Welcome to “Show Me Your Stack,” a series from Financial Planning in which we interview those who deliver financial advice to learn what tools they rely on to make it happen. Rising client expectations are driving the need for more powerful tech tools, and we’re digging deep to find out why advisors prefer certain solutions.
An opportunity to build a technology stack for a quickly growing multifamily office from scratch is rare, but it’s one Paul Algreen seized.
He is the executive managing director and chief technology officer at Cresset Capital in Chicago, which has $65 billion in assets under management (AUM) and 486 employees, 144 of whom are advisors.
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Ex-private equity executives Eric Becker and Avy Stein opened the firm in 2017. Cresset has grown rapidly since then by recruiting advisory teams from large Wall Street fixtures.
Algreen, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, came to Cresset in 2021 after several years as chief information officer and executive managing director at Janus Henderson. Before that, he was chief technology officer and managing director for Markit Group. He also spent more than a decade as a trader, portfolio manager and leader of the technology and analytics group for III Associates, a fixed-income hedge fund.
“I’ve always run my career at the intersection of investments and technology engineering,” he said. “So, Cresset seems like a cool opportunity to build a firm from the ground up.”
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Algreen was quickly given the ability to form Cresset’s technology philosophy.
“The unique elements at Cresset are contrasted with most RIAs that are left using stitched together, or worse, siloed tools, often provided by their custodians which leads to less favorable client and advisor experiences,” he said.
Oftentimes, Algreen said a firm’s stack is a mixture of technology debt, which prioritizes speed over quality, and new ideas.
“This was a blank slate,” he said.
Algreen said the firm is cloud-first, which means it can be innovated on top of.
“We’ve been innovating and building and trying to build the tech stack that will deliver a modern wealth experience for our clients,” he said.
Scroll down the slideshow to see what Algreen feels are some of the most important pieces of Cresset Capital’s tech stack.
