Former Focus Financial M&A head joins board of RIA startup Savvy Wealth: Wealthtech Weekly

Savvy Wealth Advisory Board Member Vamsi Yadlapati (left) and Savvy Wealth CEO Ritik Malhotra.

Technology-focused RIA startup Savvy Wealth has added some veteran M&A experience to its advisory board. 

On Tuesday, the New York-based firm announced Vamsi Yadlapati as its newest board addition. Yadlapati most recently served as managing director and co-head of M&A at Focus Financial Partners.

According to the company, Yadlapati's expertise in cultivating advisory firms will bolster Savvy's ability to offer marketing, compliance and back-office solutions to its advisors. Since leaving Focus, Yadlapati has remained active in the industry by sitting on a number of boards and serving as a consultant and advisor to "many of the largest RIA transactions that have come to the market."

"Being at the forefront of innovation is where I thrive, and I am excited to once again be a part of a promising new venture with Savvy," Yadlapati said in a statement. "The team's intelligent approach to modernizing the industry resonated with me right away and I'm confident that, working together, we can shape the advisory industry for the better."

Ritik Malhotra, co-founder and CEO of Savvy, told Financial Planning that he first connected with Yadlapati in 2021 via one of the company's lead investors as it was getting off the ground.

A year later, they two agreed to speak on a more formal basis, and began to speak for about an hour each month so that the new CEO could gather guidance and advice from the M&A leader.

"And then finally, after almost six plus months of that, we said let's maybe formalize this even further," Malhotra said. "It's really getting his experience from both running the Focus M&A team which is notorious and kind of built the industry, and learning all the things that worked and what didn't. Over the years of building companies, one of the things you learn is that there's no extra points for doing things yourself. So I think we get a decade-plus of that experience in a very short amount of time so we can avoid the pitfalls." 

Savvy's addition of Yadlapati to its advisory board is the latest announcement from the startup that has hit the ground running since its founding in July 2021. In April, Savvy launched Savvy Direct Indexing, an in-house solution that enables its advisors to offer tax-optimized, risk-adjusted, and personalized portfolios. 

Savvy has also attracted backing from prominent venture capital firms including Index Ventures, Thrive Capital, The House Fund and Brewer Lane Ventures. The firm secured $18 million in funding in under a year, including an $11 million series A-1 fundraise in November 2022.

"Savvy is at the forefront of driving meaningful change in an industry that has been stagnant for too long," Mark Goldberg, general partner at Index Ventures, said in a statement. "We are confident that with Vamsi's expertise, Savvy will continue to push boundaries and redefine the industry for years to come."

Commenting on what feels like the "overnight success" of his company, Malhotra told Financial Planning that he tries to keep their rate of growth in perspective while also remembering that it is by design. 

"I think we often get tied up into, you know, how do we go faster? How do we make sure that we're building the right products for our advisors? And how do we kind of continue executing?" he said. "It has been kind of surprising to see how quickly we have been able to grow, but It's not by accident … the pace that we wanted to operate at was to go very quickly because we said this is such a burning opportunity. And if we can make something that's very compelling here and bring on the right folks at the same time, we can take advantage of this opportunity and also provide something that's much needed in the industry. 

"So it's always a good reflection to see how far we've come in a short amount of time."

Scroll down to get caught up on other recent fintech news you might have missed in our Wealthtech Weekly recap. And check out the previous edition here.

Tru Independence rolls out new 'experience as a service' platform to support advisors

RIA service platform Tru Independence on Wednesday announced the launch of a new service called truView that will power its developing experience as a service platform. And they're doing it with the help of a pair of familiar fintech names.

The $9.5 billion Portland, Oregon-based firm bills truView as a tool that gives breakaway and existing advisors a platform that combines behavioral finance, fintech and human capital to drive their growth.

Comprehensive technology platform Advyzon was chosen as the foundational chassis for truView, and advice engagement platform Lumiant will support the behavioral finance aspect of the platform. 

Tru leaders say the plan is to add additional partnerships that will live within the truView ecosystem as embedded technology.

