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Technology > Investment Platforms

First Advyzon Conference Highlights Tech Updates and More

By Timothy Welsh

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What You Need to Know

  • On stage, Advyzon and some partner firms announced platform upgrades, integrations and related news.
  • GMO's Nebo Wealth will work with Advyzon Investment Management’s turnkey asset management offering.

After 10 years in the wealthtech space, platform provider Advyzon just staged its first conference. The event, which took place last week in Phoenix, drew a sell-out crowd of 400-plus guests to its technology demonstrations, integration discussions and networking sessions.

Advyzon’s “all-in-one” platform is now used by over 1,500 advisory firms, who — along with their custodial integration partners — are using its technology to drive efficiency, productivity and growth.

Started by the creators of Morningstar Office, Advyzon seems to be a shining star in today’s technology landscape, as some larger rivals have gone on acquisition sprees and now need to reconcile their resulting debt, manage layoffs, deal with executive departures and tighten their belts. This gives firms like Advyzon a rare opportunity to expand their business and move up market.

At the recent conference, Advyzon announced the launch of Advyzon 3.0, a platform upgrade that promises added functionality, artificial intelligence, advanced automation and new mobile capabilities.

Because Advyzon is built on a single source code, its end-to-end features (such as CRM, portfolio management, reporting, trading, rebalancing and more) are tightly bound, creating a unified user experience. This contrasts with the idea of a “best-in-breed” model where advisors cobble together their favorite applications via data integrations and often end up with clunky, non-integrated workflows.

“We’ve saved every click that our users have been making over the last decade to find better ways to enhance the user experience,” said Hailin Li, Advyzon’s founder and CEO.

This data aggregation effort has resulted in dozens of terabytes of information that it is now tapping into with advanced AI capabilities to unlock even more efficiencies and productivity for advisors.

As Advyzon plays an increasingly influential role in the advisor technology ecosystem, the major custodians are coming to see that they need to be more integrated with the firm’s offerings to stay on the forefront of advisor demand — and all were premier sponsors of the recent conference.  

Apex Advisory Solutions recently announced a comprehensive custodial integration that lets Advyzon users open, fund and start managing new accounts directly from the platform, for instance.

Cat Davies, the CEO of Innovayte — the rebranded custodian that used to do business as Equity Trade — highlighted the firm’s new integration with Advyzon on stage as another example of how custodians are leveraging the end-to-end functionality of Advyzon to get to market with a robust technology and custodial solution.

Also making a major product announcement at the conference was Nebo Wealth, GMO’s technology-driven asset management platform. Nebo Wealth says its technology allows RIAs to streamline and automate the process of delivering personalized portfolios at scale. It is partnering with Advyzon Investment Management’s turnkey asset management offering, with services that include trading, rebalancing, billing and reporting.

Joel Bruckenstein, head of Technology Tools for Today, and Bob Veres, publisher of Inside Information, shared the stage with Informa’s Shannon Rosic to discuss the latest industry developments, including the results of a recent advisor survey that reinforced how far Advyzon has come.

“Advyzon received the highest ratings for the all-in-one category for multiple years running, receiving ratings that are frankly unheard of,” Bruckenstein said.

Veres mentioned his renewed interest in the all-in-one category, after hearing from advisors for some time about their continued frustration with technology integration.

The conference was not all technology and demos. Sprinkled throughout were compelling keynotes from non-wealthtech leaders, like Pixar director Mathew Luhn. He regaled the crowd with his experiences while directing and animating hits like “Toy Story” and explained the importance of storytelling in everyday business interactions.

“Storytelling inspires people to take action, so the key to good stories is that they are memorable, impactful and personal. Only 5% of people remember a stat or chart or graph. However if there is a story attached to it, then that number goes to 65%,” Luhn said.

He added that his job is to “make people laugh or cry for a living.” Also, in all aspects of human interaction, “the best story wins,” Lunh said.

Timothy D. Welsh is president, CEO and founder of Nexus Strategy, LLC, a leading consulting firm to the wealth management industry. He can be reached at [email protected] or on X @NexusStrategy.

(Credit: Adobe Stock)

Timothy Welsh

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