Advisor Tech Talk (Week of 11/9/26)

There's inertia behind the status quo, and change is usually more of a narrative than a reality. 

In a week where change was seemingly everywhere, the story in wealthtech remained pretty much the same. Welcome to Advisor Tech Talk, where, although we don't have a deluge of announcements from new wealthtech partners for Anthropic's Claude, the dominant financial advisor technology storyline is still one of artificial intelligence's growing adoption and deployment across the industry. 

In fact, the AI storyline is pretty much unchanged, despite a lot of financial market jitters concerning technology providers that surrounded this year's midterm elections. 

We loathe talking politics here in our wealthtech sanctuary, but yes, there was an election in the U.S. last week and as any straight news source will tell you, the people voted for change. 

How much change they actually get remains to be seen, but from a political scientist's perspective, not much tends to happen under a divided government. 

If recent midterm congressional leadership changes are any kind of predictors for what is to come, when the 120th Congress is sworn in next year, more energy will be spent investigating and prosecuting members of the opposing party in the executive branch than in forging compromises to further any kind of agenda or actual change. In other words, the next two years are now more likely to be more of the same than they would have been if the outgoing party had held control of Congress. 

Apparently. technology investors didn't really think much about that before dumping their shares last week in a knee-jerk reaction to the potential for more restrictions on data centers and regulations on AI models. The message sent by investors was one of flagging enthusiasm for artificial intelligence. 

Financial advisors should know better. Declining market prices are not a sign of the end of AI, or even a sign of the end of a so-called AI peak. The underlying economics of AI, good and bad, are not affected by moving securities prices. 

Wealth management continues to be a leader in adopting AI, and the future for financial advisors is one of more AI, not less. In fact, across industries, not to mention personal use cases, the future seems to be one of more artificial intelligence.  

Anthropic and dub are expanding the capabilities available directly to consumers. Mercer Advisors is using AI to scale complex services. Osaic and Nitrogen are bringing agentic technology to large advisor networks. Edward Jones is developing hybrid advice for emerging investors, while Envestnet, Farther and other technology providers are emphasizing usability and integration. 

Anthropic and dub are expanding the capabilities available directly to consumers. Mercer Advisors is using AI to scale complex services. Osaic and Nitrogen are bringing agentic technology to large advisor networks. Edward Jones is developing hybrid advice for emerging investors, while Envestnet, Farther and other technology providers are emphasizing usability and integration. 

However much we think we're going to see a serious backlash against AI, and that our industries might stop moving towards more AI adoption, and that our clients and customers might want less technology in their interactions with us, the trend is actually towards more AI. 

Which means we're still accelerating. We're in the process of creating more demand, not less, for all those data centers and markets for the technologies built by the very companies that investors tried to dump last week. Even if we did for some unforeseen reason start to pull back, a certain amount of growth in wealthtech AI, and the infrastructure that powers it, is already baked in. 

While we didn't see a huge list of new partners, one of the week's most significant developments did indeed come from Anthropic, which introduced Personal Finance in Claude, a consumer-facing feature that allows users to connect bank and credit card accounts and ask conversational questions about their financial circumstances. Powered by financial data connectivity from Plaid, the service offers transaction analysis, spending insights and explanations of financial concepts. Anthropic emphasized that the connections are read-only: Claude cannot transfer money, manage accounts or execute investments. The feature began rolling out in beta to eligible U.S. subscribers. 

Although the service does not constitute comprehensive financial advice, its implications for wealth management are substantial. Anthropic has already been developing Claude for Financial Advisors, and its expansion into household financial analysis illustrates how general-purpose AI platforms could become an increasingly important interface between consumers and financial institutions. A client who can obtain an immediate explanation of spending patterns, account balances or debt obligations from an AI assistant may eventually expect similarly accessible explanations of investments, retirement projections and tax strategies. Traditional advisory firms may retain an advantage in fiduciary accountability, personalized judgment and complex planning, but the technology is steadily reducing the informational advantages that once distinguished professional financial services. 

But that' s nothing new, either. Almost everyone already has the intellectual ability to be their own financial advisor. Technology offers all of the technical skill of the financial services industry to virtually anyone's fingertips via a home computer or mobile device. 

