Robos & Wealth

Moment, the company automating trading and portfolio management workflows for fixed income teams, has raised $36 million in Series B funding led by Index Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and others. Moment’s platform unifies trading, research, portfolio optimization, reporting, and risk and compliance in a single system, with a layer of automation that allows financial institutions to supercharge their fixed income teams. Leading financial institutions use Moment to: Execute thousands of trades in seconds with automated execution rules; Optimize tax-sensitive, multi-asset class portfolios across hundreds of thousands of accounts; Scan all of their accounts and trades in real-time for compliance violations using custom rules; Use AI-powered workflows to instantly generate portfolios from email requests, build transition proposals from PDFs in seconds, and produce client-ready reports with custom commentary. By embedding forward-deployed engineers with its largest customers, Moment co-develops multi-year transformation roadmaps while delivering near-term solutions in production. Dylan Parker, CEO and co‑founder of Moment said “These firms are partnering with Moment to co-create the future of fixed income – empowering their fixed income teams with a differentiated platform to win new business, unlock eight-figure revenue channels, and genuinely 10x their productivity.”

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For clients looking for precise control over their portfolios, direct indexing strategy can be a solid middle ground between the mass-market ETFs and high-maintenance stock picking, said Eric Croak, president of Croak Capital. “Direct indexing is really just owning the pieces of an index instead of the ETF shell,” he said. “So instead of one fund that tracks the S&P 500, you hold all 500 companies, or at least enough to mirror its performance.” For Tushar Kumar, co-founder of Twin Peaks Wealth Advisors in San Francisco, it’s his fastest growing strategy for client portfolios. Direct indexing gives his firm a toolkit that’s flexible, tax sensitive and aligned with the circumstances and priorities of each client. It works best when the investor has the interest and resources to make it worthwhile, said Trevor Johnson, financial planner and founder of Dream Weaver Financial Planning “Direct indexing can be a powerful strategy for certain investors who want more control, customization and potential tax benefits than traditional ETFs allow,” he said. The ability to offset gains in other accounts or funds and then donate the appreciated shares is powerful, said Rob Schultz, senior partner and wealth manager at NWF Advisory. “With the costs and minimums, there is a compelling case for those in higher tax brackets and with charitable inclinations,” he said. One of the biggest advantages of direct indexing is automated and systematic tax-loss harvesting throughout the year, said Kumar. “The platform continuously monitors for opportunities to harvest losses, which research has shown can be more impactful than year-end-only strategies,” he said. The ability to tax-loss harvest individual “losers” is a huge advantage, said Croak. What draws Jon Wingent, principal at Cerity Partners,  to direct indexing is the ability to truly tailor a portfolio to the individual. Direct indexing also defrays one of the inherent problems of using an index fund or ETF — inflexibility in taking advantage of losses in the underlying basket or fund, said Robert S. Jeter II, vice president and financial advisor with InFocus Financial Advisors. “For high-tax investors, it can be a great way to keep more of what you earn or compound over time,” he said. The ability to personalize a portfolio underscores another aspect of direct indexing: It can be incredibly useful for values-based investing, said Kumar. If a client is in a high marginal income tax bracket, direct indexing is worth considering to take advantage of short-term losses, which can offset $3,000 of ordinary income per year and can be carried forward to future tax years indefinitely, said Jake Skelhorn, partner and wealth advisor at Spark Wealth Advisors

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After President Donald Trump’s Republican allies raced to meet their July 4 deadline to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the legislation is on its way to be signed into law. Financial advisors and their clients can now take the rest of the year to plan for 2026 and beyond. The legislation extends and expands many provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and will have a massive impact on the rules for federal income taxes and estate planning, alongside other Trump administration priorities such as defense and border security appropriations, work requirements for Medicaid beneficiaries and an increase to the debt ceiling. Trillions of dollars in additional federal debt as a result of the newly passed legislation pose further questions for investors. Over the next decade, the bill will expand deficits by $3.2 trillion, after savings of $1.4 trillion on the overall cost of $4.6 trillion, according to the Penn Wharton Budget Model. Beyond the political upshot and inevitable arguments around the economic impact of the legislation, advisors and their clients will likely want to prepare for an array of new tax rules coming into effect as early as this year. No matter their political bent or opinion on the law, it is “exciting that they can take advantage of something like that,” said Mike Byrnes, founder of advisor growth firm Byrnes Consulting. Since clients will no doubt be asking advisors’ thoughts, it makes a great topic for, say, a client or prospect event, he noted.  “It just gives advisors another thing to be really proactive with their clients about,” Byrnes said. “Whether the client leans left or leans right, I think it’s a great opportunity to strengthen their relationship and just be in front of them.”

