Ridgeline. (2026, October 8). Ridgeline showcases AI-native innovation at fifth annual Base Camp conference. Ridgeline. https://ridgeline.ai/company/news/ridgeline-showcases-ai-native-innovation-at-fifth-annual-base-camp-conference Ridgeline highlighted its product innovation and customer AI transformations at Base Camp, its fifth annual conference, held in Carlsbad, California, September 14 to 17, 2026. The event drew nearly 400 asset and wealth management leaders from the U.S. and Canada representing more than $2 trillion in managed assets, many of them Ridgeline customers or active evaluators. In the opening keynote, CEO Dave Blair stated that Ridgeline delivered more than 650 customer-requested capabilities across the platform in the past year. Blair noted that one hundred percent of live Ridgeline customers use AI within the platform. Ridgeline debuted new capabilities, including an expanded Ridgeline Assistant that analyzes files and data in chat, new agentic workflows that combine firm or user skills with workflows, and a significant user experience redesign. Ridgeline announced it is the first known front-to-back investment management platform with an AI Management System certified to ISO/IEC 42001. Ridgeline also announced a closed $250 million Series E round led by Founder and Chairman Dave Duffield at a $1.425 billion valuation, with more than $760 billion in assets under management committed to the platform.

OneVest. (2026, October 8). Network Wealth selects OneVest’s wealth management platform. OneVest. https://www.onevest.com/blog/network-wealth-selects-onevest OneVest announced on October 8, 2026 that Network Wealth, a Canadian wealth management firm, has selected OneVest to power its Next-Gen Advice Practice. Network Wealth will deploy OneVest’s full wealth management platform, including digital onboarding, account opening, portfolio management, client experience, and an advisor workspace. The digital onboarding and account opening function provides a guided mobile journey intended to set up new clients in minutes with reduced paperwork and email correspondence. A single client mobile application consolidates accounts, goals, planning, and reporting into one location for clients. The advisor workspace unifies client data, planning, and portfolio activity into a single view to support end-to-end client service without switching systems. Jeff Talbot, CEO of Network Wealth Cooperative, stated that the partnership strengthens the firm’s back office and client-facing platform while giving advisors more time to focus on clients. OneVest is backed by Salesforce Ventures, Deloitte Ventures, TIAA Ventures, Allianz Ventures, and OMERS Ventures.

MDOTM. (n.d.). Custom at scale: What it really takes to run tailored MPS. https://www.mdotm.ai/news/custom-at-scale-what-it-really-takes-to-run-tailored-mps MDOTM hosted an Investment Leadership Event at The Line in London on 1 October, bringing together DFMs and wealth managers to examine what it takes to run tailored model portfolio services (MPS) at scale. NextWealth data shows on-platform discretionary MPS assets have reached £208bn, growing 32% in a year, more than twice the rate of the overall platform market. Tailored models account for around 14% of MPS assets, and nearly three-quarters of DFMs offer them. Average total costs have roughly halved since 2021, with lower-cost and more passive providers growing fastest while hybrid propositions lose ground. Panellists said demand for tailoring has become structural, as consolidating advice firms outsource investment management but want portfolios that reflect their own beliefs and client service model. Running models across 20 or more platforms creates a heavy reconciliation burden, and tokenisation was raised as a possible step change that could let a single trade settle across all platforms. Automating risk-budget rules, rebalancing, and drift monitoring was described as the way to run tailoring at scale, with the winning MPS proposition of five years from now characterised as digital, instant, and well governed. Knote: Getting the MPS (managed portfolio solutions) industry in the UK automated is a key theme for us in 2027. There is a huge technology gap between the UK and the US in this regard that needs to be closed.

Barnes, B. (2026, October 6). M1 Advisor: Your financial life finally has a CFO. M1. https://m1.com/blog/m1-advisor-your-financial-life-finally-has-a-cfo/ M1 has launched M1 Advisor, an AI financial advisor built into its platform that is live now for M1 clients and free through December 31, 2027. M1 Advisor is offered through M1 Advisory Services, LLC, an SEC-registered investment adviser that M1 describes as having a legal duty to act in the client's best interest. The advisor reads data from a client's M1 Invest, Cash, and Borrow accounts to tailor advice and remembers the client's goals over time, with clients controlling what it keeps in memory. M1 says the tool weighs how one financial move affects others, covering decisions such as borrowing against a portfolio versus selling for a tax bill, unwinding concentrated employer stock, and choosing among taxable, Roth, and rollover IRA accounts. M1 Advisor shows its reasoning and never moves money on its own, as the company states that it recommends and the client decides. CEO Brian Barnes compares the launch to Jack Bogle's 1976 index fund, citing ICI data that index funds now hold $22.4 trillion versus $18.9 trillion in actively managed funds. M1, which reports more than $14 billion in client assets, says the AI models behind M1 Advisor are improving quickly and that it is adding better instructions, more tools, and new capabilities.

