For Ritik Malhotra, founder and CEO of Savvy Wealth, building a tech-backed wealth management software provider wasn't just about building AI tools for the advisor, but also building the tools for anyone working alongside the advisor.
"There's a lot of firms that will say, 'Hey, we use a lot of technology like this software or portal.' That's all fine. We thought that was table stakes. We've built that stuff," Malhotra said. But "you might have an investment associate, or you might have a marketing analyst or someone else doing things that can actually take a lot of time. … The financial advisor is working with all these other internal people at these other firms, typically, to get their job done right in service of the client."
Since Savvy Wealth started in July 2021, it has built out a fully loaded bucket of software and services, including a customer relationship management (CRM), billing, client onboarding, marketing software, investment management and operations capabilities. It supports more than 30 wealth managers through its RIA affiliate, Savvy Advisors.
While Malhotra said his firm "tried a different number of strategies" throughout the years, it ultimately found growth, and advisors, by simply not forcing a sale.
"We ended up finding the best strategy to really bring on advisors is having this very educative, consultative approach — really trying to understand their pain points. Don't force a sale," he said. "We're not trying to sell it. We're trying to see if this can actually help the individual's livelihood."
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The firm recently completed its second tranche of Series A funding, raising $15.5 million and bringing its total funding to $33 million.
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Name: Savvy Wealth
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Size: Savvy Wealth has a team of more than 30 wealth managers at its affiliate RIA, Savvy Advisors. Savvy Advisors manages more than $700 million in client assets and expects to reach $1 billion in the coming months.
Products and services offered: Savvy Wealth aims to offer a full suite of advisor tech-backed services, including a fully integrated CRM, billing, client onboarding, note-taking AI capabilities and compliance work.
It also has marketing automation software and support associates aimed at helping advisors generate leads and prospects through AI technologies. Lastly, Savvy Wealth has what Malhotra calls the "investment and operations bucket," among the three core buckets, which provides research-backed models that can be customized.
"We know that a common theme is that each and every client has some level of customizability … so we're able to construct this very modular set of portfolios and then apply software on top to really automate the ability to determine which portfolio makes sense for this customer," Malhotra said. "But the advisor can utilize the tools to do that research, to actually implement in those portfolios, to do the rebalancing, and so on."
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Who Savvy Wealth aims to serve: Through Savvy Advisors, the firm primarily focuses on high net worth clients.
What problems Savvy Wealth tries to solve: At the end of the day, Savvy Wealth is using technology to streamline back-office workflows and the time it takes to handle normal operations. This includes client onboarding, something Malhotra said was a massive "pain point" for advisors.
It "seems embarrassing to give a large stack of papers for such a simple thing. Why does it take 21 days to open accounts, all of this stuff, with tons of errors in communication? And then clients are frustrated with stacks of paper, and they just don't want to deal with that," he said. "We got it down to best-case, five minutes or less for a client to onboard, no paperwork required."
More recently, Savvy Wealth launched the ability for advisors to create customizable reports for clients in a way that's more automated and downloadable, rather than the advisor having to run reports manually.
How Savvy Wealth is different from competitors: While there are many wealthtech platforms and software providers, Malhotra said Savvy's technology stands out because it's built for entire back-office functions for everyone working with advisors, not just the advisor themselves.
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"I think we are very, very on the cutting edge and forefront of using technology in any way possible to really streamline the output," he said. "If you can optimize the entire workflows for all of these other individuals, up … that's what we think of our differentiation. It's every area to make it more optimized and efficient. And ultimately, that drives much more value and speed for the clients."
What it costs: Since Savvy Wealth's software is offered directly to affiliate advisors as an all-in-one package to them, there is no publicly advertised pricing.
What's next for Savvy Wealth: Since the latest capital raise, Malhotra said he wants to "double down" on the existing platforms "and expand the amount of products and services" supporting their advisors.
This includes adding more AI capabilities that help streamline workflows through large language models. This also means increasing the headcount at Savvy Wealth and bringing in more advisors.
"There's a long, long list of stuff that we want to continue either building or optimizing what we've already built but want to improve. And that's the road map we're going to follow," he said.
