and compliance workflows rather than just recording them, Marloo is attacking the CRM category’s core weakness — advisors maintaining the system instead of the system working for them.

Knote: It seems to us that the only real advantage of the incumbent CRMs is that it is a pain to migrate off of them. That won't last forever, so they need to get a lot more aggressive at defensive building...and fast.

Ezra Group launches a directory of AI agents for advisors

Ezra Group, the wealth management technology consultancy, launched an “AI Agents for Advisors” directory cataloguing 51 advisor-specific agents by category, with pricing detail and an eventual 0–5 “Autonomy Score” for how much human input each agent needs.
As agents proliferate inside advisor platforms, a directory granular enough to cut past marketing language could become the reference layer for firms trying to work out what these tools actually do.

Knote: I have always admired, and continue to admire, Craig's courage. With the sheer number of agents coming online, I think this will be very valuable but not easy...more like Air Traffic Control than anything else. Put me down as a subscriber.

Vanguard to acquire Altruist, pairing its scale with a modern custody platform

Vanguard, one of the world’s largest investment managers, agreed to acquire Altruist, the AI-forward custody and technology platform for independent advisors, with the deal expected to close later this year and Altruist continuing to operate as a standalone business.
Pairing Vanguard’s institutional scale with a modern self-clearing custodian instantly reshapes the custody race — and signals that the advisor infrastructure layer is now a strategic asset worth paying up for.

Knote: We are hearing they paid $4.6B, up from a reported $1.9B valuation in April of last year. That is the power of modern technology for you.

The week in AI: six advisor-tech launches in five days

Caddi launched an AI agent that builds and governs a firm’s other back-office agents — employees demonstrate a task on screen, and the resulting agent runs deterministic code with a replayable record of every execution.
Practifi unveiled Sentir, an AI-native intelligent CRM carrying 16 named agents across tax, planning, and client sentiment, and rebadged its existing configurable CRM as Practifi Naya.
Flanks joined Perplexity’s connector ecosystem, putting regulated portfolio data from more than 700 institutions across 33 countries into natural-language advisor workflows.
Growhill Wealth (formerly GROW Digital Wealth) introduced an agentic AI workforce that monitors portfolios, flags priority issues, and preps research for independent advisors across Asia.
AssetMark released Talk Tracks, which turns portfolio data, market context, and holdings news into client-ready talking points inside its Advisor Portal.
Advisor360° shipped proactive AI intelligence, native Schwab account opening, and Fidelity straight-through trade processing on its Unified Data Fabric.

MMnote: Six AI announcements in five days (worth covering). AI is no longer the differentiator; it is the price of admission. The next fight is proving what all these agents actually do (see Ezra’s new directory above).

Scalable Capital opens its platform to AI assistants

Scalable Capital, the Munich-based digital bank with more than one million clients and €60 billion on platform, launched Agentic Investing, letting clients trade, manage savings plans, and run portfolio analysis through ChatGPT, Claude, and Grok via an MCP server.
It claims to be the first bank in Europe to open its platform to AI assistants — an early look at what brokerage distribution becomes when the client interface belongs to someone else’s AI.

FE fundinfo launches a governed core for fund data

FE fundinfo, the global fund data and technology provider, launched Product Mastering Core, a pre-configured governed data layer spanning more than 600 Openfunds-aligned fields that goes live in days with no implementation project.
With 64% of investment management leaders saying AI will only deliver value once data quality and structure improve, productized data mastering is becoming the on-ramp for everything else in the stack.

Knote: The big win here is probably ease of AI access. AI is not a computational exercise - it is a data exercise.

april puts IRS tax data to work inside advisor platforms

april, the embedded tax platform backed by $80 million from QED Investors, Nyca Partners, and Team8, expanded its Integrated Tax Platform to deliver planning insights built on client-authorized IRS transcript data and its IRS-approved tax engine.
Pulling verified tax history directly into existing advisor workflows moves tax from an annual filing chore to a live planning surface — Roth conversions, equity compensation, and estimated payments included.

Knote: It sounds like Intuit and H&R Block need to get their heads off their pillows.

Nexedge Capital raises $20M to manage a family’s whole balance sheet

Nexedge Capital, the Indian multi-family office founded 18 months ago by 360 ONE Wealth co-founder Anirudha Taparia, raised a $20 million first round co-led by Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Elev8 Venture Partners at a roughly $250 million valuation.
With more than $3 billion in AUM already and plans to push family-office-style service into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities, Nexedge is a bet that India’s wealth boom will be served by technology rather than headcount.

MWnote: India's affluent and mass affluent population is expanding faster than the supply of experienced advisors available to serve it, so a firm that can push family office style services into Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities on a technology platform is addressing demand that traditional relationship coverage cannot realistically reach.

RQD* Clearing secures $74M growth investment led by Bain Capital

RQD* Clearing, the modern clearing and custody provider that has cleared 515 million equity transactions this year — roughly 2.4% of the NMS equities market — landed a $74 million minority investment led by Bain Capital Tech Opportunities, with ABN AMRO Clearing Bank and Nyca Partners participating.
Days after Vanguard–Altruist, the raise confirms that modern clearing rails — digital asset custody and tokenization included — are where infrastructure capital wants to be.

MMnote: This had to have already been in the works, but on top of Altruist<>Vanguard this week, clearing and custody is looking hot. Specifically, how to do so effectively with all asset classes.

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