Business Wire. (2026, September 10). SS&C enhances wealth management offerings with Black Diamond AI. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260910600223/en/ SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc. (Nasdaq: SSNC) unveiled Black Diamond AI, a collection of artificial intelligence enhancements for its Black Diamond Wealth Solutions platform. The offering integrates with SS&C's AI Gateway governance framework and SS&C WorkHQ, an enterprise AI orchestration system. The suite combines in-platform AI assistance, contextual intelligence, natural language data queries, and interconnected AI experiences intended to help wealth advisors and operational teams streamline manual processes and improve decision-making efficiency. Black Diamond Assist provides in-platform agentic AI navigation and workflow access. Black Diamond Insights proactively analyzes data to surface relevant information, and natural language queries enable teams to ask questions about client and business data in plain English. A Model Context Protocol server permits advisors to securely retrieve Black Diamond data through their preferred enterprise AI platforms. Brian Boughner, CEO of Fiduciary Alliance, said that Black Diamond AI's approach to security and compliance made it an easy decision and that its advisors picked it up quickly.

Hamachi.ai secures U.S. patent for privacy-first agentic AI communications in wealth management. (2026, September 10). Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260910780806/en/ Hamachi.ai, a regulatory-first, AI-powered Wealth Intelligence Platform for investment advisors and asset managers, announced it has been awarded U.S. Patent No. 12,641,064. The patent covers agentic artificial intelligence systems and methods for secure, compliant, multi-agent LLM-assisted networked communications. The company was founded in 2025 by fintech veterans from Orion, Redtail, AdvisoryWorld and Advizr, and is based in Encinitas, California. The platform is designed to identify and redact client personally identifiable information and sensitive financial data before it reaches downstream language models, while preserving sufficient context for personalized, compliant communications. Components covered by the patent include ingesting data from email and CRM systems, preserving workflow context, redacting PII before LLM processing, orchestrating specialized AI agents, generating drafts, reviewing outputs for compliance issues, and supporting audit logging. Mike Wilson, CEO and co-founder, said the patent reflects an architecture that is "privacy-first, compliance-aware and purpose-built for the way advisors actually work." Hamachi expects the patent to be the first in a broader portfolio covering privacy-first, compliance-aware agentic AI systems for wealth management and other regulated industries, with additional patent applications pending.

Envestnet announced on September 9 a definitive agreement to acquire Vestmark, a Wakefield, Massachusetts-based provider of portfolio management technology, institutional-grade trading, and outsourced investment management services. Vestmark supports more than $2 trillion in assets across more than five million accounts, while Envestnet serves more than a third of all advisors and approximately $8 trillion in platform assets. Terms were not disclosed, and the deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter pending customary conditions. Vestmark built its business over 25 years serving wirehouses and other firms running institutional-grade trading operations, a client base that complements Envestnet's roots among independent broker-dealers, scaled RIAs, and hybrid firms. Both companies plan to continue investing in their existing product roadmaps, including VestmarkONE, VAST, Envestnet Enterprise, Tamarac, and MoneyGuide, with no requirement for clients of either company to migrate platforms as a result of the transaction. For advisors and platforms, the combination points to one connected ecosystem spanning the wealth management lifecycle. Over time, Vestmark clients gain access to Envestnet's reporting and planning tools, including Tamarac and MoneyGuide, while Envestnet clients gain more modular trading, rebalancing, and tax transition capabilities, along with Vestmark's Pulse AI-powered monitoring tools. Envestnet CEO Chris Todd said the acquisition positions the firm to compete across an expanded addressable market and extend its AI strategy across Vestmark's workflows. Knote: This fills in a weak spot for Envestnet: tax-loss harvesting, high-powered rebalancing (including tax transition), and direct indexing. Look for that feature set to expand across the entire Envestnet ecosystem. Link to Article