Wealth management continues to bank on the fact that not everyone will want to manage their own finances from their phones. 

It's the same story we've been telling for years, and elections and volatility can't break its inertia. 

Let's get to our headlines... 

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Anthropic 

Getting answers about your money no longer means opening every banking app and doing the math yourself. With Personal Finance in Claude, you can securely connect your bank and card accounts and ask in your own words. Access is read-only, and Personal Finance can’t move, manage, or invest your money. 

Claude gives you answers in everyday language, from your balances and transactions, and explains any term that's new to you. Like the rest of Claude, Personal Finance has no ads or sponsored recommendations, and it doesn’t offer credit cards, loans, or savings accounts of its own, so your money questions get a straight answer. 

Personal Finance starts rolling out in beta this week, on the Pro, Max, and Ultra plans in the US. 

Arch 

Arch, the infrastructure layer for private markets, today announced a multi-year partnership with Mercer Advisors, Inc. (“Mercer Advisors”), a national wealth management and financial planning firm, powering scale in private markets management while reducing operational risk. Since their work began in early 2025, Mercer Advisors has saved more than 7,000 hours a year, reducing the operational cost of managing client alternative investments by 40%. Arch’s enhanced alts data management platform will continue to support Mercer Advisors’ portfolio monitoring, liquidity planning, and workflow tracking, including the tracking of capital calls and distributions and the delivery of private markets insights. 

Mercer Advisors has grown from $18 billion in client assets in 2020 to $114 billion today. Growth in Mercer Advisors’ high-net-worth business, along with rising client adoption of alternative investments, has made scalable tools essential to serving families with private holdings. 

Arch addresses this challenge by collecting documents from fund admin portals, then routing structured data and insights to the downstream teams and systems for action. Leveraging Arch, K-1s are collected and made available to each client’s CPA, capital calls are actioned, reporting data is sent to reporting systems, and insights are delivered 

Benzinga 

Benzinga, a leading provider of real-time financial news and market intelligence, today highlighted its continued commitment to supporting the rapidly growing ecosystem of AI-powered financial applications, with tradeInsightAI among the latest platforms leveraging Benzinga content to enhance market intelligence and decision-making. 

As artificial intelligence reshapes how investors, analysts, and institutions consume information, demand for trusted, real-time financial data continues to grow. Through its APIs and data licensing solutions, Benzinga provides the news, corporate communications, and market intelligence that power a growing range of AI-driven products and workflows across the financial industry. 

The relationship with tradeInsightAI reflects a broader trend of AI-native companies incorporating high-quality financial data into their platforms to generate insights, identify market-moving developments, and help users navigate increasingly complex information environments. By integrating Benzinga's real-time financial news and corporate communications content, tradeInsightAI is further strengthening its AI-powered analysis capabilities and expanding the intelligence available to its users. 

bQuest  

bQuest, the award-winning Longevity Planning and Care Coordination solution, announced today the launch of its Longevity Planning Framework, a structured, repeatable process that helps registered investment advisors (RIAs) and wealth management firms bring longevity planning and care coordination into the financial planning relationship, before a health event forces the conversation. The framework addresses a growing gap: Americans now spend an average of 12.4 years living with illness or disability, the largest healthspan-lifespan gap among 183 countries studied, according to research from the Mayo Clinic. 

That 12.4-year gap is where financial plans are most likely to break down. Most plans account for how long a client may live. Far fewer account for how that client wants to live during years of changing health, or for the housing, caregiving, and care coordination decisions that can significantly reshape a plan. The Longevity Planning Framework gives advisors a way to uncover those gaps early, connect them back to the financial plan, and bring in trusted resources when action is needed. 

The demand is growing quickly. By 2030, more than one in five Americans will be 65 or older, and 93% of adults in that age group report at least one chronic condition, according to CDC survey data. Fidelity's 2026 Retiree Health Care Cost Estimate puts expected lifetime healthcare costs at roughly $185,500 for a single 65-year-old and $371,000 for a couple, before most dental care and any custodial long-term care. Importantly, this does not include long-term care expenses. Meanwhile, Cerulli Associates projects $124 trillion in wealth will move through 2048, and has found that more than 70% of heirs are likely to change advisors after an inheritance. 

