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

Aqua, a New York based alternatives infrastructure company, announced on September 9 the launch of what it calls the industry's first turnkey alternative investments platform, along with $18.8 million in total funding. The company raised a $3.8 million seed round backed by Google's AI Fund and Y Combinator, followed by a $15 million Series A led by Arthur Ventures with participation from Alumni Ventures. The platform is aimed at wealth managers, registered investment advisors, banks, trust companies and fund sponsors, and brings fund creation, operational workflows, investment lifecycle management, marketplace access, document intelligence and investor servicing into a single environment. Co-founder and chief executive Rohan Marwaha said most firms still meet client demand for alternatives with spreadsheets and fragmented manual processes. Aqua plans to use the money to expand its engineering and partnership teams and to deepen integrations with custodians and fund sponsors. Head of growth David Coyle argued that a marketplace is not the same thing as an alternatives strategy, a distinction that speaks to where the category is heading. The first wave of growth in alternatives was about widening access. The harder problem for advisory firms now is running the programs, where transparency, liquidity, research, education and onboarding friction still slow adoption. Firms weighing an alternatives push will have to decide whether to buy that plumbing or keep assembling it themselves. 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.

FMG Suite. (2026, September 9). FMG Suite introduces FMG Connect to unify advisor tools, data, and workflows. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fmg-suite-introduces-fmg-connect-to-unify-advisor-tools-data-and-workflows-302873540.html FMG Suite introduced FMG Connect, an integration and orchestration layer that brings advisor tools, data, and workflows together in one connected system. FMG Connect targets four areas: advisor productivity, prospecting, relationship intelligence, and communication and engagement. The layer integrates with AI meeting tools and notetakers to trigger follow-up, routes lead enrichment data into personalized outreach, and syncs contact records and client context from financial planning tools. FMG Connect exposes the FMG platform to third-party tools and data sources through FMG's API library, with support for standards including Model Context Protocol slated for a future release. The launch partners are Zocks, Jump, Aidentified, Wealthfeed, Tax Status, Asset-Map, and GReminders, each with early access and building toward live connections. APIs are available now, launch partners received early access last month, and the first partner-powered features are expected to reach shared customers over the coming months. FMG said it serves more than 80,000 financial professionals reaching over 45 million U.S. investors, and cited Michelle Feinstein, Chief Product and Strategy Officer, and Dave Christensen, Chief Executive Officer, on the launch. 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).

KPMG. (2026, July). State of AI in UK Wealth & Asset Management: Survey results. https://assets.kpmg.com/content/dam/kpmgsites/uk/pdf/2026/09/state-of-ai-in-uk-wealth-asset-management.pdf KPMG interviewed senior leaders at UK asset managers, wealth managers, and specialist alternative investment firms with assets under management ranging from £30 billion to more than £6 trillion. Research summarization and legal contract review are the most widely deployed AI use cases, each used by 83% of firms. 56% of firms have a firmwide AI strategy, but only 11% have embedded AI operating models. 94% of respondents cite operational efficiency as the primary objective for AI investment, and 62% expect AI budgets to grow over the next 12 to 24 months. Model hallucinations rank as the top AI risk limiting adoption at 72%, and only 11% of firms believe they are fully aligned with emerging AI regulation. 83% cite data readiness issues as the key lesson learned from AI adoption, and 75% cite skills shortages and a lack of relevant expertise as the key barrier. Wealth firms show the strongest investment momentum of any segment, with 75% expecting AI budgets to rise 10 to 25% or more, and one in three see hyper-personalized advice as among the most transformative future AI capabilities. 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.

