SEI has made its first strategic investment in AI developer and startup incubator TIFIN. The investment is meant to foster rapid iteration of new ideas between the two. This will also give SEI access to artificial intelligence technology developed by TIFIN.
SEI manages, advises or administers approximately $1.4 trillion in assets across its platform, which is used by several thousand advisors.
“Working with the right strategic partners during times of intense change can increase speed, confidence and agility,” Sneha Shah, head of new business ventures at SEI, wrote in a statement.
In July 2023, as part of the launch of TIFIN.AI, a subsidiary within TIFIN, previous investor JP Morgan made an additional investment in the firm. Terms of JP Morgan's investment, or the involvement of any other investors, were not disclosed.
TIFIN's last major capital increase was that closed a $109 million Series D funding round in May 2022. Franklin Templeton and Motive Partners joined investors Hamilton Lane, JP Morgan Asset Management, Morningstar and Broadridge.
Apex and Advyzon launch new integrations
It's been a busy few weeks for both Advyzon and Apex.
Most recently, the two announced new stewardship and integration features this week during Advyzon's inaugural conference in Phoenix, Ariz.
These integrations cover several processes and areas, from new account opening workflows to account funding, money movement, submission of custody fee files and FIX trading support.
In short, Apex has simplified these processes, allowing for live processing where possible and enabling advisors on Advyzon's cloud-based platform (which combines portfolio management, performance reporting, trading and rebalancing, portals on customer web, CRM, customer billing and document storage ) to initiate, say, a new account opening for a customer directly from Advyzon.
All customer data that resides within Advyzon's CRM will pre-populate the account opening form and can then be sent directly to the customer through the company portal for review, along with any additional information required, as well as a signature .
Similar efficiencies are built in to support other features as well.
Just a week ago, Advyzon Investment Management, the firm's TAMP, announced an integration with Nebo Wealth. A month ago, Apex launched the new Astra user interface during the T3 annual conference.
AssetMark will spend $60 million on technology in 2024
Turnkey asset management platform AssetMark held its fourth quarter earnings call this week.
During a recent one WealthManagement.com interview and again on this week's earnings call, Assetmark CEO Michael Kim was asked about a Bloomberg's December story that majority shareholder Huatai Securities Co. was exploring a sale.
Mum remains mum on the matter, as Kim said the company does not comment on rumors or stories of this nature. In response to Raymond James equity and capital markets analyst Patrick J. O'Shaughnessy for Huatai, Kim said the investor remained “very, very supportive of the business and the entire management team.”
From a technology perspective, Kim said he was excited about 2024.
“We're going to have over $60 million in our capital budget this year, last year it was about $45 million that we spent on technology and that's a significant increase and we're committed to it,” he said. WealthManagement.com.
TAMP supports over 9,300 individual financial advisors, serves over 250,000 households and has $108.9 billion in platform assets.