Orion Launches Advisor Academy: Tech Roundup

Orion Advisor Solutions introduced Orion Advisor Academy, a new, on-demand learning platform that it said Wednesday provides practical, actionable education for advisors to improve and grow their businesses while earning continuing education credits.

Orion Advisor Academy provides a mix of free CE-approved courses and practical training for running a successful fiduciary advisory firm taught by Orion’s experts, the firm said.

Advisors can access a wide variety of courses related to leadership, marketing, financial planning, behavioral finance, investing, operational processes and more, Orion said.

Including the recent additions of Redtail and TownSquare, the combined Orion platform serviced $3.7 trillion in assets under administration and $60 billion of wealth management platform assets as of Dec. 31, according to Orion. Orion supports more than 5 million technology accounts and thousands of independent advisory firms, it added.

Zogo Joins Fidelity Alliance Network

The Fidelity Alliance Network welcomed Zogo, a technology company whose platform works with financial institutions to promote financial education and well-being via short-form content.

Fidelity Institutional clients will now have discounted access to Zogo’s modules, which the companies said in a joint announcement Wednesday “make it easier to engage with young investors on topics most relevant to their life stage and to help educate the next generation of investors.”

Through the Fidelity Alliance Network, Fidelity Institutional clients will be able to work directly with Zogo to “bridge the financial education gap by providing their clients with educational materials to better understand their investments,” the companies added.

Dynasty Teams With BridgeFT

Dynasty Financial Partners selected BridgeFT’s WealthTech application programming interface to power Dynasty’s integrated wealth technology offerings across the Dynasty Network, the firms said Wednesday in a joint announcement.

BridgeFT is a cloud-native, API-first wealth infrastructure software company that enables financial institutions, fintech firms and registered investment advisors to deliver data-driven outcomes for their clients, according to the companies.

As part of the pact, “BridgeFT will be responsible for custodial data aggregation to fuel the technology of all Dynasty’s integrated partners,” the companies said.

In conjunction with the new partnership, Dynasty and select Dynasty affiliates will make a strategic minority investment in BridgeFT. Dynasty did not disclose how much of a stake it acquired or how much it paid.

As part of Dynasty’s investment, Frank Coates, Dynasty’s chief technology officer, will be joining BridgeFT’s board. Coates previously served as co-president of data and analytics for Envestnet. Prior to Envestnet, Coates co-founded and was CEO of Wheelhouse Analytics, a firm acquired by Envestnet in 2016.

AssetMark Tallies Q4 Growth

More than 17,900 new households and 143 new producing advisors joined the AssetMark platform during the fourth quarter ended Dec. 31, the company said Wednesday.

In total, at the end of 2022, the AssetMark platform hosted more than 9,200 advisors (about 2,900 of which were engaged advisors) and more than 241,000 investor households, it said.

The firm “realized a 14.1% annualized production lift from existing advisors for the fourth quarter, indicating that advisors continued to grow organically and increase wallet share on our platform,” it said.

Platform assets decreased 2.2% year-over-year to $91.5 billion. But quarter-over-quarter platform assets grew 15.2%, factoring in $6.9 billion from the acquisition of Adhesion Wealth, market impact net of fees of $4.3 billion and quarterly net flows of $908 million, the company said.