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June 09, 2021 at 03:17 PM
What You Need to Know
- The acquisition stands to help advisors attract and engage prospects and clients across key digital channels, Broadridge says.
- Initial opinions of fintech experts on the acquisition were decidedly mixed.
- Terms of the transaction were not provided.
Broadridge Financial Solutions acquired AdvisorStream in a transaction that Broadridge said Wednesday will expand its front-to-back office wealth capabilities and position it to serve growth-oriented advisors and firms looking to attract and engage prospects and clients across key digital channels.
AdvisorStream is a provider of digital engagement and marketing solutions for the global wealth and insurance industries.
Initial reactions from fintech sector experts were decidedly mixed.
Noting that Broadridge has been providing marketing tools to the wealth management industry for years, Joel Bruckenstein, president of Technology Tools for Today (T3), told ThinkAdvisor that AdvisorStream was a “welcome addition” to Broadridge’s lineup.
Calling AdvisorStream an “innovative marketing platform,” Bruckenstein said it is, “in my opinion, more attuned to the needs of independent advisors than Broadridge has been in recent years, so if it a great pickup for Broadridge. I think there are definitely some synergies to exploit.”
However, Doug Fritz, CEO and founder of F2 Strategy, said he loved Broadridge but had “zero idea why they’d buy this firm.” After all, he said, Broadridge has “not materially integrated any of their previous firms.”
Fritz speculated that Broadridge acquired AdvisorStream “because they want to have something in the ‘advisor digital’ space, but from the outside in: There’s zero chance this is going to make a difference to either AdvisorStream or Broadridge’s current or prospective firms.”
However, “if Broadridge commits to spending $2-5 million on integrating the tech somewhere (though I can’t think of where that would be…), I would change my mind,” he added.
Financial terms of the transaction, which Broadridge said closed on Wednesday, were not disclosed.
AdvisorStream’s advisor marketing platform helps advisors to “drive revenue and growth by providing personalized and consistent client communications,” Broadridge said.
