As RIAs firms increasingly seek ways to streamline operations and enhance client outcomes, understanding how to maximize technology becomes critical. We spoke with Blake Wood, Head of Platform Strategy at Envestnet, to explore how firms are leveraging Envestnet’s integration capabilities to transform their practices and deliver more impactful results for their clients.
Which aspects of Envestnet’s platform have made the biggest difference for advisors and their clients?
We’ve found advisors using the integrated systems within Envestnet’s Wealth Management Platform often experience a productivity boost. These systems encompass financial planning, research, proposal creation, account opening, trading, reporting, risk management, and compliance tools. The boost in productivity is further enhanced when expanded to our integrated third-party systems, which include CRMs, alternative investments, insurance, and custodial platforms.
As advisors deepen their usage of the Envestnet ecosystem, the next significant lift arises from our Insight Engine. This AI-driven engine proactively delivers opportunities for advisors to service clients and improve outcomes through a growing number of insights.
One of the most substantial impacts we observe occurs when firms embrace managed accounts when deemed to be in a client’s best interest. Whether using third parties or outsourcing the trading of their portfolios, this enables advisors and their staff to redirect their time towards higher-value, revenue-generating activities.
How are you strengthening integration on Envestnet’s Wealth Management Platform?
Our strategy is two-fold. First, we aim to integrate with outside technology at a deeper, more meaningful level for firms and their advisors. This goes beyond implementing surface-level data feeds that merely share information. Instead, we’re focused on creating deeply functional integrations that connect key processes across Envestnet and partner systems to eliminate manual steps and streamline advisor workflows. It's not about amassing numerous integrations; instead, we prioritize understanding what matters most to our clients and enabling access to the capabilities that support their specific business needs.
Second, we continually strive to enhance integrations within Envestnet, making planning a core aspect of the investment and advice process. By embedding insights into meaningful interaction points for both advisors and their clients, we ensure the right information is available at the right time with fewer clicks.
Currently, we support hundreds of integrations across client and third-party systems1 and handle 30 million+ API calls each month.2 We expect this number to keep growing, driven by our incredible scale and ongoing investment.
What factors does Envestnet take into account when evaluating a potential integration partner?
There are several key factors:
- Problems Solved: We assess whether the partner's FinTech tool addresses a significant challenge and adds value to the advisor's advice process.
- Advisory Persona Alignment: It's crucial that we serve the same advisory persona to ensure a cohesive and synergistic relationship.
- Outcome Improvement: We evaluate how the solution enhances outcomes for both advisors and their clients, focusing on the return on investment for key stakeholders.
- Stability and Scalability: The partner must be stable, reliable, and compliant, with the ability to scale effectively.
- Feature and Technical Roadmap: The partner's roadmap should align with our growth plans, allowing us to evolve together.
- Common Clients and Prospects: Identifying common clients and prospects is essential to avoid the pitfalls of the "if we build it, they will come" model, which is often fraught with failure and disappointment.
What does the future of integrations on the Envestnet platform look like?
We’ve made significant strides over the years in modernizing our Developer Portal and integration capabilities, and we continue to expand them for new use cases and opportunities. Envestnet remains focused on what we excel at, adding integrated capabilities to tools and products that deliver exceptional user experiences to our advisors and the families they serve.
We continue to invest in fully bundled and unbundled solutions. It's exciting to see the new ways we can support emerging investment technology, leveraging massive amounts of data for insights and actions, both within and outside of our platforms. We're also exploring ways to enhance the prospect journey and help advisors collect and convert prospects at a higher rate, thereby improving firms' organic growth and inorganic growth simultaneously.
To learn more about our connected wealth management experience, please visit https://www.envestnet.com/wealth-management/software
