Savvy Advisors, a New York-based RIA that leverages a proprietary technology platform built by fintech parent firm Savvy Wealth, has added Fidelity as a custodian along with Charles Schwab as the new firm continues to recruit advisors across the country to worked remotely.
Ritik Malhotra, co-founder and CEO of Savvy Wealth and Savvy Advisors, said potential advisor recruits asked to keep their clients on the Fidelity platform and that having multiple custody options was always the plan.
“We started the process around September,” he said. “And very soon after that, maybe a month and a week, we were fully operational and ready to go. Fidelity has a great team that really worked with our operations team to get it running smoothly, but we always knew it was going to be a multi-custody platform. It was not an 'if' but a 'when'.
“So we built it to be able to integrate all the different data sources and all the things you have to build to support it, which made the whole process easier. Building all the infrastructure for our first guardian took much, much longer.”
Incorporated July 2021, Savvy Wealth raising venture capital funds before officially launching the affiliated RIA next summer to create an all-in-one wealth management firm backed by responsive, cutting-edge technology. The platform is built around a personal advisor and CRM dashboard called Co-Pilot and includes a direct indexing tool presented last year as well as a new part of investment managementfinancial planning through an “active, real-time” integration with eMoney and a comprehensive database of alternatives compiled by in-house researchers.
After ending 2023 with 12 advisors and nearly $500 million in recruited assets, Savvy recently welcomed three new advisors, bringing the growing network to 15 and adding approximately $100 million in client assets.
Based in Central Arkansas, Dustin Parsons previously spent 13 years at Arvest Bank and has experience in banking, lending, investing and insurance. Originally a personal banker, he became a client advisor to Arvest Wealth Management in 2017. With expertise in advising clients who have come into sudden wealth, Parsons focuses on helping build and manage retirement, investment and estate plans.
On the California coast, north of San Diego in Del Mar, Aaron Wiegman joined Savvy from Financial Sense Wealth Management, where he spent the past five years. As a board member of the San Diego Chapter of the Financial Planning Association, his career includes six years with Saybrus Partners, two with Oakwood Asset Management, five with Del Mar Financial Partners and three with Thrivent Financial.
“I've been looking for the right partner to support my clients' financial goals and the growth of my practice,” Wiegman posted on LinkedIn last month. “Savvy provides the tools and resources I need to focus on my client relationships and their financial success.”
About two hours north of Wiegman in Beverly Hills, California, Arynton Hardy brought his freelance practice to the Savvy platform. Before starting Hardy Capital Investments in April 2019, he spent two years as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, after more than three years as an analyst for The Pacific Group. Hardy will continue to operate under its namesake brand.
“The RIA entity is not coming with him because all the services he would need to be able to operate are provided by us, but he is still the face and the brand in front of those clients,” Malhotra explained. He noted all customers have already switched to Savvy.
“We are thrilled to partner with these experienced and passionate advisors who can effectively use our technology to unify every aspect of their clients' financial lives,” said GinaRose Galli, Head of Savvy Wealth Growth.
Malhotra noted that a vital aspect of the evolving platform is its reliance on advisor feedback.
“We've actually expanded the feedback loop in the development of the innovation platform,” he said. “About a year ago, a lot of it was just internal feedback that advisors were giving in structured weekly meetings to the product and operations teams. help with development, and then ad hoc feedback here and there.”
As capabilities have been added, Slack communication channels now facilitate a continuous flow of information between specific service teams and the advisors using those services.
“It's both proactive and reactive,” Malhotra said. “Advisors can suggest that something is not working well in the workflow and we are able to jump on that. And each of those teams can go to them and figure out what would make it easier to adopt or make it easier for their customers to understand, which actually makes us better at understanding those interactions. ”
Centralized services such as investment management are not mandatory for smart advisors. However, some have been directly involved in the development of proprietary models that Malhotra said have become popular.
“Whenever customizations are needed, that's part of the program,” he added. “They can work on products to enable that as well.”
Innovations in use for the coming months include product enhancements around investment management, practice management and lead conversion.
“We are now hitting the 2s and 3s version,” Malhotra said. “These improvements are based on advisor feedback on things they've been using now for several months and in a number of different use cases.”
Malhotra, named as one of the WealthManagement.comS ' Ten to watch for 2024, expects to triple its headcount this year to more than 50 across consulting, product, operations and marketing. He declined to say whether Savvy has reached the $500 million AUM mark, but said he expects to share more about the firm's progress later this year.