PlannerPal, an AI workflow platform for financial advice and wealth management firms, has raised $6 million (£4.3 million) in a round led by Mercia Ventures. Ada Ventures, which led the company's February 2024 pre-seed round, also participated, alongside strategic fintech investors and angels. PlannerPal will use the capital to expand its engineering and product teams, support customer rollouts, and accelerate development of its client intelligence capabilities. PlannerPal began by automating administrative work in financial advice, including capturing client meetings, producing documentation, and updating the systems advisers already use. The platform now connects client information across conversations, documents, and core systems to improve data quality. It integrates with Iress Xplan, where it is the only AI partner in the Iress Partnership, as well as Intelliflo, Curo, Plannr, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and SharePoint. More than 250 UK advice firms use PlannerPal, including Canaccord Wealth, ValidPath, and Amber River, supporting around £150 billion in client assets. The round reflects demand among advice firms for AI that works inside their existing technology rather than beside it. CEO and co-founder Mark Whitcroft said he does not believe the answer is "another disconnected AI tool sitting outside the core systems of the business." Adam Lovell, Investment Director at Mercia Ventures, said firms want a long-term AI partner that works with their existing systems and client data. PlannerPal has also entered UK mortgage advice, signing Charles Cameron, one of the country's largest independent mortgage brokers. Link to Press Release

Alto, a Nashville-based self-directed IRA custodian and broker-dealer, has agreed to acquire Forge Trust, a Charles Schwab company. Financial terms were not disclosed. Once closed, the combined business will hold more than $20 billion in assets under custody, serve over 60,000 self-directed IRA accounts holding private market assets, and administer more than 3 million Custody-as-a-Service accounts. The deal is pending approval from the South Dakota Division of Banking. Alto's platform lets investors hold private market assets inside retirement accounts, supported by its own custody capabilities, an SEC-registered broker-dealer, and a private market investment marketplace. Forge Trust is a South Dakota-chartered custodian with over 40 years of experience administering alternative assets such as real estate, private equity, and precious metals. J.P. Morgan Securities and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz advised Schwab, while O'Melveny and Myers was lead legal advisor to Alto. The deal reflects the industry's growing interest in alternatives. According to Alto, more than $19.9 trillion sits in IRAs, yet most of it remains locked out of private markets. Pairing Forge Trust's custodial expertise and account types with Alto's AI-powered technology could ease the onboarding friction that has kept alternatives out of retirement portfolios, giving advisors and alternative managers a larger channel to reach retirement savers. Forge Trust clients do not need to take any immediate action. Link to Press Release

KKR has agreed to acquire Gen II Fund Services, a technology-enabled fund administrator for private capital managers, from Hg, General Atlantic and other minority investors at an enterprise value of $5.1 billion. The investment will be made through KKR's Core Private Equity strategy, and the transaction is expected to close in 2027. Gen II co-founder and CEO, Steven Millner, will continue to lead the company. Founded in 2009 by Steven Millner, Steven Alecia and Norman Leben, Gen II provides fund administration, tax, compliance, treasury and technology solutions to more than 275 investment managers and oversees more than $2 trillion of private fund capital across the U.S. and Europe. Since Hg and General Atlantic co-led an investment in 2020, the company has quadrupled revenue and EBITDA through organic growth and four acquisitions. Morgan Stanley, Robert W. Baird and UBS Investment Bank advised the sellers, with Kirkland & Ellis as legal counsel, while Simpson Thacher & Bartlett advised KKR. The deal shows how valuable the operating infrastructure behind private markets has become. As platforms and advisors expand access to private funds, administrators that handle reporting, tax and compliance are a critical link in delivering those investments at scale. KKR plans to support Gen II's global expansion, broaden its capabilities across asset classes, invest in proprietary technology and AI, and introduce broad-based employee ownership. Link to Press Release