Citizens 

Citizens today announced Citizens Treasury Intelligence™, a new digital platform for commercial banking clients that offers multi-bank cash visibility, analytics, forecasting and workflow tools designed to help businesses manage liquidity with greater confidence. 

The platform shows where a client’s cash is today and forecasts where it is going, providing a consolidated view of cash across all of a client’s banking relationships. A basic version of the platform will be available at no cost to eligible accessOPTIMA® information reporting clients. AccessOPTIMA® is Citizens' treasury management and reporting platform. Paid tiers are available for clients with greater treasury needs. 

Many organizations continue to manage treasury operations through a combination of portals and spreadsheets, adding friction to decisions that depend on timely information. Citizens Treasury Intelligence™ supports automated aggregation and categorization of data across multiple banks, helping treasury teams analyze cash flow trends, forecast liquidity more efficiently and move faster when business conditions change. 

d1g1t 

d1g1t, a leading enterprise wealthtech provider, today announced that Harbourfront Wealth Group (Harbourfront Wealth) has selected and deployed d1g1t's institutional-grade enterprise wealth management platform to support continued growth and deliver a more connected digital experience for advisors and clients. 

Harbourfront Wealth is evolving its technology infrastructure in step with its rapid expansion, building the scale and operational capacity needed to support a growing national organization. By simplifying core processes and connecting key functions, the firm is creating a stronger foundation for advisors to serve clients and expand their businesses. 

By deploying d1g1t, Harbourfront Wealth is bringing its advisor desktop, client portal, portfolio data, performance calculations, trading and rebalancing, and related workflows together on a single integrated platform. The platform will support the firm's Unified Managed Account framework, reduce reliance on manual trading and cash management processes, and create greater operational capacity as the organization continues to grow. 

dub 

dub, America's premier social investing platform powering more than $2 billion in trades, today announced the launch of Arlo, an AI investing assistant available within the dub app. Arlo is built on dub's proprietary investing technology, engineered to execute a realtime multi-factor investment analysis with actionable insights, revolutionizing the legacy advisory industry. 

With Arlo, the entire decision-making process is fully traceable end to end, creating a level of transparency dub believes sets Arlo apart in the AI investing space. Arlo upends the traditional advisory experience by making actionable information accessible to the retail audience. 

The investment management space has long been a function of wealth, much like trading itself was once largely out of reach until personal technology revolutionized an entire industry. Arlo brings that technology to investment management, giving customers access to the kind of actionable insights they would typically turn to a financial advisor for. In doing so, dub believes Arlo can replicate many of the functions investors have traditionally paid for, opening access to services typically out of reach for hundreds of millions of Americans. dub sees this as a broader shift in consumer finance, making sophisticated investment knowledge available to a far wider audience and narrowing a gap that has historically been defined by wealth. 

Edward Jones 

Edward Jones continued to build on its growth momentum in Q3 2026, reflecting the strength of its client relationships, increasing demand for personalized financial advice and disciplined investments in the firm's future. 

Edward Jones introduced Digital Managed Solutions™, an investment advisory platform initially available to a small group of associates as part of the firm's development of a future hybrid advice offering. Designed for investors earlier in their financial journeys, the offering will combine self-service digital tools with access to human guidance. Broader availability is planned for mid-2027. 

The firm announced development of an AI-powered, end-to-end retirement plan management tool in collaboration with Aboon, and Retirement Plan Advisory Group (RPAG®), part of Great Gray Group. The Retirement Plan Management Center will roll out to Edward Jones financial advisors in 2027 and will better enable advisors to serve business owners with workplace retirement plans. 

Envestnet 

Envestnet, the Adaptive WealthTech company, today announced the appointment of Jane Graham as Senior Vice President, Client Experience. The newly created position will elevate the client experience across Envestnet's platforms as part of its $1 billion five-year investment plan in its platforms to deliver "return on day" to advisors. In this role, Graham will create a more unified and seamless experience to retain and grow client relationships by leading client success and retention, service delivery, enablement, support operations, and renewals functions. She will join the Executive Committee.   

