Orion to Acquire Portfolio Stress-Testing Platform

What You Need to Know

HiddenLevers is a rival of popular risk management platform Riskalyze.
The firms “have the potential to deliver the industry’s leading tech-powered TAMP,” according to HiddenLevers.
Advisors will be able to see how combining models and strategies will affect investors' portfolio risk.

Orion Advisor Solutions is acquiring Riskalyze rival HiddenLevers, an Atlanta-based firm that operates a risk analytics and business intelligence platform.

Orion will add HiddenLevers applications to its solutions, making them “part of Orion’s core technology platform, enabling advisors to win new business and dispel investor uncertainties by magnifying the ability to generate proposals tailored to clients’ specific needs,” Orion said Tuesday.

For example, within Communities, Orion’s open-architecture model marketplace, advisors will be able to see how combining models and strategies will affect the overall risk profile of an investor’s portfolio, according to Orion.

Orion also intends to embed HiddenLevers’ capabilities within its business intelligence and compliance solutions, it said.

The stress-testing capabilities will give wealth management executives more insight into revenue and advisor performance while helping with regulatory compliance, according to Orion. M&A deal analytics will provide crucial intelligence to RIA consolidators, it noted.

Also, “as the lines blur between wealth and asset management, Orion sees HiddenLevers as a critical solution that will lift its turnkey asset management platform beyond the competitive fray,” it said.

‘Solving Investor Problems’

Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. The acquisition has not closed yet, but it is expected to be finalized soon, according to Eric Clarke, CEO and founder of Orion. The open application programing interface (API) architecture that Orion and HiddenLevers share are expected to make it easier for Orion to integrate the latter firm’s tech into the Orion platform.

APIs and deep integrations are “already in place” and “committed joint customers” have been “giving feedback,” so the “combined platform experience is expected to come to market quickly,” Orion said.

Explaining why Orion decided to acquire HiddenLevers, Clarke said in the announcement: “It’s time for tech providers to shift focus to solving investor problems, not just investment problems. The client experience needs to connect planning and investing to the discussions investors care about.

The Companies’ History Together

HiddenLevers first approached Orion in fall 2020 about a potential deal, according to Clarke, but the firms have worked together since 2009. Orion’s integration with HiddenLevers goes back to shortly after the latter firm’s founding that year.

Proposals built in HiddenLevers are already pushed through to Orion’s New Account Center. In 2019, HiddenLevers expanded the scope of its partnership to integrate Orion’s business intelligence components with HiddenLevers’ Risk Monitor.

HiddenLevers was founded by Praveen Ghanta, its CEO, and Raj Udeshi, its chief revenue officer. They will join Orion’s leadership team after the deal is finalized.

“Orion brings scale to our pace-setting functionality, and their approach to a tech-enabled advisor-client relationship matches our vision,” according to Ghanta. “Orion has always supported our tech innovations and thought leadership, so the combined vision will be unstoppable.”

Orion and HiddenLevers “have the potential to deliver the industry’s leading tech-powered TAMP,” according to Udeshi. “We are combining Orion’s TAMP infrastructure with our BI dashboards, portfolio insights, UMA client experience, and nimble development team. Working together, we can deliver on this vision quickly.”

Orion supports more than 2,200 advisory firms with $1.4 trillion in assets under administration and an additional $48 billion of combined platform assets on its open-architecture TAMP, it says.