Savvy Wealth announced on September 9 a $100 million Series C round at a $600 million valuation. The round was led by Halo Fund, the investment firm of Qualtrics founder Ryan Smith and Accel general partner Ryan Sweeney, with existing investors including Thrive Capital, Industry Ventures, Canvas Prime, Index Ventures, Vestigo Ventures, Allianz Life Ventures, and Euclidean Capital participating. The company says it is on track to reach $100 million in annual recurring revenue by year-end 2026, up from $10 million in January 2025. Founded by chief executive Ritik Malhotra, whose prior startups were acquired by Box and Brex, Savvy operates a tech-enabled national RIA that consolidates compliance, operations, investments, billing, marketing, and technology into a single platform, replacing the 23 or more vendors a typical firm strings together. Its AI layer, Savvy Intelligence, is built to cut administrative work, and the company says advisors on the platform save roughly 19 hours per week while retaining ownership of their books and client relationships. As of July 2026 Savvy supported more than 150 advisors and $8 billion in assets under management. Proceeds will fund further development of Savvy Intelligence, new products and services for advisors, and expansion of the advisor network. For the industry, the raise underscores how much capital is chasing the independent advisor channel, where tech-forward national platforms are competing to recruit breakaway advisors with integrated software and better economics. MMnote: The telltale of whether this investment is worth it will be whether AUM scales at a much higher rate than advisor count Link to Press Release

Ebix, Inc. (2026, September 8). Ebix launches Ebix Meridian, a new operating platform for U.S. financial advisory firms. PR Newswire. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/ebix-launches-ebix-meridian-a-new-operating-platform-for-us-financial-advisory-firms-302866153.html Ebix launched Ebix Meridian, a new operating platform for independent U.S. advisory firms, now generally available in the United States at pricing starting at $149 per month. Meridian is built on the foundation of Ebix MoneyWare, a wealth and asset management platform used by over 300 financial institutions across 17 countries. The platform consolidates client management, financial planning, private markets, and insurance advisory into a single environment built on one client record, a single document vault, and a unified audit trail. White-labeled client and investor portals are included at no extra cost. Private markets capabilities cover the full lifecycle, from offering management through capital calls and distributions. The financial advisory component generates a weighted Retirement Readiness Score for households, provides cash-flow projections with Monte Carlo simulation options, and supports intake, needs analysis, and multi-carrier life and annuity workflows. Meridian AI embeds conversational client intake, portfolio analysis, document intelligence, and predictive scoring into advisor workflows, and the company states that client data is never used to train models and is never shared externally while the platform maintains SOC 2 Type II certification. 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.

GCash parent Mynt scales GStocks into the Philippines’ largest online retail stock platform Mynt, parent of Philippine super app GCash, said GStocks PH now serves over 2 million Filipinos and accounts for more than 50% of all online retail stock accounts at the Philippine Stock Exchange. With 3.22 million of the country’s 3.61 million retail stock accounts already held online, the payments super app rather than the brokerage is becoming the default on-ramp to Philippine equity investing. Knote: Half my family is Filipino and I can assure you that they know how to save money. And 2 million users is off-the-charts given that only about 2% of the population invests in the stock market (vs 62% in the US). Read More → Hightower picks Dispatch to run onboarding for its Signature Wealth channel Hightower Advisors, a Chicago-based wealth manager with more than 800 advisors, selected fintech Dispatch to handle advisor transitions, client account opening and cross-platform data syncing for Hightower Signature Wealth. Placing Dispatch’s data layer between custodians such as Schwab and Fidelity and Hightower’s advisory systems makes onboarding infrastructure a growth dependency for a channel that has reached $35 billion in AUM in barely a year. Read More → Ajaib raises $270 million from SBI Holdings in Indonesia’s largest tech round since 2022 Ajaib, a Jakarta-based online stock trading platform serving more than seven million users, raised $270 million from Tokyo-listed SBI Holdings, taking total funding past $500 million since its founding. SBI’s 20% stake implies a valuation near $1.35 billion and signals that mobile-first brokerages with large, young installed bases remain strategic targets as tokenization pulls incumbents toward digital-asset infrastructure. Read More → Archive Intel and Zocks connect AI meeting records to compliance review Archive Intel, an AI-powered communications compliance platform, integrated with privacy-first AI platform Zocks so transcripts and notes flow