Altruist. (2026, October 6). Altruist adds donor-advised funds so advisors can manage charitable giving in-platform. Business Wire. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261005103748/en/Altruist-Adds-Donor-Advised-Funds-so-Advisors-Can-Manage-Charitable-Giving-In-Platform Altruist, an AI-forward wealth technology and custody platform for advisors, added donor-advised funds that advisors can open, fund, invest, and manage for clients in minutes without a separate system. Advisors can transfer an existing fund in two steps, contribute cash or appreciated securities in a few clicks, and view the fund alongside every other holding in the household view. The feature is being powered by Endaoment, a Philanthro-Tech focused on DAFs in the wealth space based in San Francisco. Unlike most DAF platforms that restrict investments to a fixed menu, Altruist donor-advised fund assets can be invested in any model in its marketplace, including custom portfolios and personalized-indexing strategies. The offering has no account-opening, balance, or grant minimums, and fees start at 50 basis points a year compared with the 60 to 65 basis points typical among other sponsors. Founder and CEO Jason Wenk said the company aims to make donor-advised funds easy to navigate and access because giving is one of the most personal things a client does with an advisor. Knote: It makes me wonder if any of the soon-to-be millionaires will use DAFs to donate some of their pre-IPO shares.

Agostinelli, J. (2026, October 5). Morningstar investor perspectives for advisors: 4 trends shaping client relationships. Morningstar, Inc. https://www.morningstar.com/business/insights/research/investor-perspectives-for-advisors Morningstar's Investor Perspectives: Financial Advisors survey is based on 501 online responses from US advisors collected between July 21 and August 16, 2026. The share of advisors reporting AI use rose from 67% in 2025 to 80% in 2026, led by internal productivity tasks such as meeting summaries and email drafts (43%), idea generation (36%), research and due diligence (35%), and client communications (33%). Advisors reporting that AI significantly or moderately improved their efficiency increased from 36% in 2025 to 48% in 2026, and more now view AI as a help (42%) than a threat (19%). Nearly half (47%) of advisors agree that AI will have a significant impact on the financial advisory industry and that competition among advisors is extremely fierce. Advisors spend 53% of their time on client-focused activities but would ideally spend 63%, with 56% citing administrative and operational work as the top barrier to delivering the desired level of advice and service. The share of advisors discussing fees less than once or twice a year rose from 26% in 2024 to 38% in 2026, while the share of clients reviewing advisor fees monthly or quarterly increased from 30% to 40% over the same period. Advisors offering private markets to clients increased from 35% in 2025 to 40% in 2026, even as comfort explaining those investments fell from 68% to 61% and fee transparency concerns (46%) topped the barriers to due diligence.

Donachie, P. (2026, October 2). SEC self-custody rules for crypto assets draws divisive reactions. WealthManagement.com. https://www.wealthmanagement.com/regulation-compliance/sec-proposes-self-custody-rules-for-crypto-assets The SEC proposed custody rule changes that would allow RIAs to self-custody clients' crypto assets if they determine a permitted custodian is not available, a condition they must recheck quarterly. Advisors using self-custody would need expertise in safeguarding each crypto asset, at least annual cybersecurity reviews, private key management, two-person authorization of transactions, and quarterly client account statements. The SEC argued that typical qualified custodians may be unwilling or unable to hold the large and growing number of crypto assets, although Schwab and Fidelity already offer crypto custody options. The proposal would also let advisors and regulated funds hold crypto assets with a chartered state trust company and would specify when discretionary trading authority could be exempt from custody rule requirements. The proposal replaces the stricter 2023 approach with the lighter-touch stance favored by Chair Paul Atkins and retiring Commissioner Hester Peirce, and it follows last month's failure of the CLARITY Act in Congress. The Investment Adviser Association praised the effort to make the custody rule more workable, while Better Markets said it subjects investors to a very high risk of loss and benefits only crypto companies. The proposed rules will be open for public comment for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register. Knote: Why would an advisor do this? It's like taking custody of the egg from Alien: kind of cool but lots of unknowns and downside.