Hello FutureProof! FutureProof kicks off in Huntington Beach, California this coming week (September 14-17). I won't be there because nobody wants to see me in short pants, but if you see either of these two out there, say 'hi' and see if you can get them talking about WealthTech. Envestnet to acquire Vestmark, adding institutional-grade trading and tax capabilities Envestnet agreed to acquire Wakefield, Massachusetts-based Vestmark, which supports more than $2 trillion in assets across over five million accounts, in a deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026 on undisclosed terms. The combination pairs Vestmark's wirehouse and institutional trading base with Envestnet's independent broker-dealer, scaled RIA and hybrid footprint, and both roadmaps — VestmarkONE, VAST, Envestnet Enterprise, Tamarac and MoneyGuide — continue with no mandatory migration. Knote: This fills in a weak spot for Envestnet: tax-loss harvesting, high-powered rebalancing (including tax transition), and direct indexing. Look for that feature set to expand across the entire Envestnet ecosystem. Read More → Savvy Wealth raises $100 million Series C to scale its AI-powered advisor platform Savvy Wealth raised a $100 million Series C at a $600 million valuation led by Halo Fund, the investment firm of Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith and Accel general partner Ryan Sweeney, with Thrive Capital, Industry Ventures, Canvas Prime, Index Ventures, Vestigo Ventures, Allianz Life Ventures and Euclidean Capital returning. The tech-enabled national RIA says it is on track for $100 million in annual recurring revenue by year-end, up from $10 million in January 2025, against more than 150 advisors and $8 billion in AUM as of July — so the number that matters is whether assets scale at a much higher rate than advisor count. MMnote: The telltale of whether this investment is worth it will be whether AUM scales at a much higher rate than advisor count. Read More → Rogo raised roughly $30 million from global banks and sets its sights on wealth management Rogo raised approximately $30 million from Barclays, BNP Paribas through Opera Tech Ventures, Citi Ventures, MUFG Innovation Partners, Societe Generale and Sixth Street co-founder Josh Easterly, joining existing backers J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners and Truist Ventures on a cap table of nine global banks holding close to $20 trillion in assets. More than 50,000 professionals across over 350 firms already run Rogo's agents — including its Felix workflow agent — inside their own security perimeters, and with bank wealth desks reportedly testing the platform, the competition is arriving in wealth management from capital markets rather than from the advisor-desktop vendors. MMnote: Rogo has been making headlines for a while and I've been waiting on them to bring their talents to wealth management. If the WSJ rumors are true, welcome! Read More → Luminary raises $22 million Series A to build the data layer for wealth transfer Luminary raised a $22 million Series A led by Ten Coves Capital, with BNY, Fin Capital, Focus Financial Partners, Rockefeller Capital Management's FinTech Innovation Fund, 8VC and several family offices participating, taking total funding to nearly $32 million. The AI-native platform turns estate documents into structured data across more than $500 billion in client assets for advisors, trust companies, law firms and accountants, and the strategic investor list echoes Wealth.com (Schwab), Vanilla (Vanguard, Edward Jones) and Trust & Will (Northwestern Mutual, UBS) — estate data has become infrastructure that distributors want to own a piece of. MMnote: Strategic money is not foreign in estate planning. Wealth.com has Schwab, Vanilla has Vanguard and Edward Jones, and Trust & Will has Northwestern Mutual and UBS. Congrats to all parties! Read More → Aqua launches turnkey alternatives platform backed by $18.8 million New York-based Aqua launched what it calls the industry's first turnkey alternative investments platform, funded by $18.8 million across a $3.8 million seed from Google's AI Fund and Y Combinator and a $15 million Series A led by Arthur Ventures with Alumni Ventures participating. Co-founder and CEO Rohan Marwaha argues most firms still meet client demand for alternatives with spreadsheets and fragmented manual process; consolidating fund creation, lifecycle management, document intelligence and investor servicing moves the alternatives question from access to operations, and turns it into a build-or-buy decision. MWnote: If you already have a marketplace relationship, the question this raises is not whether to switch but whether the operations layer sitting on top of it is something you should be building yourself. Read More → FMG Suite introduces FMG Connect to unify advisor tools, data and workflows FMG Suite introduced FMG Connect, an integration and orchestration layer spanning advisor productivity, prospecting, relationship intelligence and client communication for a base of more than 80,000 financial professionals reaching over 45 million U.S. investors, with APIs available now and Model Context Protocol support planned. Seven launch partners are already in early access — Zocks, Jump, Aidentified, WealthFeed, Tax Status, Asset-Map and GReminders — and the Asset-Map and Tax Status connections are the ones to watch, since held-away asset visibility and tax alerts turn a marketing platform into a prospecting engine with a reason to call. Knote: Asset-Map and Tax Status are two interesting integrations in particular. That brings in the full asset picture (including held-away) and the tax picture (including alert opportunities). Read More → Ebix launches Ebix Meridian, a new operating