automatically into contextual review and audit-ready retention for $12 per user per month. With SEC and FINRA treating AI notetaker output as electronic client communications subject to five-year retention, supervision is becoming a required companion product to every advisor AI assistant. Knote: One step closer to the dream of fully automated direct surveillance that can be outsourced to 3rd party compliance consultants. Read More → Younger advisors run more of their book through model portfolios Fuse Research Network found that 47% of surveyed advisor accounts are managed through model portfolios, rising to 56% among advisors under 45 and falling to 40% among advisors 60 and older. The age gradient turns model placement into a forward-looking distribution strategy for asset managers, since the advisors gaining share of industry assets are already building on models. Knote: The UK is behind the US in this, but heading in the same direction. Read More → Morningstar’s retirement advisory business drops ByAllAccounts for Plaid Morningstar Investment Management will move account aggregation for its retirement advisory clients, covering $19.4 billion in managed account assets, from its own ByAllAccounts unit to Plaid next month. Morningstar says the switch is limited to this segment and unrelated to ByAllAccounts ownership talks, though Fuse Research has framed it as a possible proof point ahead of a wider transition. Knote: I wish the US would adopt an open banking standard like the UK has except extend it to cover investment accounts. It would make holistic advice a lot easier (and more accurate). Read More → Orion adds BlackRock, Fidelity and Vanguard to Tailored Allocation Portfolios Orion added model portfolios from BlackRock, Fidelity Investments and Vanguard to its Tailored Allocation Portfolios, bringing the program to eight strategists since its October 2025 launch. Pairing third-party models with Custom Indexing, now past $17.1 billion in assets, lets advisors migrate concentrated and legacy positions gradually and moves the differentiation from allocation to tax management. Knote: UK friends, please take notice. It should not take 30 days to rebalance your customized model portfolios. Read More → Aquiline to acquire control of Flourish from MassMutual Aquiline Capital Partners agreed to acquire a controlling interest in Flourish, the RIA-focused cash and lending platform working with more than 1,300 firms representing over $2.6 trillion in assets, with MassMutual retaining a significant stake. The deal maps to the Family Office as-a-Service theme, in which owning the banking layer of the client relationship becomes asset defense for RIAs competing with banks and wirehouses. MWnote: MassMutual selling control while staying a shareholder, partner, and client is about as close to the ideal corporate venture outcome as one can get. More insurers sitting on WealthTech assets should be studying the structure. Read More → Envestnet more than doubles its technology investment in Tamarac Envestnet is raising technology investment in Tamarac, its RIA platform, by 2.5x through a $35 million surge investment, and introduced Report Studio alongside an AI-enabled version now open for beta signup. The surge accelerates a five-year, $1 billion research and development commitment and aims it at reporting and planning integration, where Envestnet estimates report automation could return roughly 1,077 hours a year across a median book. Knote: Looks like Tamarac is going on the offensive after years of fighting something of a rear-guard action. It's the sort of thing I love to see. Read More → Norwegian investor reportedly seeking majority stake in Hungarian fintech Dorsum Portfolio.hu reported that a Norwegian private equity investor, identified by industry sources as Hawk Infinity, agreed to acquire a majority stake in Budapest-based wealth software firm Dorsum at a value of HUF15-18bn (€38mn-45mn). At roughly 8-9 times EBITDA on 2025 revenue of HUF9.2bn, the reported terms would price a regional leader in securities and wealth-management software that has shifted from custom development toward scalable products. Knote: This has not been confirmed so we are just passing it along. If true, it would be a nice Services-to-Software success story. Read More → AI ATC: A quick summary of AI feature rollouts WealthAi launches WealthAi for Advisors as advice firms enter next phase of AI adoption (https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/wealthai-launches-wealthai-for-advisors-as-advice-firms-enter-next-phase-of-ai-adoption) FE fundinfo extends Nexus for Financial Advisers into face-to-face client meetings with new mobile app (https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/fe-fundinfo-extends-nexus-for-financial-advisers-into-face-to-face-client-meetings-with-new-mobile-a) Altruist Launches AI Financial Planning Agent (https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/altruist-launches-ai-financial-planning-agent) 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