Graham brings more than 15 years of experience building and scaling service, client success, and retention organizations for high-growth technology businesses. She has also led go-to-market transformations, enterprise technology implementations, and large-scale client experience transformations. She will develop and execute a strategy that strengthens client engagement, makes it easier for advisors to get full value from Envestnet's platforms, improves client satisfaction and adoption, and supports their long-term growth. The goal: one accountable team for advisors across Tamarac, MoneyGuide, and Envestnet's enterprise platform, with faster resolution, smoother onboarding, and fewer handoffs. As Envestnet delivers new innovations faster than ever, her team will make it easy for clients to adopt them and realize value from those new capabilities. 

Graham's appointment comes as Envestnet focuses on its strategy to simplify the wealth management experience through an end-to-end platform that helps advisors make smarter decisions, operate more efficiently, and deliver increasingly personalized advice across every stage of a client's financial journey. 

Farther 

Farther today announced the addition of Kai Conragan as Vice President, Head of UX, and Allan Smith as Vice President of Product. Based in California, Conragan and Smith will lead the continuous upgrade of Farther’s proprietary Intelligent Wealth Platform, enhancing a product experience that frees advisors to better serve their client base.  

Kai Conragan joins Farther from Google, where he spent 15 years on UX for Google Search, building a global team that scaled Search to one of the most widely used software products in the world as it evolved from desktop to mobile to AI. During his tenure at the company, Conragan helped launch an array of products including Knowledge Graph, Google News, Gboard, and Gemini in Search. 

In his new role as Farther Vice President, Head of UX, Conragan will implement a “design-first” approach to advance the frontier of usability in intelligent wealth systems. 

Ittikar 

Millenium Associates AG, the independent M&A and corporate finance adviser founded in Zurich in 2000, has selected Ittikar, the private capital network for global family offices, as an innovative preferred platform for private capital transactions. Ray Soudah, Chairman and Founder of Millenium Associates AG, joins the Ittikar Strategic Advisory Board with immediate effect. 

Under the partnership, Millenium Associates AG brings a quarter of a century of transaction experience and one of the most established advisory networks in European private banking and wealth and asset management to Ittikar's members: more than 100 Founding Members within a network of 500 family offices across Europe, Switzerland, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. Ittikar brings Millenium Associates' clients an innovative platform option where family offices and entrepreneurs analyse deals, invest and raise capital directly with one another, matched by Capital DNA™ rather than publicly broadcast to the market. 

Millenium Associates' transaction team are available to work alongside Ittikar's investment team on the review of transactions before they are published to the network, and the two firms have the ability to take the combined proposition to family offices and entrepreneurs across Europe and the Middle East. The founders have known and collaborated with each other for over fifteen years. 

Mako Financial Technologies 

Odlum Brown, an independent Canadian investment firm, and Mako Financial Technologies today announced the launch of a custom digital client onboarding solution built around Odlum Brown’s workflow requirements and integrated natively into its book of record. 

The launch marks a significant step in Odlum Brown’s digital transformation, reflecting the firm’s commitment to shaping the next generation of wealth management through technology and personalized service. Through Mako’s workflow automation platform, the solution brings that vision to life with a more connected digital experience for clients and advisors, creating a foundation for continued innovation and growth. 

Odlum Brown manages its own data collection needs for its book of record system necessary to fulfill trading, clearing and settlement operations. Connecting onboarding workflows with this infrastructure was a central consideration in the solution’s development. The native straight-through processing links Mako with Odlum Brown’s existing client service environment, enabling a more seamless onboarding and account-opening journey. This partnership supports Odlum Brown’s broader digital transformation and gives advisors more time to focus on client relationships. 

Maywood 

Lombard Global, Inc., an Austin investment bank focused on technology M&A since 2004, expects a 70%+ increase in deal flow over the next twelve months after deploying Maywood's proactive AI agent, Maverick, across its business development. Maverick has already helped increase the Lombard network by 15+ buyers and sellers per week. For technology founders, that means a banker who already knows the buyers most likely to value their business. For acquirers, it means a banker who understands their strategy and can bring them the right targets early. 

The firms also announced an ongoing partnership to expand Lombard Global's use of Maverick across its sell-side and buy-side business development. The partnership pairs Lombard Global's sector research and deal tracking with Maywood's relationship intelligence. 

