Advisors trying to keep abreast of generative AI developments should note that Amazon this week added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic.
For those unfamiliar, Anthropic is a start-up that competes with other big names in generative AI development, including OpenAI and Google.
Just six months ago Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, and the latest capital injection completes Amazon's $4 billion total investment with the AI firm.
All of this could be relevant to consulting shops, because part of Amazon's rationale has been to be able to offer access to sophisticated AI tools to customers of its massive cloud hosting business.
Numerous improvements to interactive brokers
Interactive Brokers announced and rolled out a number of updates to its Advisor Portal this week.
Among these are improvements to its trading capabilities, which now support advisor allocations, where advisors can create “allocation groups” in the Advisor Portal (which serves as the custodian's CRM) or Trader Workstation without having to to move between applications.
A new folder structure has been added to the IB Message Center to help advisors more easily track and organize their communications with clients. This includes improved message classification and improved search and sorting tools.
Electronic billing has been updated to allow RIAs to bill new clients for a limited time after accounts are opened or funded, after which standard logic will be applied to the client's account.
The Custodian has made it easier for RIAs to gather the information required for filing their Forms ADV with a new Form ADV worksheet that automatically populates the information.
There have also been improvements added to DocuSIgn, as well as improvements to updating beneficiaries in IRA accounts and improvements to client management models, among others.
We hit only a handful of the highlights; you can read prepared statement for the full list.
FP Alpha and PreciseFP Strategic Partnership
PreciseFP's customer engagement and data collection platform (a part of Docupace) collaborated with FP Alpha to deepen the integrations between the two. This will assist advisors using financial planning software that is not currently integrated with FP Alpha, allowing them to access and automatically populate client data from that planning software directly into FP Alpha platform.
These integrations will allow FP Alpha users to sync data with widely used financial planning tools including RightCapital and eMoney Advisor. Data and documents can be seamlessly fed into FP Alpha's AI-driven technology that reads clients' tax returns, wills, trusts and insurance policies, and then summarizes key data and can identify actionable planning insights.
PreciseFP has over the years developed more than 30 integrations with other advisory technology platforms, including eMoney Advisor, Redtail CRM, RightCapital, Wealthbox and many more.
Eaglebrook Advisors expands partnership with Franklin Templeton
Advisors Eaglebrook and Franklin Templeton have put together a new managed Bitcoin and Ethereum separately managed account strategy.
Active asset manager Franklin Templeton has launched the Franklin Templeton Digital Asset Dynamic actively managed investment vehicle that the firm hopes will outperform a market-cap weighted portfolio that includes Bitcoin and Ethereum. The asset management firm is offering the model to Eaglebrook on a non-discretionary basis. Advisers planning to use SMA will also be able to include an automated tax overlay.
With the new strategy, both firms are looking to offer advisors working with high net worth investors a better option for tax optimization. Eaglebrook's platform has built-in tax optimization strategies that proactively identify opportunities to reduce or defer capital gains tax liability.
In 2022, Franklin Templeton introduced two digital asset SMA strategies via the Eaglebrook platform: Franklin Templeton Digital Assets Core and Franklin Templeton Digital Assets Core Capped.
Franklin Templeton is also an investor in Eaglebrook, having added $2.5 million in additional funding following the latter's $20 million Series A funding round in early 2022.
Eaglebrook, which counts Dynasty Financial Partners, Mariner Wealth Advisors and Halbert Hargrove Global Advisors among its clients, works with more than 700 advisors and has more than $225 million in assets under management, according to the firm.