Amit Dogra, president and chief operating officer of tru Independence, said experience as a service "is not a tru thing, it needs to be an industry thing." He said over the course of a year, his team spoke with hundreds of advisory firms, and a common piece of feedback is that while the industry has plenty of wealthtech options, interacting with it remains a time-consuming and overwhelming experience.

"To that end, we forged strategic partnerships with forward-looking fintech providers that are equally committed to shaping the industry, and thus clients' lives, for the better," Dogra said in a statement.

The news comes shortly after tru Independence added $1 billion multi-family office Seven Mile Advisory to its roster, and firm leaders say they are poised to make a series of additional big announcements in the coming months.

"When we talk to advisors about service excellence and our focus on the advisor experience, they want to know more about how we are delivering an experience as a service platform. When they see truView, they are blown away and it has led to the direct signing of four new teams, collectively totaling $2.5 billion in AUM, in just a few months," Dogra said. "It has served as a clear differentiator for us, and we fully expect this to be the biggest year in company history by a healthy margin."

Nitrogen, fka Riskalyze, releases inaugural advisor growth survey

As the transition from Riskalyze to Nitrogen continues, the Auburn, California-based wealthtech firm is keeping up with its commitment to try new things by conducting its first ever advisor growth survey.

More than 1,000 firm executives and advisors participated in the inaugural Nitrogen study that contrasts the successful behaviors of "hyper-growth firms" with those of low-growth wealth management firms across their sales, marketing and client satisfaction processes.

According to the study, participants identified many of the same challenges to growth. But hyper-growth firms — defined as those firms growing at more than 21% annually — exhibited different behavior than slow-growth firms.

Key findings include hyper-growth firms being more consistent users of front-office, marketing, risk alignment, proposal generation and CRM technology.

High performers are also more aggressive when it comes to marketing with 40% of hyper-growth firms report spending more than 6% of gross revenue on marketing annually.

After referrals, events like firm-hosted webinars were identified as the highest converting channel for hyper-growth firms. Slow-growth firms, meanwhile, rely almost exclusively on referrals.

"The harsh reality is that the majority of wealth management firms did not grow organically over the last 12 months, and market volatility has compounded the challenge of growing a firm," Craig Clark, the chief marketing officer at Nitrogen, said in a statement. "With this research, we were very deliberate to probe specifically into what fast-growing firms are doing differently from slower-growing firms. 

"What we have learned is that wealth firms are absolutely elite at guiding the financial decisions of their clients toward great outcomes. They are, though, not naturally great at marketing and sales and can benefit from emulating the strategies of successful firms."

The survey's 1,065 participants were recruited via email, social media and in-product messages for a study with the description "2023 Firm Growth Survey." The 50-question online survey was conducted in March 2023. In order to be included in the study, the respondents were required to be a financial advisor, a firm owner, or a firm executive.

The full study can be found by clicking this link.

Private Advisor Group adds Invesco as an investment strategist

Independent wealth management firm Private Advisor Group announced that Invesco is bringing its investment management expertise to the WealthSuite platform.

Advisors on the platform can now access curated investment strategies from Invesco alongside offerings from BlackRock, Fidelity Institutional Wealth Adviser, Orion Advisor Solutions and WisdomTree. 

Since launching in October 2022, WealthSuite has provided various investment strategies such as bespoke mutual fund, ETF and blended mutual fund/ETF model portfolios, along with custom indexing and tax-optimized solutions delivered through a separately managed account structure.

Invesco offers ten models on the platform across a range of investment risk objectives including exposure to taxable and tax-aware strategies, and active and passive implementation within asset classes. 

Invesco is available for advisors who custody with LPL and Fidelity. 

"The WealthSuite platform is a great avenue for advisors who want to scale their practice, create capacity, and centralize portfolio management functions," Verne Marble, Private Advisor Group's director of business development, said in a statement. "With the addition of Invesco to our in-house solution, advisors have more curated investment strategies they can choose from to support their clients' diverse investment objectives and grow their practices."

The Morristown, New Jersey-based Private Advisor Group had more than $25 billion in assets under management as of the end of 2022.
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