Welcome to the October 2025 issue of the Latest News in Financial #AdvisorTech – where we look at the big news, announcements, and underlying trends and developments that are emerging in the world of technology solutions for financial advisors!
This month’s edition kicks off with the news that Origin has launched a new, direct-to-consumer “AI financial advisor” that gives advice on budgeting, provides investment recommendations, and creates future planning projections and suggests strategies, all for $1 for the first year and $99 thereafter – but while Origin is unlikely to threaten human advisors (since it’s primarily geared towards DIYers who wouldn’t be likely to hire a human advisor to begin with) the big question is whether it will be able to solve the client acquisition cost problem that has beleaguered many low-cost planning tools in the past (including the robo advisors of the 2010s)
From there, the latest highlights also feature a number of other interesting advisor technology announcements, including:
Long-running equity compensation software StockOpter has been acquired by Grantd, a new startup that plans to refresh StockOpter’s software with a more modern, AI-driven interface – which may be more about acquiring StockOpter’s existing user base and data than it is about the software itself
Rebalancing platform RedBlack is being relaunched in the U.S. six years after being acquired by the asset manager Invesco (and being subsequently folded into the mainly UK-focused Intelliflo platform), bringing back what is now one of the only standalone rebalancing tools on the market – raising questions about whether RedBlack will find a specific niche focus not served by more comprehensive portfolio management platforms like Orion, or whether this is simply the prelude to another acquisition that would incorporate RedBlack into another all-in-one solution?
AI-powered prospecting tool Wealthfeed has announced a strategic partnership with Broadridge, which will take a minority stake in Wealthfeed and incorporate its AdvisorStream marketing automation tools within the Wealthfeed platform – which on one hand makes sense as a partnership that allows advisors to both identify and vet prospects and subsequently market to them as well (since not all of them are likely to say “yes” right away), but on the other hand suggests that the market for standalone prospecting tools is getting crowded enough that there is pressure to add features, partner with other solutions, and (perhaps) ultimately be acquired by more comprehensive marketing platforms
Read the analysis about these announcements in this month’s column, and a discussion of more trends in advisor technology, including:
How standalone advisor-specific AI notetakers are beginning to experience price compression amid the debuts of Altruist’s Hazel and Wealthbox’s integrated AI notetaker, both of which are selling at around $50 compared to the $120+ originally charged by standalone tools – leading tools like Jump and Zocks to introduce lower-cost “basic” pricing tiers and pack more features into their premium offerings to justify their ongoing value in the face of cheaper alternatives
How Slant is creating a new CRM that aims to use AI to help advisors build better client relationships, from surfacing “memories” of key client information at opportune moments to sending “nudges” to the advisor to follow up on pressing tasks to including its own integrated AI notetaker – showing how, by using the things that AI is good at, an AI-native CRM can be centered around actually managing client relationships rather than simply storing data
And be certain to read to the end, where we have provided an update to our popular “Financial AdvisorTech Solutions Map” (and also added the changes to our AdvisorTech Directory) as well!
*To submit a request for inclusion or updates on the Financial Advisor FinTech Solutions Map and AdvisorTech Directory, please share information on the solution at the AdvisorTech Map submission form.
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