Axos Clearing, the clearing and custody arm of Axos Financial, this week announced a strategic partnership with Envestnet.
The partnership will see Envestnet's managed account solutions integrated into Axos Clearing's Axos Complete, its workstation for registered investment advisers, hybrid advisers and independent broker/dealers. (Axos itself already provides trade execution, account management and compliance tools for its client firms.)
The new partnership and integrations with Envestnet will help simplify portfolio management, enable Axos to automate portfolio rebalancing and reporting, and ultimately allow the firm to offer a broader menu of investment options.
For example, although this partnership does not include access to Envestnet's partnerships with BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Franklin Templeton and State Street Global Advisors, which were announced in Junehowever, it will create the technological plumbing to allow them to turn on, according to both David Crowexecutive vice president and head of Axos Clearing, and Molly Weiss, group president of wealth management platforms for Envestnet. (In October, Franklin Templeton announced the first part of its expanded partnership with Envestnet to offer custom tax-managed strategies at scale through its Canvas Custom Indexing platform.)
“It's really about delivering the broader ecosystem and technology and capabilities and service in as synergistic a way as possible,” Crow said of the new partnership with Envestnet. “At the end of the day, it's about choice, about giving firms the ability to say 'I want to manage my (investments)' or 'I'm the manager and sponsor' all the way through and including all the produce and contractors. Asset Manager Options.”
He said that while it is not immediately available, his technology team and Envestnet were working toward introducing an early version of the integration by the end of the year or early in the first quarter of 2025.
“This is how our customers will access this great new capability and the products available through it,” said Crow.
Envestnet's Weiss said that with the industry increasingly moving toward fee-based models, it's important to provide the technology to support managed accounts. Also important is what asset managers can bring, making it easier for firms like Axos to access networks of asset managers, sophisticated tax overlays and other capabilities.
“It's very representative of what we're hyper-focused on at Envestnet,” she said.
“This is a great example of Envestnet's secret sauce, integrating into someone who has a great custodial and clearing offering,” she added.
Crow said that in addition to the managed account announcement, Axos has on its roadmap the addition of hybrid RIA and IBD banking services.
“In the not too distant future, you will also be able to see and bank (from the Axos Complete platform), as we are part of a larger organization that has retail banking and we are based on our base. skills in the bank,” he said, referring to Axos Bank.
Axos Clearing currently over $33 billion in assets across 65 IBD and 233 RIA clients.