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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/dbs-records-near-threefold-growth-in-millennial-affluent-clients-in-singapore 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/apex-partners-with-gemini-on-crypto-prediction-markets 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/marloo-enters-us-market-with-ai-platform-designed-to-replace-traditional-financial-advice-workflows 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/what-does-this-agent-actually-do 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/e4175899 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). Read More → Caddi | Practifi | Flanks | Growhill | AssetMark | Advisor360° 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/scalable-capital-becomes-first-bank-in-europe-to-open-platform-to-ai-assistants-via-agentic-investin 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/fe-fundinfo-launches-product-mastering-core-fund-data-platform 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/april-expands-integrated-tax-platform-with-precise-tax-planning-insights-powered-by-irs-tax-data 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/37776c39 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. Read More → https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/rqd-clearing-secures-74-million-growth-investment-led-by-bain-capital 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

WealthTech Strategy opens a free job exchange WealthTech Strategy launched the WealthTech Job Exchange, a free listing board where people looking for their next challenge submit a casual profile that the team drafts, and where anything a candidate wants kept quiet can simply read “Upon Request.” Trading on network rather than fees, and built to accommodate confidential searches, it targets the part of WealthTech hiring that never reaches a job board: senior operators who cannot be seen looking. Read the full post MoneyLion veterans raise $10 million for a wealth data ontology Astraeus, a New York platform founded by former MoneyLion global CTO Phill Rosen and former MoneyLion wealth head Jon Stevenson, went live on August 6 with more than $10 million from Fintech Collective, F-Prime, Walkabout Ventures and Plug and Play Ventures. The pitch is a semantic layer unifying clients, advisors, accounts, products, fees and regulatory requirements without a rip-and-replace, sold to advisory firms, wealthtech platforms and private equity owners rather than to individual advisors. Knote: I'm not seeing anything new here at first glance, but I'm looking forward to digging in. F-Prime does not back things lightly. Read the full post nCino opens its mortgage suite to AI agents over MCP nCino, the cloud banking and lending platform, launched Mortgage MCP, letting lenders connect Model Context Protocol–compatible AI agents to the nCino Mortgage Suite through pre-built Admin MCP and Loan Officer MCP tools. Every action runs inside nCino’s existing permissioning and audit logging, with timestamped records and configurable human confirmation on higher-impact steps — the part that decides whether agentic lending clears a risk committee. Knote: There is a lot of money yet to be made in lending infrastructure and it is a natural place for well governed AI, particularly at community banks and CUs. Read the full post eToro buys TradeZero for up to $231 million to crack US active trading eToro, the global social investing platform, agreed to acquire TradeZero, a US brokerage built for active and day traders with roughly $80 million of trailing revenue at an 81% gross margin, in a cash-and-stock deal worth up to $231 million. TradeZero’s broker-dealer subsidiaries and proprietary short-locator technology hand eToro US infrastructure it has been renting, with management guiding to first-year accretion on an expected close in the first half of 2027. Knote: With Robinhood expanding crypto trading into the UK, it only seems fair that eToro expands into the US. The Company says they expect it to be accretive in year 1, which makes sense to us since we believe TradeZero is profitable and most of the deal is cash. And eToro has arguably way too much cash on the balance sheet (about $1.2B of its $2.4B market cap last we looked). Read the full post Schwab capex jumps on a $633 million software license The Charles Schwab Corporation reported second-quarter capital expenditures of $792 million against $136 million a year earlier, driven primarily by a $633 million multi-year software license booked with a matching liability in long-term debt. Full-year capex now runs above the guided 3% to 5% of net revenues, and the filing names artificial intelligence, digital assets and private company securities as competitive trends alongside the phased Schwab Crypto rollout and the closed Forge Global deal. Knote: We don't have any details on the mystery vendor behind this large tech contract yet, but at $633M, I would not be surprised it rhymed with Planthropic. Read the full post eToro says it rewrote its entire app with AI and wired in trading agents eToro posted second-quarter net contribution up 9% to $229 million and funded accounts up 18% to 4.28 million, and told analysts it rebuilt its app from scratch using AI, replacing what it claims was more than 500 person-years of prior development. Official Grok and Claude connectors now let users authorize AI agents to trade autonomously under read-only or portfolio-scoped permissions, moving agentic investing out of