platform for U.S. financial advisory firms Ebix made Ebix Meridian generally available in the United States at $149 per month, built on Ebix MoneyWare, which serves more than 300 financial institutions across 17 countries. It folds client management, planning, private markets and insurance advisory onto a single client record with a shared document vault and audit trail, white-labeled client and investor portals at no extra cost, and a Meridian AI layer covering conversational intake, portfolio analysis, document intelligence and predictive scoring under SOC 2 Type II. There is no mention of custodial links or trading and rebalancing, which constrains the operating-system claim — but at that price point, emerging firms assembling a stack from scratch will take the meeting. Knote: No mention of the custodial links or trading/rebalancing, but for an emerging advisor the prospects of a pre-packaged advisorOS that turns on and just plain works can be compelling. Read More → Advisor headcount set to grow as AI expands capacity Cerulli Associates, in partnership with Vista Equity Partners, found wealth firms plan to add staff over the next two years — junior advisors at 73%, client service associates at 67% and senior advisors at 56% — while 64% report AI has already reduced manual and administrative work and 46% cite better client communication. AI-specific spending is projected to rise from 8% to 15% of technology budgets in 2026. Half of firms still sit in the Exploring tier and only 12% reach Leading, and Cerulli's five differentiators — operating framework, defined governance, named ownership, formal training and measurement of results — matter more than firm size or technology spend. Read More → State of AI in UK wealth and asset management KPMG surveyed senior leaders at UK asset managers, wealth managers and specialist alternatives firms running £30 billion to more than £6 trillion, and found 83% deploying AI mainly for research summarization and legal contract review, 94% naming operational efficiency as the primary investment driver and 62% expecting budget increases over the next 12 to 24 months, with wealth firms most aggressive at 75% expecting AI budgets up 10-25% or more. The gap is governance rather than ambition: 56% have a firmwide AI strategy but only 11% have embedded AI operating models, 72% name model hallucination as the top risk limiting adoption, 83% cite data readiness as the critical lesson, 75% point to skills shortages, and just 11% believe they are aligned with emerging AI regulation. Knote: I am becoming a lot less interested in what AI can do and much more interested in how it is deployed and governed, especially after reading that only 11% of firms think they are in compliance with new AI regulation. Read More → FinTurk adds PortfolioSolver and Vigil to its advisor-built CRM FinTurk, an AI-first CRM built for financial advisors, launched PortfolioSolver, which turns plain-language investment constraints into structured rules that feed a deterministic optimizer, and Vigil, which monitors connections, portfolios, accounts, tasks and inboxes for pending work. By keeping the language layer in AI and the trade math deterministic, FinTurk is pulling rebalancing and oversight functions advisors normally buy separately into the CRM itself, targeting capacity per advisor rather than headcount. Knote: I love seeing companies using AI where they can but deterministic algorithms where it counts. This is an elegant blending of the two. Read More → NextWealth benchmarks put the average adviser at 88 clients in UK NextWealth’s Financial Advice Business Benchmarks research found advisers manage an average of 88 clients, with a new client taking around 32 hours of staff time to onboard and an existing client 62 hours of ongoing support each year. Only 15 of those 62 hours sit with the adviser, placing the real capacity constraint in the surrounding paraplanning, research and compliance work, which is exactly where AI is being applied as one firm discusses moving from 150 clients per adviser to 200. Knote: We have run into advisors in the UK who are servicing 300 clients per advisor, but these numbers seem right. Technology to the rescue. Read More → Conquest Planning drops “Planning” and repositions around its SAM engine Conquest Planning shortened its name to Conquest and unveiled a refreshed identity, repositioning around its Strategic Advice Manager engine, which pairs a calculation engine with a proprietary AI expert system that ranks strategies and models life events. The rename moves a planning software vendor into the broader advice-engine category, and the headless architecture, with a deterministic algorithm and checkable audit trail behind every recommendation, is the pitch to compliance teams for white-label distribution across wealth segments. Knote: WealthTech often reminds me of Italy in the late Middle Ages with everyone wanting to take over everything adjacent to them. Read More → AI ATC - A quick summary of interesting AI launches for those with AI fatigue FINTRX Launches New AI Agent Named "Fin" That Monitors Their Advisor Database Prompts Actions https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/fintrx-launches-new-ai-agent-named-fin-that-monitors-and-integrates-private-wealth-data-and-intell WealthStream Adds OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 to Practice, Launching at Future Proof https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/wealthstream-adds-openai-s-gpt-live-1-to-practice-launching-at-future-proof Feel free to reach out if you want to discuss any of the above or if you just want to chat about WealthTech. We love talking WealthTech! Subscribe and receive these insights directly: wealthtechstrategy.com