Zocks. (2026, September 30). Zocks launches Advisor Intelligence plugin with seven skills for Claude. https://www.zocks.io/press/zocks-launches-advisor-intelligence-plugin-with-seven-skills-for-claude Zocks announced an Advisor Intelligence plugin that packages seven Claude skills developed specifically for financial services workflows. The skills reason across client information Zocks has captured from past meetings and conversations, including goals, concerns, life events, and household dynamics, and apply it to custom analyses and client-ready deliverables. Advisors can type a single plain-language prompt in Claude, such as "prep the annual review," and Claude completes the full sequence of work in minutes. The seven skills are Next Best Action, Household Review Pack, Client Journey, Client Attrition Risk, Held-Away Radar, Tax Opportunity Scan, and Client Behavioral Profile. The Household Review Pack produces four deliverables: a review summary, a client letter, a client presentation in the firm's branding, and briefs for the client's accountant and attorney. The plugin runs on the Zocks connector for Claude built on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), is read-only, can access only data an advisor already has permission to see in Zocks, and sets up without code or IT involvement. Zocks reports that more than 5,000 firms use its platform, including 7 of the 9 Barron's Top Mega RIAs and 2 of the top 3 life insurance carriers.

WealthTech Job Exchange Because finding a good job is hard but building a good team is harder. Digital Media, Performance Marketing and Growth -- Available FTE -- 20+ year Boston-based digital media leader, with WealthTech stops at MassMutual, FinMason and Upromise Link Northwestern Mutual selects Jump as its enterprise AI partner Northwestern Mutual named Jump its enterprise AI partner, putting Jump's suite in front of roughly 22,000 financial representatives, advisors and team members across 85 network offices and the home office. A firm with a nearly 170-year habit of building its own technology concluding that partnering beats building is the clearest signal yet that AI advisor assistants have crossed from pilot to infrastructure. Knote: Note that this is a bonafide enterprise deal, not a license to hunt deal. Jump just picked up 22,000 users! Read More → DTCC takes a stake in iCapital to build private markets plumbing DTCC and iCapital announced a strategic collaboration plus an undisclosed DTCC investment, deepening the integration of DTCC's Alternative Investment Product rails with iCapital's platform, which services $1.2 trillion in assets. Wiring post-trade infrastructure directly into a distribution platform already used by nearly 3,900 wealth firms attacks the onboarding friction and manual processing that have kept Alts2Wealth adoption below what advisor demand would support. MMnote: iCapital is moving from being a marketplace for alts to being the rails they run on. Alts2Wealth needs more infrastructure partnerships like this before alts become a normal part of the advisor's toolkit. Read More → CD Valet launches an advisor marketplace with no asset minimums CD Valet, a digital marketplace for comparing certificates of deposit, launched a Financial Advisor Marketplace that lets investors compare independent advisors by specialty, service and credential rather than by paid placement. As custodial referral programs raise their asset thresholds and matching platforms move to success-fee and AUM pricing, a flat-fee channel with no minimums aims squarely at the small and mid-sized RIAs being squeezed out. Knote: Organic Growth is the new Inorganic Growth for RIA aggregators. Read More → XYPN partners with Jump on discounted AI for fee-only planners XYPN gave its members discounted access to Jump's Meet, Onboard and Grow products, naming AI efficiency tools its most-requested partnership category in 2025 and 2026 and Jump the most requested tool within it. Jump reaching more than 45,000 users in three years, while expanding from transcription into onboarding and in-meeting account opening, shows how quickly the meeting-management category is consolidating around full-lifecycle platforms. Knote: Second big win announcement in a week. The Jump team is on a roll. Read More → XYPN adds Income Lab as a member benefit XYPN made Income Lab's retirement income planning platform a member benefit, after three consecutive years in its five most-requested benefits and with more than 300 members already on the platform. Income Lab's framing of spending power and ongoing adjustments over probability-of-success scores reflects a wider shift in planning software toward decisions clients can actually act on in retirement. Knote: The fact that XYPN, a network known for attracting younger advisors, is fielding a retirement income distribution tool is all you need to know about the importance of distribution planning. Read More → Robinhood opens AI trading agents to retail investors Robinhood launched Robinhood Agents at HOOD Summit 2026, an embedded AI that analyzes markets, builds strategies and trades around the clock from a dedicated agentic account, with manual trade approval on by default. More than 150,000 agentic accounts opened since May, and agents hitting Robinhood's tools nearly 30 million times a day, make retail