AssetMark is the latest turnkey asset management firm to buy its own financial planning software.
For $145 million, the Concord, California-based TAMP, which provides outsourced investment management and technology to independent financial advisors, will acquire Voyant, a financial planning software used by 20,000 financial advisors across 11 large financial institutions and 2,100 independent advisory firms. The transaction is funded with $120 million in cash and $25 million in AssetMark stock.
Though most of its customers are in the United Kingdom, Canada, and Ireland, Voyant does work with Lincoln Financial in the U.S. The acquisition will improve AssetMark’s own technology for independent advisors while creating opportunities to expand Voyant as a standalone company among financial institutions in the U.S., according to incoming AssetMark CEO Natalie Wolfsen. The company also sees an opportunity to grow AssetMark in the international markets where Voyant is already popular, Wolfsen adds.
These opportunities ultimately drove AssetMark’s decision to acquire Voyant rather than software more recognizable among U.S.-based advisors in the U.S., like Advicent or Next Capital, says a company spokesperson.
“Voyant has exhibited strong top line growth while also being a profitable company,” the spokesperson said in an email. “At the end of the day, this was simply the best deal for AssetMark’s advisors and shareholders.”
The deal comes just days after AssetMark announced it would part ways with CEO Charles Goldman after seven years. Wolfsen, formerly AssetMark’s chief solutions officer, will assume the role on March 3.
Goldman’s departure is in no way connected with the Voyant acquisition, Wolfsen says.
“They are absolutely not related,” Wolfsen says. “It’s really tempting because of the timing to connect those dots, but we’ve all been working on this deal since the fall.”
Following the closure of the transaction, AssetMark will start integrating components of Voyant’s cash-flow and goals-based planning technology into its existing advisor technology platforms, PortfolioEngine and AssetMark.
Other TAMPs have already acquired financial planning capabilities.
Despite being a relatively unknown name in an already crowded field, AssetMark plans to allocate marketing and sales resources to grow Voyant as a separate subsidiary company with U.S. financial institutions.
“Just like any competitive environment, there are always gaps that new entrants can fill,” Wolfsen says. “We do think Voyant’s highly interactive view of financial planning is distinctive.”
Voyant combines cash-flow planning with goals-based planning into a single timeline for clients, letting advisors show how changes to income can affect the probability of achieving a goal, or how altering a goal can impact a client’s budget.
“We at AssetMark really believe in investors and advisors having those conversations and making those trade-offs,” she says. “Now, that doesn’t mean that the competition doesn’t have some of those capabilities too, but the interface, the usability of the system, is built around these highly interactive conversations that combine the sort of daily decisions we make about cash flows and long-term progress towards a goal.”
AssetMark will continue to support third-party financial planning software on its platform. The company expects the transaction to close in mid-2021.