FinTurk launches PortfolioSolver™ and Vigil to expand advisor automation. (2026, September 10). Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260910668130/en/FinTurk-Launches-PortfolioSolver-and-Vigil-to-Expand-Advisor-Automation FinTurk, an AI-first CRM built specifically for financial advisors, launched PortfolioSolver and Vigil, two capabilities aimed at helping RIAs manage portfolios and track pending work. PortfolioSolver lets advisors enter client-specific investment constraints in their own words, including realized-gain limits, cash requirements, target allocations and securities that should not be sold. FinTurk translates those instructions into structured rules for advisor approval before a deterministic optimizer builds a proposed set of trades, each with an explanation of its rationale. Vigil continuously monitors connections, portfolios, accounts, tasks and inboxes, flagging failed data syncs, cash thresholds, stalled workflows, upcoming deadlines and client emails requiring a response. Founder and chief executive officer Mitchell Bratina, CFA, who previously worked as an advisor, said the firm is deploying AI solutions that can take appropriate action rather than just advise. The launch follows FinTurk's advisor-built CRM, introduced in May with $8 billion RIA Chicago Partners, and the FormFiller and CashSweep automation tools introduced in July. Bratina said bringing the capabilities directly into the CRM is intended to reduce reliance on costly separate technologies and create capacity to serve more clients without adding headcount. Knote: I love seeing companies using AI where they can but deterministic algorithms where it counts. This is an elegant blending of the two.

