For more than a decade, Advyzon has been taking the longer road — the fully integrated wealthtech firm builds all of its advisor tech from scratch rather than through integrating with other tech vendors.
"People thought we were a little crazy to attempt building all this ourselves because at the time, everybody was integrating. All the vendors integrate with each other," said John Mackowiak, chief revenue officer of Advyzon, while also acknowledging that strategy costs time. "You may see some small evolution over the next several years but at this point, the idea of integrating with 100-plus vendors, it's not going to work. You can't do it well."
Since the firm started in 2012 with a focus on reporting and billing solutions, it has continued to build out its own CRM, turnkey asset management program and document management system, to name a few. The firm has grown to roughly 1,600 advisor clients, including being a part of a newly announced deal with Fidelity Investments, which released a more affordable all-in-one tech stack bundled platform option for smaller RIA's on Aug. 5. Advyzon's operational and portfolio management software has been combined with eMoney's financial planning services onto Fidelity's brokerage platform Wealthscape.
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Name: Advyzon
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Size of Advyzon: Roughly 1,600 advisors are onboarded with Advyzon, which has 150 employees and is based in Chicago.
Products and services offered: Advyzon offers an all-in-one suite of tools for financial advisors that's designed to streamline operations and workflow. Specifically, Advyzon has built its own CRM system, portfolio management software, a client portal and mobile app, a document management system, and reporting and billing solutions. In recent years, the firm has added a turnkey asset management program, Advyzon Investment Management (AIM), and it offers digital account openings for custodians.
Who Advyzon aims to serve: Advisors and firms of all sizes as well as custodians.
What problems Advyzon tries to solve: When asked what Advyzon is trying to fix, Mackowiak said, "the problem we're solving is the tech stack" itself.
What that means in practice is that advisors have the ability to onboard clients, manage portfolios and respond to clients without having to log in and out of different programs to see custodial statements, emails and other client records. That ability comes in handy in moments of investor panic like the quick market drops on Aug. 5, he said.
"They've seen enough. They're nervous about the election, two wars going on, and they do not want to be fully invested," Mackowiak said. The advisor "can rebalance right from that screen."
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How Advyzon is different from competitors: Mackowiak said Advyzon follows the customer experience religiously, which is why they focused on building everything in-house so they could also integrate the various programs in one marketplace, essentially as a single sign-on.
"We've built everything in-house, and what that enables us to do is really tightly control that experience and make sure that when someone is logged into a client record, for example, whatever it is they want to do, it's all right there," he said.
Last year, the firm launched its Nucleus Model Marketplace, allowing advisors to access most of Advyzon's offerings like Advyzon Investment Management. They also have tight timelines where they make enhancements to the main platform every 60 days.
"We wouldn't have been able to accomplish that without having some of that core tech that was … built in a way that streamlined how we were going to roll out access to investment management capabilities for advisors," said Scott Smith, chief revenue officer of Advyzon Investment Management, who joined Advyzon in June to help grow AIM after leading the central division RIA Custody Sales at Goldman Sachs. "I think it's a differentiator in the marketplace."
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What does it cost: Pricing varies but the cost starts at $6,500 a year for up to 150 accounts and increases from there based on the size of the firm and type of service needed, Mackowiak said.
What's new for Advyzon: In the coming six months, Advyzon plans to launch more automation tools around workflows, Mackowiak said.
"Because we have built everything ourselves, we can do some really cool things around workflows and triggers and automations that we're able to take an alert from a custodian, for example, and trigger it into both touching CRM, touching client reporting," he said. "And we're the only technology platform that can do that."
The biggest challenge(s) going forward: Simply put, Mackowiak said, "the biggest challenge at this point is to not screw it up."
Meaning, he doesn't want to get distracted by vendor mergers and new technology hype that might not work in a streamlined way with other core platforms and tools.
"We have tremendous momentum right now. We have to focus on our clients and not become distracted," he said.