When a founder decides to sell, the price and terms depend on reaching the buyers who value the business most. When an acquirer decides to buy, the best targets are often private companies that never run a broad process. Both usually call a banker they already know: one who understands their market, knows the likely buyers or targets, and has stayed in touch. Building those relationships takes years of consistent, well-timed contact with hundreds of companies, and that is hard for a boutique to sustain. Private-market deals in niche technology sectors are hard to see in time. And when live deals fill the week, business development slips and relationships go cold. 

Mercer Advisors 

Mercer Advisors, Inc. (“Mercer Advisors”), a national wealth management and financial planning firm, today announced the acquisition of Fifteenth, an artificial intelligence (AI)-native tax and accounting firm whose proprietary platform is purpose-built for equity compensation and complex tax situations. The transaction reinforces Mercer Advisors commitment to put practical AI and technology to work for clients to better deliver comprehensive, integrated family office services including financial planning, tax planning and preparation, estate planning and investment management. 

Fifteenth's team brings tax expertise from Big Four and other leading firms, paired with a proprietary AI platform built specifically for high-complexity tax work. The firm combines annual tax preparation with year-round planning, helping clients navigate stock option exercises, tender offers, liquidity events and multi-entity filings. Fifteenth has a strong following among employees of Silicon Valley technology firms. Its AI-focused tech builders join Mercer Advisors, as the firm continues to invest in leading talent who want to do meaningful work that bridges financial services and technology. 

Tax services remain in high demand among clients, and Fifteenth’s technology and team add both capacity and capability. More than half of the ultra-high-net-worth clients who join Mercer Advisors are actively seeking tax capabilities as part of a unified offering, a trend the firm attributes to rising wealth complexity and a wave of executive equity and liquidity events across fast-growing companies. Tax professionals now make up roughly one in 10 of the firm’s employees, a share expected to reach one in eight by the end of 2026. Fifteenth’s technology can help those teams support more clients with complex needs, consistent with the firm’s approach of adding high-quality, fiduciary-minded professionals and specialized capabilities that deepen what it can deliver to clients over the long term. 

Moment 

Moment, the AI partner for investment management, announces today that Jason Broder, founder and former CEO of SIMON, has become a strategic advisor to the company's leadership. 

Broder founded SIMON in 2012 while at Goldman Sachs, where it became the first technology platform to deliver structured investments to the desktops of financial advisors. In 2018, he led SIMON's spin-off into an independent company backed by a consortium of banks. By 2021, the platform was used by more than 100,000 financial professionals across the country. Broder served as SIMON's CEO until its acquisition by iCapital in 2022, subsequently serving as iCapital's Chief Product Officer. Earlier in his career, he spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, ultimately becoming a Managing Director and Head of the Private Investor Product Group. 

NDEX Systems 

NDEX Systems is expanding its relationship with Schwab Advisor Services (“Schwab”) to offer registered investment advisors (RIAs) its wealth management platform and data aggregation capabilities. The offering lets firms consolidate information from multiple custodians and asset types into one application, with the option to use the full platform or select individual functions that fit their existing technology. 

NDEX’s existing integrations with Schwab support automated daily feed file ingestion, single sign-on (SSO), client onboarding and trading. The company is working on further integration to support advisors working with Schwab. 

For firms managing client assets across multiple custodians, public markets and private investments, a complete portfolio view depends on bringing information from many sources together. NDEX ingests custodial data feeds and other financial records, then normalizes and reconciles that information for use across a firm’s systems and workflows. Always ensuring to be reconciled back to Schwab data and reporting standards. 

Nitrogen 

Nitrogen, an AI-powered technology provider for financial advisors, today announced that Osaic, one of the nation's largest providers of wealth management strategies, has approved its entire suite of advisor products, including all Nucleus AI capabilities, for use across its network of financial professionals. 

The approval gives Osaic advisors access to all six Nitrogen products: Risk Center, Research Center, Income Center, Tax Center, Legacy Center, and Insurance Center. Advisors can adopt the products that best fit their practices, with the flexibility to add more capabilities as their needs evolve. 

