Technology Brief – Marstone
Technology Brief – Marstone
Last week, Pershing’s Mark Tibergien announced that his firm is adding three B2B robo providers to its list of integration partners. The three are Vanare, SigFig, and Jemstep, which was acquired earlier this year by Invesco. Tibergien also announced that Pershing was moving to a more open platform with the launching of their API store.
There was little mention last week in published reports of Marstone, the B2B robo platform for advisors that Pershing announced was their initial robo partner almost a year ago.
I recently spoke with Margaret Hartigan, CEO of Marstone and Chris LaVine of Marstone to get an update. Hartigan told me that Marstone is finally live on the Pershing platform. Marstone was actually the first firm to make use of the Pershing API store. The Marstone relationship with Pershing is not an exclusive one, but all assets of Pershing clients that Marstone manages will be custodied at Pershing.
According to Hartigan, initial interest in the Marstone offering is very strong. Marstone is already in the process of onboarding clients, and they are engaged with multiple prospects. She says her firm initially assumed that independent RIA’s would be the early adopters of Marstone within Pershing, but in light of the Department of Labor Fiduciary regulations, a number of large broker-dealers are expressing a keen interest.
Given the lack of availability to advisors over the last year, a review of Marstone’s platform was not a high priority, but now that it has gone live, we hope to have a more comprehensive evaluation of the platform soon.
Stay tuned.
