This article is the second in what I hope will be a frequent column that supplies readers with a quick overview of a product or service of interest. It is not designed to be a comprehensive review, but rather an informational piece that draws reader’s attention to something that I’ve recently taken a look at that interested me enough to share it with you.
Wealth Access – An Update
Wealth Access, a popular personal financial management and account aggregation platform, appears to be growing nicely. Assets on the Wealth Access platform now total $41 billion, a 57% increase year over year from 130 wealth management organizations, up from 85 last year, a 53% growth rate. Sales to these industry-leading RIA, broker/dealer, bank, trust, and family office firms last year were up 134%, representing broad adoption from clients, which doubled year over year to 16,000.
“What we are seeing is a wholesale embracement of account aggregation and digital wealth views by the wealth management industry,” said David Benskin, CEO of Wealth Access. “The macro industry changes hitting the industry, such as shifting consumer expectations, the fiduciary movement and the early success of the robo advisors are making these advanced communication technologies mission critical to advisors and their firms in order to remain competitive, provide a higher level of service and drive needed efficiencies in a much more challenging operating environment.”
The Wealth Access client portal platform provides a flexible solution for advisors and their enterprises. Through 60 “plug and play“ widget applications (net worth views, cash flow analyses, asset allocation charts, financial planning analyses and more), firms are able to integrate specific components to complement and extend their existing technology or deploy a complete custom solution for their specific needs.
Wealth Access uses an “aggregator of aggregators” technology approach to tap into visual-aggregated displays of clients’ entire financial situations, cash flow and budgeting, personal financial statements and integrations with financial planning systems through links to over 20,000 institutions via multi-tiered data sources.
Wealth Access was recognized with multi-awards in 2016, by both wealthmanagement.com’s industry awards program as the best Personal Financial Manager (PFM) for advisors, and Orion Advisor Services recognizing Wealth Access with its prestigious FUSE award for its innovative API usage in being able to share widgets across client portals.
On the product development front, Wealth Access rolled out a number of new enhancements to the platform in 2016, including:
More information about Wealth Access is available at http://www.wealthaccess.com