the demo and into production plumbing. Knote: The most interesting data point for me is that they say they re-wrote their entire code base with AI. So AI has replaced what they claim was 500 person-years of work in (presumably) something far less than 500 person-years. Those are some fancy numbers. Read the full post Vanguard opens its models to advisor customization at no extra fee Vanguard launched custom model portfolios letting advisors personalize its Strategic Active/Passive and Fixed-Income models, delivered through Vestmark under SS&C Black Diamond or Orion’s Tailored Allocation Portfolios, with no additional charge for customization. Custom model assets reached $258 billion by the first quarter, up 40% year over year, and a Morningstar survey found 47% of advisors cite insufficient customization as their reason for not using models at all. Knote: Custom models are a huge pain point, especially in the UK. The advisor user experience is critical, though. Key points to evaluate are (1) the amount of work and thought required on the part of the advisor during the customization process and (2) how automated is the rebalancing? Read the full post Edward Jones technology spend climbs 29% as advisory assets surge The Jones Financial Companies reported communications and data processing expense up 29% to $356 million in the second quarter and up 24% to $673 million in the first half, attributed to continued investment in new tools and technology. Advisory program assets under care rose 29% to $1,198 billion while branches fell 3% and home office associates fell 7%, a mix showing the technology bill buying scale rather than headcount. Read the full post Centricity raises $20 million seed led by Lightspeed at a $125 million valuation Centricity, an India-based wealth management technology firm founded in 2022, raised $20 million led by Lightspeed at a $125 million valuation, joined by the Burman, MS Dhoni, NB Ventures and MMG Group family offices. Its Invictus and OneDigital platforms already reach more than 4,500 distributors across 26 cities, and a plan to double the technology team from 75 to over 150 specialists marks distributor-facing infrastructure as the contested layer in India. Knote: We continue to believe that D2C advice and investing market in India is one of the hottest WealthTech opportunities globally. Read the full post LLR maps four forces reshaping wealth and asset management LLR Partners identified AI-enabled advice, broader access to alternatives, mass personalization and an expanded advisor value proposition as the four trends reshaping the market, citing EY-Parthenon research that 95% of asset and wealth managers already run at least three AI use cases. The supporting numbers carry the argument: BNY projects private-wealth alternatives assets tripling to roughly $12 trillion over the decade, and Cerulli expects US direct indexing to pass $800 billion this year. Knote: Solid themes from people who know their stuff. I would add AI governance/data to the AI theme as I see that as a big topic for 2027 and 2028. Read the full post Nitrogen extends its scoring model from risk to insurance Nitrogen Wealth, the advisor platform formerly known as Riskalyze, launched Insurance Center, built on its Nucleus AI agent and organized around a Coverage Number where a result below 100 flags a gap and above 120 suggests excess. LPL Financial is already an approved user, and with roughly 80% of Nitrogen’s advisor base using its existing tools for insurance purposes, the company is selling into demand it has been watching for years. Knote: Insurance should be an easy win for holistic advisors, but it was only a hard win 5 years ago. Technology is changing that. Read the full post Apex turns Kalshi prediction markets into an API Apex Fintech Solutions launched an API letting firms offer Kalshi-powered event contracts from their own platforms without building Futures Commission Merchant infrastructure or direct exchange connectivity, with tastytrade the first firm live. Apex handles clearing, custody, money movement and statements through AscendOS while Kalshi supplies the regulated marketplace, packaging prediction markets as something a wealth platform switches on rather than builds. Knote: Kalshi is quietly building itself into a premier prediction-markets-as-a-service platform for WealthTech. Others using its infrastructure for prediction trading include Robinhood & Coinbase (at least partially), Webull, Moomoo, Interactive Brokers, XP International, Clear, Wealthsimple, and Clear Street. Read the full post SEC exam priorities put AI claims and Reg S-P on the clock A Leo RegTech analysis of the SEC Division of Examinations’ fiscal 2026 priorities notes that examiners will test whether a firm’s actual AI usage matches what it tells clients and regulators, and that smaller advisers had to meet amended Regulation S-P requirements by June 3, 2026. The required documentation — incident response program, risk assessments, incident logs and vendor oversight records, all producible on short notice — is effectively the build spec for a modern compliance platform. Knote: We usually don't publish writeups from vendors talking about the problems that their product solves, but this one seemed refreshingly balanced. Read the full post