Products May 11, 2023

Investment Product and Service Launches

Savvy Ladies expands free financial helpline; GreenHill launches performance reporting solution; AI chatbot Mo debuts on Morningstar platforms; and more.

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Savvy Ladies Expands Free Financial Helpline  

Savvy Ladies LLC announced the mobile expansion of its Free Financial Helpline, supported by the Nasdaq Foundation. 

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The new mobile portal provides a personalized experience for on-demand access to pro bono volunteer financial professionals for women seeking answers to financial questions. 

“Women from all backgrounds face daunting barriers to financial security, including income inequality, a wide gap in retirement savings, and the impact of family and caregiving,” said Stacy Francis, founder of Savvy Ladies, in a statement. “Compounding the problem is a wide gender gap in financial literacy and confidence—consistent across women from all backgrounds, socio-economic levels, and generations. Savvy Ladies, with its new Helpline expansion, is changing that.”  

GreenHill Launches Performance Reporting Solution  

GreenHill Investment Reporting, an independent provider of investment performance reporting services, announced an enhanced solution for registered investment advisers. 

The solution enables RIAs to deliver an improved, personalized client experience by providing access to customizable reporting and analysis. 

“Retaining and attracting investors in the highly competitive financial services industry requires providing today’s increasingly savvy investors with a differentiated experience that builds client trust,” said Jack Curran, executive vice president of sales at GreenHill, in a statement. “Our investment performance reporting solution empowers RIAs to do just that by providing sophisticated reporting and analysis that enable them to provide expert insights and guidance that maximize portfolio performance outcomes.” 

AI Chatbot Mo Debuts in Morningstar Platforms 

Morningstar Inc. launched a beta version of its generative artificial intelligence chatbot named “Mo” across multiple Morningstar platforms.  

Mo is designed to summarize Morningstar’s independent insights in a conversational format for investors and investment professionals.  

“Mo is a digital research assistant that uses the power of the Morningstar Intelligence Engine to put Morningstar’s research just a question away,” said James Rhodes, Morningstar’s chief technology officer, in a statement. “We look forward to learning how people interact with the beta so we can improve and expand its capabilities to make the day-to-day investing experience better.” 

Mo is powered by the Morningstar Intelligence Engine, a platform that pairs Morningstar’s investment research library with Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. 

Envestnet PMC Launches ActivePassive ETFs 

Envestnet PMC has launched a series of ActivePassive exchange-traded funds. 

“Our mission has always been to provide investors with a single portfolio that marries the best attributes of both active and passive investing at a low cost,” said Dana D’Auria, co-chief investment officer and group president of Envestnet Solutions.  

The new ETFs will be featured in the ActivePassive PMC ETF Portfolios. The ETF allows financial advisers to access the combined strategy within cost-effective, tax-efficient, liquid and transparent investment vehicles. 

“Our ActivePassive portfolios and ETF wrapper options simplify the blending of active and passive investments for advisors, aimed at allowing them to devote more time to revenue-producing activities and helping to improve outcomes for their clients,” said Brooks Friederich, principal director of research strategy at Envestnet PMC. 

Orion Advisor Technology Goes Live With Industry’s First ChatGPT Integration 

Orion Advisor Solutions went live with a ChatGPT 3.5 series integration available in Redtail Speak, its compliant, real-time communication platform for financial advisers. 

“Redtail Speak’s first-of-its-kind integration with ChatGPT will allow advisors to have an assistive technology at their fingertips while keeping them in control of responding to clients,” said Brian McLaughlin, president of Orion Advisor Technology and the co-founder and CEO of Redtail Technology before its 2022 acquisition by Orion, in a statement. “This marks the beginning of Orion’s journey to integrate AI into our applications.” 

The integration builds upon the previous 20 text messages between the adviser team and client, incorporating the necessary context into the dialogue created by ChatGPT. Using artificial intelligence, the platform is then able to provide automatic prompts and recommended responses to client questions with vital knowledge of the adviser-client relationship.  

 

Deals and People May 11, 2023

Vestwell, JP Morgan Announce Partnership

Vestwell will bring its digital recordkeeping platform to JP Morgan's 401(k) product for small businesses. 

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J.P. Morgan partnered with digital recordkeeper Vestwell to expand access to the platform for advisers in support of the bank’s small-business 401(k) platform, the firms announced Thursday .

J.P. Morgan selected Vestwell to expand the available recordkeeping platform options for advisers at the firm and to provide greater support for Everyday 401(k), the small-business workplace savings offering for clients, according to the release.

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“As the retirement industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, we remain committed to offering best-in-class solutions for our clients,” said Steve Rubino, head of retirement at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, in the release. “Enhancing our offering by coupling a modern technology platform with an assigned client success professional, like Vestwell, will enable us to quickly and efficiently meet the increasing demand. Small businesses are seeking affordable and tech-forward retirement plans in record numbers, and we are proud to be able to deliver for them.”

Vestwell has experienced “unprecedented demand” from advisers that want to offer retirement plans to clients, Aaron Schumm, its founder and CEO, said in the release.

“These new partnerships and integrations signal the rapid growth across the savings industries with strategic interest from the world’s leading advisory and asset management firms,” Schumm said.

Vestwell had previously expanded its distribution partnerships with top advisory firms, including Commonwealth Financial Network and Cambridge, and investment researcher, according to the release, As Vestwell seeks to offer a “seamless recordkeeping solution for advisors and small businesses, the firm has expanded API integrations with leading payroll providers Gusto and Intuit QuickBooks.”

Vestwell serves 30,000 small businesses, 1 million retirement, education and healthsavers and accounts totalling $27 billion in assets in all 50 states, according to the company.

JP Morgan retained its small-business recordkeeping business, following the sale of the large-market recordkeeping division to then-Great-West in 2014.

A spokesperson for JP Morgan said, “We have 1,700 Everyday 401(k) plans funding or in onboarding [with] the typical Everyday 401(k) plan currently [at] less than 20 participants.”

Retirement plan offerings are growing in importance as more workers expect their employers to provide a plan. Almost three-quarters of workers (73%) agreed or strongly agreed that they expect employers to offer a 401(k) or 403(b) plan because of the tight labor market, and 98% of respondents think it is important for their employer to offer a retirement benefit for employees at the workplace, Vestwell research found in February.

Voya Financial Research shows a retirement plan is as important for employee retention as a competitive salary and work arrangement, according to November 2022 data finding that 60% of workers are more likely to stay with their current employer if they offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan.

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