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Savvy Wealth, a digital-first platform for financial advisors centered around modernizing human financial advice, announced the successful close of a $72 million Series B funding round, led by Industry Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on private technology investments. Savvy will leverage the fresh funding to accelerate its core technology offering, hire top technical talent and expand recruitment of independent advisors and advisory teams to its affiliate registered investment advisor (RIA), Savvy Advisors. The firm will also accelerate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to build personalized knowledge bases on each client, providing predictive, real-time intelligence tailored to individual financial profiles and needs. Ritik Malhotra, Founder and CEO of Savvy Wealth. “At Savvy, we’re embedding AI inside the core of our CRM and advisor-facing tech stack to ‘10x’ their capabilities – unlocking predictive, real-time insights that strengthen human relationships. As modern advisors continue to choose independence, Savvy’s boutique culture, cutting-edge technology and full-service platform offers them a welcome home where their voice matters.” Recently surpassing $2 billion in assets under management, Savvy continues to build upon the sophistication of its offering, which includes solutions designed to meet the complex needs of high-net-worth investors. As Savvy expands its client base, it plans to evolve into a modern wealth management platform that offers more premium services to vertically integrate all of an individual or family’s financial needs.

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Vanguard Group grew into a $10 trillion financial colossus by pioneering simple, ultralow-cost investing. Its wildly popular index funds proved that people don’t need expensive portfolio managers to pick their investments. These days, the company’s most exciting new product is a striking departure from that playbook—a foray into the world of private markets, where investors pay steep fees for access to complex deals that promise high returns. Wall Street is feverishly embracing private markets and Vanguard, like other  giant money managers, wants a foothold in this booming business. A new fund it is developing with Blackstone and Wellington  Management will offer a mix of public and private assets. State Street, another big fund manager, joined with Blackstone rival Apollo Global Management to create a 401(k) target-date fund with approximately 10% exposure to private markets. BlackRock is aiming to launch something similar next year. The companies say they want to democratize investing, letting people place bets in areas like private equity and private credit that have long been restricted to pensions, endowments and plugged-in elites. With fewer publicly traded companies to invest in, people need to put money in private markets, they say. The investment firms have something to gain for themselves in this shift. After years of driving down fees, retail fund managers are nearing a wall as what they charge approaches zero . The chance to sell more funds that can charge higher fees would boost revenues for the likes of Vanguard and State Street, which pioneered exchangetraded funds. “They have been preaching low fees and competition, and now they’ve come around to the value of alternative investments in client portfolios,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys . The companies that create and manage the private funds—Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and others—are hitting their own wall as their privateequity funds , which own unlisted companies, stall. They have focused on private credit , which involves issuing loans to those same sorts of companies, to generate growth. The trillions in savings held by retail fund managers looks like enticing fuel for their businesses. “Everyone’s looking at Vanguard and saying ‘wow, they have a tremendous pile of gold, I wonder if they’d let us have a small slice’,” said Bob Brinker , publisher of a mutual-fund newsletter.