agentic trading a live supervisory question rather than a forward-looking one. Knote: The techy in me thinks this is very cool. The father in me worries. Read More → BNY Pershing sunsets Wove and folds its parts into wealth solutions BNY Pershing is dismantling its multi-custodial Wove platform and absorbing its best components into the wider wealth solutions business under Adam Vos, with focus on the clearing and custody stack, API integrations and unified managed accounts. Retiring a platform launched in 2023 while Envestnet, Orion and Altruist push open-architecture roadmaps shows how little patience the market now has for a branded platform that advisors never fully adopted. Knote: I thought they were doing everything right, but at the end of the day it was like the witness protection program: new name, same problems. Read More → IRS narrows Section 351 ETF conversions and flags related strategies Treasury and the IRS issued Notice 2026-62 and Revenue Ruling 2026-20, treating the ETF in a Section 351 conversion as a conduit and the investor's contributed securities as a taxable exchange under Section 1001. With guidance that could apply retroactively and comments due October 28, advisors and their platforms face a documentation and calculation burden on a tax-management technique that had been scaling fast. Knote: Sounds like the 351 exchange compliance and calculation burden just went up. Technology to the rescue? Read More → Schwab launches Charley, a generative AI client assistant Charles Schwab will roll out Charley in phases from October to eligible U.S. retail clients on Schwab.com and Schwab Mobile, handling questions, account and market information, and select actions by voice or text. Schwab's own survey showing clients comfortable with AI for routine updates but preferring a person for meaningful account actions is the boundary the launch is drawn around, and it is the boundary every retail platform is now testing. Read More → Arch extends its private markets platform into pre-investment diligence Arch launched Investment Research, moving beyond post-commitment document collection and capital call workflows to let RIAs, family offices and institutions analyze opportunities against their own criteria with terms auditable to source documents. Carrying diligence materials forward with the investment after close closes the gap between the research file and the monitoring record, which is where most allocators still lose the original thesis. Read More → Edward Jones builds an end-to-end retirement plan management center Edward Jones is developing an AI-powered Retirement Plan Management Center with Aboon and RPAG, covering prospecting through plan servicing and rolling out to advisors beginning in 2027. Edward Jones advisors already serve more than 263,000 workplace plans holding $106.9 billion, a book large enough that tooling the full plan lifecycle is an operations problem before it is a growth play. Knote: With an average company plan size of only around $400K, I am highly confident their advisors will weep with joy to get some technology assistance. Read More → RBC and Campden survey finds family offices optimistic but still reporting by hand The 2026 North America Family Office Report, drawing on 155 responses, found AI the top investment pick for 85 percent of offices and half reporting AI embedded as essential to their workflow. That 73 percent still call investment reporting too manual for the third year running, while cybersecurity concern jumped from 16 to 59 percent, points to a technology budget being spent ahead of the operational basics. Knote: What surprised me was the percent of direct private markets investments vs funds. Seems high at 45%. Read More → Pravar AI launches Wealth OS to extend white-glove service down the book Pravar AI released Pravar for Advisors, reading across each family's accounts, holdings and history to flag liquidity events, held-away assets, attrition signals and unmet heirs, with the follow-up already drafted. A continuous evaluation layer that scores every interaction, routes low-confidence output to human review and leaves an audit record is the governance scaffolding most agentic advisor tools still leave to the buyer. Knote: I am not sure this will be the product that brings them fame and glory, but they indicate they have more coming. What I do like is that they are leading with governance. Read More → CG Financial Services names Jon Patullo COO and CIO CG Financial Services, recognized by Citywire as one of the fastest-growing RIAs at 17.2 percent annual growth, appointed Jon Patullo to a combined COO and CIO role covering operations, technology strategy and advisor platform development. Hiring a platform builder from TD Ameritrade into a dual operations and technology seat signals a firm treating its advisor technology stack as the constraint on its next stage of growth. Knote: If a $5B RIA hires Jon Patullo, my guess is that they are not planning on being $5B for long...or even $50B. Read More → AI ATC - A quick summary of interesting AI launches for those with AI fatigue OneVest Launches Canada's First Agentic Account Opening Solution https://www.wealthtechstrategy.com/post/onevest-launches-canada-s-first-agentic-account-opening-solution 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