Envestnet to Offer Pre-Qualified Loans on Client Platform

To provide a "holistic" approach to managing client portfolios, the firm's advisors soon will be able to offer pre-qualified loans.

Envestnet executives at NYSE.

With a single sign-on process, advisors on the Envestnet platform soon will have the ability to provide pre-qualified loan offers  — such as real estate, commercial and business loans and security-based loans  — to their clients.

The Envestnet Credit Exchange, to be operational in the second half of this year, has Envestnet partnered with Advisor Credit Exchange (ACE), which created an advice-driven program that supports advisors in providing loans to clients. The partnership was announced today.

The idea took hold over the past two years, Bill Crager, Envestnet’s CEO, told ThinkAdvisor. “We looked at the advice model, and how consumers pull together their financial lives,” he said. He noted they have separate banks, advisors and insurance brokers, typically none of which are connected. “We [wanted] to provide an infrastructure that integrated advice,” he said.

Recently the firm launched its insurance exchange, and the next step, said Crager, was “a credit storefront.”

Advisors will be able to enter the storefront from their computer, which allows “access to a streamlined screening process that generates real-time, immediately available loan offers for their clients with direct referrals to lenders,” according to Envestnet.

The hope is that throughout the client’s life stages — for example, from buying a home to sending kids to college to retiring — the integrated process allows the advisor to rebalance the client’s portfolio along the way. This includes opportunities and ease-of-access for loans for homes or businesses at a competitive rate, Crager said.

“The  concept is through a financial plan … and through our infrastructure, the advisor will be able to see that consumer’s ‘borrowability,’” Crager said. “We can optimize and save the client [money] with affordable, smart lending, at an advisor’s fingertips.”

This latest news follows a busy year of acquisitions for Envestnet, with its recent  $500 million purchase of MoneyGuide, its Tamarac unit’s purchase of Schwab’s Portfolio Center, and its Yodlee unit’s purchase of Abe AI.

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