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Vanguard Group grew into a $10 trillion financial colossus by pioneering simple, ultralow-cost investing. Its wildly popular index funds proved that people don’t need expensive portfolio managers to pick their investments. These days, the company’s most exciting new product is a striking departure from that playbook—a foray into the world of private markets, where investors pay steep fees for access to complex deals that promise high returns. Wall Street is feverishly embracing private markets and Vanguard, like other  giant money managers, wants a foothold in this booming business. A new fund it is developing with Blackstone and Wellington  Management will offer a mix of public and private assets. State Street, another big fund manager, joined with Blackstone rival Apollo Global Management to create a 401(k) target-date fund with approximately 10% exposure to private markets. BlackRock is aiming to launch something similar next year. The companies say they want to democratize investing, letting people place bets in areas like private equity and private credit that have long been restricted to pensions, endowments and plugged-in elites. With fewer publicly traded companies to invest in, people need to put money in private markets, they say. The investment firms have something to gain for themselves in this shift. After years of driving down fees, retail fund managers are nearing a wall as what they charge approaches zero . The chance to sell more funds that can charge higher fees would boost revenues for the likes of Vanguard and State Street, which pioneered exchangetraded funds. “They have been preaching low fees and competition, and now they’ve come around to the value of alternative investments in client portfolios,” said Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys . The companies that create and manage the private funds—Blackstone, Apollo, KKR and others—are hitting their own wall as their privateequity funds , which own unlisted companies, stall. They have focused on private credit , which involves issuing loans to those same sorts of companies, to generate growth. The trillions in savings held by retail fund managers looks like enticing fuel for their businesses. “Everyone’s looking at Vanguard and saying ‘wow, they have a tremendous pile of gold, I wonder if they’d let us have a small slice’,” said Bob Brinker , publisher of a mutual-fund newsletter.

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Artificial intelligence-powered offerings in wealth management regularly hammer home one benefit they provide in particular: saved time. “Advisors are saving 10-plus hours per week on average by leveraging AI to streamline their client meeting process,” said Startup Zeplyn CEO Era Jain. “That’s about 500-plus hours per year or 20 new clients they can service per year.” These time savings are primarily spent on business development and relationship building. Solo advisor Kelly Klingaman, founder of Kelly Klingaman Financial Planning, said she wanted to utilize an AI notetaker in her business so she could be more present during client meetings. Having tried out a few AI notetaking tools so far, Klingaman said Fathom is “affordable, easy to use and dynamic” — and it saves her between five and eight hours per week. For Gregory Furer, the founder and CEO of Beratung Advisors, one of the biggest game changers has been the integration of Holistiplan tax planning software. “With AI, we can now analyze a client’s tax return and generate insights in just three minutes — a process that used to take an hour and was prone to human error,” he said. From there, Furer said they create tax modeling for clients in 20 to 30 minutes, compared to the two to three hours it used to take. He said his firm is also leveraging AI within eMoney, its financial planning software, “to instantly calculate the amount of life insurance needed to maintain client-defined success rates and goals.” “This real-time decision support enhances the accuracy and speed of our recommendations,” he said. Like Klingaman, Furer has been utilizing AI for meeting notes; he uses Jump.  “As the tool continues to learn our systems and language, it could eventually save five to 10 hours per week of high-value planner time, potentially becoming our most cost-effective AI tool.” Rob Schultz, senior partner and wealth manager at NWF Advisory said he also uses Jump for meeting summarization. “The quality of the notes was significantly better than I ever wrote down during a meeting and it allows me to focus solely on the client in front of me. It saves me time in the post-meeting review, probably 30 minutes per client interaction.” Samuel Flaten, co-founder of Narrow Road Financial Planning said he mainly uses ChatGPT, which he calls a “total game-changer.” In addition to the writing assistance, Flaten said he has also trained a custom GPT with “everything I know as a CFP” to workshop ideas, stress-test strategies and pull in creative alternatives he might not have considered. Across his average weekly schedule of 20 meetings, Schultz said his use of Jump AI frees up about 10 hours. Jain of Zeplyn recommends that firms optimize their scheduling by identifying advisors who successfully use AI to save time, establishing their best practices and training or coaching other advisors.

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Arete Wealth, a leading broker-dealer and registered investment advisory firm, has partnered with Orion, a leading provider of wealthtech solutions for financial advisors and enterprise firms. The strategic collaboration aims to enhance advisory services and streamline operations for Arete Wealth’s Corporate RIA and affiliated Independent RIAs. Orion’s platform integrates portfolio management, reporting, trading, compliance, and client engagement tools, enabling financial professionals to drive efficiencies, improve client experiences, and scale their businesses effectively. Arete Wealth’s new partnership with Orion is a significant step in its strategy to provide advisors with the most innovative tools available, ensuring they can optimize their practices and better serve their clients. The partnership comes at a time of substantial growth for Arete Wealth, which has nearly doubled its Advisory Assets Under Management (AUM) since 2022. Orion’s platform will play a crucial role in supporting this trajectory, delivering seamless integration, advanced analytics, and superior client engagement capabilities to Arete’s growing network of financial professionals.

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