Best, J. (2026, September 10). How many clients could an adviser advise, if the adviser didn't do everything? NextWealth. https://nextwealth.co.uk/how-many-clients-could-an-adviser-advise-if-the-adviser-didnt-do-everything/ NextWealth's new Financial Advice Business Benchmarks research found that the average number of clients managed by an adviser is 88. A typical new client takes around 32 hours of staff time to onboard, and an existing client takes an average of 62 hours of ongoing support each year. Only 15 of those 62 hours sit with the adviser, with the rest spread across paraplanners, research, client services, compliance and other roles. One firm running 150 clients per adviser, with individual clients averaging around £400,000 of assets under advice, is now discussing 200 using AI tools. Research from the United States found that adviser wellbeing peaks at around 50 clients for unsupported solo advisers and just under 100 for supported solo advisers. Seven in ten FABB respondents expect adviser headcount to increase over the next year, and 47% expect more paraplanners to join the team. Julie Best, insight director at NextWealth, said advice firms are redesigning the work rather than replacing people, using AI to reduce meeting admin, summaries and follow-up work. Knote: We have run into advisors in the UK who are servicing 300 clients per advisor, but these numbers seem right. Technology to the rescue.

Conquest. (2026, September 9). Conquest repositions as a verifiable AI financial advice engine and unveils refreshed brand to reflect evolution. https://conquestplanning.com/media/conquest-repositions-verifiable-ai-financial-advice-engine-refreshed-brand Conquest unveiled a refreshed brand and visual identity and shortened its name from Conquest Planning to Conquest, repositioning around the broader role its engine plays beyond traditional financial planning software. The new visual identity features a mark inspired by a sonic boom, signaling forward motion and transformation, and the company will showcase it at the Future Proof Festival (September 14-17). The Strategic Advice Manager (SAM) engine has served as the intelligent core of Conquest's offerings since the company's 2018 founding and has evolved to include agentic capabilities announced earlier in 2026. SAM comprises a calculation engine and a proprietary AI expert system that evaluates and ranks financial strategies, model life events, and respond to client questions in significantly less time than traditional financial plan development. The same headless engine powers AI-enabled advisor, client, and white-label experiences across any wealth segment, channel, and surface. Every SAM recommendation includes a deterministic algorithm and an audit trail checkable at each step, helping advisors and clients understand recommendations while giving compliance teams visibility into how advice is generated. Conquest states that it supports more than 75% of financial advisors across Canada, and its strategic investors include Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, Canapi Ventures, Citi Ventures, BDC Capital, TIAA Ventures, USAA, BNY, Portage, and Royal Bank of Canada. Knote: WealthTech often reminds me of Italy in the late Middle Ages with everyone wanting to take over everything adjacent to them.

FINTRX. (2026, September 10). FINTRX launches new AI agent named "Fin" that monitors and integrates private wealth data and intelligence into email, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and calendars. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fintrx-launches-new-ai-agent-named-fin-that-monitors-and-integrates-private-wealth-data-and-intelligence-into-email-slack-microsoft-teams-and-calendars-302875328.html FINTRX, a mapping engine of wealth management advisors and their firms geared towards outbound marketing, introduced an AI agent called Fin on September 10, 2026. Fin monitors the private wealth channel continuously and pushes alerts on advisor moves, new allocations and firm-level changes, along with prospect lists, reports and meeting preparation. The rollout covers more than 850,000 financial firms and contacts, including 45,000 RIA and broker-dealer firms, 790,000 registered reps, over 4,600 family offices, and 1,900 banks and trust institutions. FINTRX said Fin extends its Model Context Protocol integrations with Claude, ChatGPT and Perplexity by pushing intelligence proactively rather than answering on request. Every FINTRX client receives standard access to Fin at no additional cost, and premium access adding two-way conversations is free for the first 45 days. Fin runs on the same SOC 2 Type II and ISO/IEC 42001-certified foundation as the core platform, which also integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, Intapp DealCloud and Snowflake.

WealthStream adds OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 to Practice, launching at Future Proof. (2026, September 11). Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260911918036/en/WealthStream-Adds-OpenAIs-GPT-Live-1-to-Practice-Launching-at-Future-Proof WealthStream announced the addition of OpenAI's GPT-Live-1 to Practice, its offering built to help financial advisors prepare for client conversations. Practice launches at WealthStream's Booth during the Future Proof Festival, held September 14 to 17 in Huntington Beach, California. Practice places WealthStream's advice intelligence in an interactive environment where advisors rehearse before they meet with clients. The GPT-Live-1 integration adds natural voice conversation to that experience, letting advisors practice the exchange itself rather than review talking points. Jeff Shortis, Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder of WealthStream, said preparation "isn't just knowing what you want to say, it's being ready for what the client says next." The company positions Practice around the step between developing a recommendation and delivering it, including complex explanations, client uncertainty, and sensitive financial discussions. WealthStream describes itself as the leader in advice intelligence for the wealth management industry, with Practice bringing AI-powered conversation rehearsal to advisor preparation.