At the center of Nitrogen's suite is Nucleus, its agentic AI engine that connects products and completes tasks with advisor approval. Osaic advisors can now turn client statements into portfolios, generate retirement income illustrations, and transform tax returns into visual insights. Combined with Nitrogen's trusted analytics and persuasive visuals, these capabilities help advisors showcase the value of their advice in every client meeting. 

Orion 

Forms Logic, a cloud-based technology provider helping financial services firms automate data, documentation and compliance workflows, today announced a collaboration with Orion, a leading wealthtech platform for financial advisors, introducing a new capability to support streamlined transitions for Orion’s advisor clients. 

Orion will leverage components of Forms Logic’s Migrator solution, which provides advisors and transition teams with a more standardized process and additional safeguards as they move books of business onto the Orion platform. The technology is designed to reduce administrative friction, help transition teams manage activity at scale and allow advisors to spend less time on operational tasks and more time communicating with clients, addressing questions and maintaining continuity throughout the move. 

As advisor movement accelerates across the industry, firms are increasingly looking for solutions to help execute transitions with greater speed, accuracy and scalability. Migrator organizes transition data, identifies and pre-populates required paperwork, automates workflows and provides real-time visibility into progress, reducing the manual work required to move accounts to a new platform. 

Premialab 

Premialab, the leading independent platform for quantitative investment strategies (QIS), today announced a partnership with Aladdin, BlackRock's platform that unifies the investment management process, to accelerate the adoption of quantitative investment strategies (QIS) by bringing Premialab's specialist QIS data capabilities directly to common clients. 

QIS now play a central role in modern portfolio construction, and deploying them effectively requires sophisticated risk analytics and precise modelling. The partnership pairs Aladdin's capabilities with Premialab's deep QIS data and analytics expertise, giving common clients a more streamlined way to manage QIS exposures alongside the rest of their portfolios. 

Together, Aladdin and Premialab are advancing a shared industry priority: making QIS more accessible to institutions worldwide. Premialab's multi-asset, multi-region platform processes more than 15 million data points daily across over 8,000 investable systematic strategies, representing approximately USD 20 trillion in client assets under management. Its proprietary dataset and analytics provide detailed risk decomposition, factor attribution and scenario analysis. 

Simplicity Group 

Simplicity Group ("Simplicity"), a holistic financial planning firm combining the best of accumulation and protection strategies and solutions, today announced the appointment of Albert Cohen and Nandha Srinivasan as Simplicity Partners and EVPs of Securities Technology. In their leadership roles, Cohen and Srinivasan will lead Simplicity Securities' technology growth, driving platform scale and elevating the advisor experience. 

Albert Cohen brings over 25 years of experience in enterprise architecture, digital transformation, and product engineering across wealth management, brokerage, and banking. Before joining Simplicity, he held senior technology leadership roles at AssetMark, Cetera Financial Group, and Citibank, aligning technology investments with business objectives to deliver high-impact global applications. Throughout his career, he has built and scaled end-to-end platforms — including advisor and client portals, Investment Management products (such as tax-efficient optimization and direct indexing solutions), portfolio construction, and has integrated financial planning tools — spanning the entire financial services workflow. Mr. Cohen holds a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from University of Massachusetts Amherst. 

Nandha Srinivasan is a veteran technology leader with over 25 years of wealth management engineering experience across RIA, TAMP, broker-dealer, institutional, and retail sectors. Prior to joining Simplicity, he held senior leadership roles at AssetMark, Cetera Financial Group, BNY Mellon, and E*TRADE Financial, where he spearheaded platform modernization, integrated advisor/client portals, and drove business process automation. He specializes in setting strategy for global engineering organizations, building vendor-agnostic data and integration architectures across custodians and clearing firms, and leveraging AI to accelerate product delivery and operational efficiency. Mr. Srinivasan holds a Master of Computer Applications from the University of Madras and a BS in Mathematics. 

Tradestation Securities 

TradeStation Securities, Inc. (“TradeStation”), the brokerage firm built for active equity and derivatives traders, today announced an integration with QuantWheel*, an options† trading platform for directional and income-focused traders. The integration builds on TradeStation’s reputation for delivering high-end trading technology and reliable brokerage services within an advanced trading ecosystem and underscores the company’s commitment to sophisticated traders. 

