Vise, an automated asset management platform that helps advisors build and manage customized portfolios for their clients, announced this week that it has hired Ross Znavor as president.
He is not new to Vise, having served as an executive advisor with the company for over a year. Znavor spent over two decades at BlackRock, perhaps of most interest to advisors are the years he spent as part of the team that built and developed the Aladdin Wealth Technology platform. He most recently served as Client Director for Latin America and also worked in Blackrock's portfolio management, institutional business and retirement groups and was good.
In his new role, Ross will help lead the company's strategic initiatives and oversee operational execution and go-to-market strategy.
Vise co-founder and CEO Samir Vasavada said Znavor's rare mix of experience — as someone who could dive deep into solving startup problems and as someone who has held leadership roles and helped close big deals with the world's largest asset manager – made him the perfect fit for his new role.
“Ross spent almost a year as an executive advisor, and we wanted to really get to know him ahead of time and build trust with the team, and it was a bit of a different recruiting process than you'd normally find at a startup,” said. Vasavada, referring to the direct senior executive hires many startups make, many of which don't pan out.
“On the personal side of things, joining (CIO) Runik (Mehrotra) and Samir and taking all the experience I've had—from being a consultant at Merrill Lynch and then all the years at BlackRock and as a founding member. building the Aladdin team”, said Znavor. “When I left BlackRock, I really had the opportunity to look back and think, 'Where did I have the most fun?' Building Aladdin's wealth technology business.”
During the last months, Vise has expanded its platform capabilities to support the needs of RIA aggregators in addition to its core market of independent RIA firms. Central to these platform capabilities is the ease with which Vise claims its technology can ingest an RIA aggregator's investment models, which include advisor and home office strategies, and in turn provide a unified workflow. for them and help them centralize their investment management operations.
“And it's working,” Znavor said of the crowdfunding strategy.
According to Vise, the platform's assets — which the company said include its assets under management for RIAs and assets on the Vise platform for aggregators — have grown to more than $3.5 billion, a 350% increase in assets year over year. year.
“Existing customers have grown significantly, more than market growth, but the growth in output has been from aggregators,” Vasavada said.
According to Vise's latest Form ADV, filed in mid-September, its assets under management for individual RIA firms are just over $1 billion (assets on the crowdfunding platform are not under Vise's management and should not to be reported there).
While he and Znavor said they could not yet name which aggregators were using Vise, their first announcement was imminent in the coming weeks.
“What I can say is that we have signed a large number of the largest RIA aggregators, several hundred billion in total assets,” Vasavada said.
In September, Vise announced that Andrew WaisburdDr.
Vise also announced that Larry Raffone, current chairman and former CEO of Edelman Financial Engines, has joined Vise as an executive advisor focusing on distribution and partnerships. At the same time, Chip Roame, founder of Tiburon Strategic Advisors and former chairman of Envestnet, signed on to serve as a strategic advisor.
Asked about the company's headcount, especially given the growth, Vasavada replied that it was more than 40 (there are pending hires). Almost all of them report to Vise's New York office every day, with only a handful, “three to four,” regularly working remotely.
He said that was one of the hard lessons the company learned when staff grew to more than 100: “It was difficult to operate remotely at that size.”
Vise was founded in 2016 by Vasavada and Mehrotra and has raised a total of $128 million in multiple rounds from investors. The most recent was 2021 $65 million Series C led by Ribbit Capital with the participation of existing investor Sequoia Capital.
The firm has experienced ups and downs in recent years. In mid-2022, it introduced major improvements to its AI-powered platform, including its tax and money management features, and later that year, cut half its staff.
“The good news is that we've been able to focus on those people that we have left, and because we've been able to downsize effectively, we've kept cash on hand and that gives us time to grow, ” said Vasavada.