Rogo, an artificial intelligence company built for finance professionals, announced on September 10 that Barclays, BNP Paribas through Opera Tech Ventures, Citi Ventures, MUFG Innovation Partners, Societe Generale and Sixth Street co-founder Josh Easterly have taken strategic stakes in the business. They join existing strategic investors including J.P. Morgan Growth Equity Partners and Truist Ventures, putting nine global banks with close to $20 trillion in combined assets on Rogo's cap table. Separately, The Wall Street Journal reported that the recently signed round totals roughly $30 million. Rogo sells AI agents that do the research and analysis work of junior finance staff inside a firm's own security perimeter, covering company research, document review and meeting preparation. Its Felix agent runs multi step workflows across email, messaging, spreadsheets and data terminals. The platform is deployed to more than 50,000 professionals at over 350 firms, and the new capital will fund expansion across EMEA and APAC. The Journal reported that JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America are among the banks already using it. The Journal also reported that wealth management is among Rogo's next frontiers, with advisers at big banks already using the platform. Rogo has not announced a wealth specific product, and its own materials still speak to investment banking, private equity and investment research. If the reported path holds, advisors would gain research tooling built to institutional security standards, and wealthtech incumbents would face a well funded competitor arriving from the capital markets side rather than from the advisor desktop. MMnote: Rogo has been making headlines for a while and I've been waiting on them to bring their talents to wealth management. If the WSJ rumors are true, welcome! https://rogo.com/news/strategic-investors https://www.wsj.com/finance/banking/wall-streets-favorite-ai-startup-sets-its-sights-on-wealth-management-61b8b5d1

Advisor headcount set to grow as AI expands capacity. (2026, September 9). Cerulli Associates. https://www.cerulli.com/press-releases/advisor-headcount-set-to-grow-as-ai-expands-capacity Cerulli Associates, in partnership with Vista Equity Partners, released State of Wealth Management AI Adoption, a benchmark study finding that wealth management firms are deploying artificial intelligence to expand advisor capacity rather than reduce staffing levels. Over the next two years, registered investment advisors are most likely to add junior advisors (73%), client service associates (67%), and senior advisors (56%). Nearly two-thirds of firms (64%) report that AI has reduced manual and administrative work, and 46% cite improved quality of client communication. Cerulli identifies operating framework, defined governance, named ownership, formal training, and measurement of results, as a clearer driver of AI success than firm size or technology spending. Measured on the Vista AI Maturity Score across governance, operational efficiency, and innovation, half of surveyed firms remain in the lowest Exploring tier, 38% are Scaling, and 12% have reached the Leading tier. AI-specific spend is projected to roughly double as a share of technology budgets in 2026, rising from 8% to 15%, concentrated in enterprise AI model licenses, purpose-built advisor and operational workflow tools, and formalized training. Asher Cheses, Senior Director of Wealth Management at Cerulli, states that the conversation around AI in wealth management is shifting from headcount reduction to productivity, while Vista's Dan Parant notes that firms getting it right treat AI as a growth engine rather than a cost-cutting tool.

Luminary announced on September 10 a $22 million Series A led by Ten Coves Capital, bringing total funding to nearly $32 million. BNY, Fin Capital, Focus Financial Partners, Rockefeller Capital Management's FinTech Innovation Fund, and several family offices participated, alongside 8VC, which led the company's $9.5 million seed round. The company did not disclose a valuation. Luminary is an AI-native platform that turns estate documents into structured data, giving wealth advisors, trust companies, law firms, and accounting firms a single source of truth for wealth transfer planning and administration. The platform supports tax-efficient strategy, trust structuring, and ongoing client guidance, and it now covers more than $500 billion in client assets. Customers include Caprock, IEQ Capital, Wealth Enhancement Group, AM Law 100 practices, and trust companies. David Barnard is founder and chief executive. Proceeds will fund expanded AI capabilities, additional integrations, administration workflow development, and commercial team growth. The timing follows the demographics. Generation X, not the millennials, will inherit the most wealth over the next ten years, and the first year millennials inherit more is 2037. Advisors serving that transfer need estate data they can query rather than PDFs they have to read, and the platform that owns the document layer sits close to the assets when they move. MMnote: Strategic money is not foreign in estate planning. Wealth.com has Schwab, Vanilla has Vanguard and Edward Jones, and Trust & Will has Northwestern Mutual and UBS. Congrats to all parties! Link to Press Release