Through the integration, TradeStation clients can analyze opportunities, trade, and track positions without leaving QuantWheel. Directional traders can review dealer positioning and live options flow, then find calls, puts, and spreads, while income-focused traders can screen for cash-secured puts, covered calls, and credit spreads and see which positions are near assignment. Orders the trader approves go directly to TradeStation for execution, with spreads and poor man’s covered calls (PMCCs) sent as a single order, and positions sync to QuantWheel’s options journal. 

QuantWheel also offers QW Intelligence, an AI assistant that uses a trader’s positions and cost basis to answer portfolio-related questions and perform recurring checks. The platform supports Model Context Protocol (MCP) and API connectivity with external AI tools and workflows. 

Vestmark 

Vestmark, Inc., a leading provider of wealth management technology and services, today announced a strategic collaboration with First Trust Portfolios (First Trust), a provider of investment products and advisory services, to expand access to customized model portfolios for the registered investment advisor (RIA) marketplace. 

Through the relationship, RIAs will be able to access a white-labeled, customizable experience for constructing and managing model portfolios using First Trust strategies. The collaboration combines First Trust’s investment capabilities with Vestmark’s portfolio implementation infrastructure, enabling advisors to tailor portfolios around individual client needs while managing them efficiently at scale. 

The offering will initially support exchange-traded fund (ETF), mutual fund and interval fund strategies and leverage Vestmark capabilities including trading, tax-aware portfolio transitions and ongoing tax management. Implemented through the Vestmark Model Marketplace, these capabilities are designed to integrate First Trust strategies into advisor workflows while supporting scalable, tax-aware portfolio implementation. 

Wealthbox 

Wealthbox, the #1 CRM software platform for financial advisors, today announced that Anand Sheth, founder and former CEO of Pulse360, has joined the company's product team. Anand will work on AI and enterprise features for the large RIAs, broker-dealers, and advisor networks that make up a fast-growing share of Wealthbox's customer base. 

Anand Sheth brings more than two decades of experience in the advisor world, first as an operator and then as a founder. He spent nearly 20 years at Ameriprise Financial in practice management, client service, and compliance roles, and later served as Chief Operations Officer of Confluence Wealth Management Group. In 2019, he founded Pulse360 to automate meeting prep, notes, follow-ups, and compliance records for advisors. The company was a 2021 WealthManagement.com Industry Awards finalist, launched AI-powered note-taking in 2023, and integrated deeply with the leading advisor CRMs, including Wealthbox. 

The hire comes as Wealthbox continues to expand up-market. Long the top-rated and most widely adopted CRM among independent advisors, Wealthbox has in recent years won a growing share of large RIAs, multi-office advisory networks, and enterprise broker-dealer platforms that have moved off legacy CRM systems in favor of a platform purpose-built for financial advisors. The company's AI lineup, including the Wealthbox AI Assistant, AI Notetaker, and AI Agents, has become a central reason enterprise firms choose Wealthbox over bloated, general-purpose alternatives. 

WealthFeed 

WealthFeed, a leading AI-powered end-to-end growth engine for financial advisors, today announced the addition of Form 5500 data to its platform, giving advisors another source of organic growth in the retirement plan market. Advisors can now search more than 780,000 retirement plans and receive alerts when new filings show changes that may signal a business opportunity. Because the plan data sits inside WealthFeed's existing platform, advisors can find warm introductions to plan decision makers and reach out through the same automated outreach they use for individual prospects. The addition extends WealthFeed's money-in-motion intelligence beyond individuals and households to businesses and plan sponsors. 

More wealth advisors are pursuing retirement plan business, often by working with the 401(k) plans sponsored by business owners they already serve. These plans can also provide a path to new individual wealth management clients. According to February 2026 research from FUSE Research Network, 65% of advisors surveyed said converting retirement plan participants into wealth management clients was easier than acquiring clients through traditional marketing or referrals. 

Employers that sponsor retirement plans file Form 5500 annually with the U.S. Department of Labor to report plan assets, participant counts, contributions and benefit payments. Larger plans also disclose certain service providers and their compensation. Although these filings are public, advisors have often analyzed them separately from the tools they use to prospect for individual clients. This separation makes it harder to compare plans and determine which ones to pursue.