Envestnet is increasing its technology investment in Tamarac with what it calls a $35 million surge investment in the widely used portfolio management and rebalancing platform used by RIAs. This represents 2.5 times its regular annual investment in the technology and is part of a $1 billion, five-year research and development commitment to transform the advisor experience, according to the company.<\/p>\n
The investment focuses on integrating AI directly into workflows where registered investment advisers lose the most time, including client reporting, data reconciliation and portfolio management, according to Chris Todd, chief executive officer of Envestnet.<\/p>\n
“Growth for RIAs has always been about how much of their time they can spend on higher-value client and investment activities versus being buried in the operational mechanics of wealth management. This investment is Envestnet backing our belief that closing that gap is among the single biggest levers available to advisors today, and it’s a down payment on a much longer commitment we’re making to this industry,” Todd said.<\/p>\n
Related:Altruist Launches AI Financial Planning Agent<\/a><\/p>\n The company has also launched Report Studio, a rebuilt reporting foundation that gives advisors drag-and-drop control over tables, charts and modules.<\/p>\n Report Studio is now available, while AI-enabled Report Studio is available for preview and beta sign-up, with general availability planned for later this fall, according to the company.<\/p>\n The typical U.S. advisor serves a median of 235 households and produces approximately 1,175 reports annually, according to the 2025 Dimensional Global Advisor Study.<\/p>\n Aquiline to Acquire Controlling Stake in Flourish from MassMutual<\/p>\n Aquiline, a global private investment firm with approximately $11 billion of assets under management, has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a controlling interest in Flourish, the wealthtech platform serving more than 1,300 registered investment advisors, from MassMutual, with the transaction expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026.<\/p>\n Flourish will retain MassMutual as a significant stakeholder following the transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals. David Canter, who previously led Fidelity’s RIA and Family Office segments, will join the Flourish board as executive chairman.<\/p>\n \u201cUnder MassMutual’s ownership, Flourish has built a following that includes some of the largest and fastest-growing RIA firms,\u201d said Charles Janeway, principal at Aquiline. \u201cWe look forward to putting our network and experience in wealth management to work on Flourish’s behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n Related:Tech-Based Custodian Altruist Sells to Vanguard<\/a><\/p>\n Flourish has grown assets under custody in its advisor-led cash-management solution from $1 billion to $8 billion in five years and recently launched a home-lending solution<\/a> designed for the independent advisor channel.<\/p>\n Flourish acquired the AI-powered liability analytics startup Sora Finance in early 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThis new structure preserves our deep, ongoing relationship with MassMutual while providing the agility to accelerate our roadmap and deliver the next generation of products that independent advisors need to succeed,\u201d said Max Lane, chief executive officer of Flourish.<\/p>\n Carefull Appoints Duke Professor as Research Fellow<\/p>\n The financial safety platform for protecting older adults, Carefull<\/a>, has appointed Gregory Samanez-Larkin, Ph.D., as research fellow to integrate behavioral and cognitive science into the company\u2019s technology development, the firm said.<\/p>\n Samanez-Larkin is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University and professor of marketing at Duke University\u2019s Fuqua School of Business, where he has spent over two decades researching how motivation, cognition and the brain influence financial decision-making across the lifespan.<\/p>\n \u201cFinancial vulnerability rarely begins with a single transaction,\u201d said Max Goldman, co-founder and co-CEO of Carefull. \u201cChanges in behavior, judgment, relationships and life circumstances can emerge long before a traditional fraud system recognizes a problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Related:Apex Adds Gemini to Prediction Markets Platform<\/a><\/p>\n In his role, Samanez-Larkin will work with Carefull\u2019s product, data science and engineering teams to translate research across psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience and consumer finance into GreyMatter, Carefull\u2019s AI-powered intelligence engine<\/a> for understanding behavioral and financial risk.<\/p>\n \u201cMy role is essentially to serve as a periscope into the scientific world,\u201d said Samanez-Larkin. \u201cThere is an enormous body of research that can teach us how people make financial decisions and evaluate risk.\u201d<\/p>\n The appointment is part of Carefull\u2019s effort to apply cognitive and behavioral science to older adult financial risk by identifying changes in spending and transaction patterns that can occur alongside life events such as the death of a spouse, relocation or retirement.<\/p>\n \u201cA tremendous amount of effort over the last 10 or 20 years has focused on catching a scam or fraud after it has happened,\u201d Samanez-Larkin said. \u201cBut by then, there can already be enormous financial loss.\u201d<\/p>\n FP Alpha Launches AI Tax Planning Tools for Advisors<\/p>\n FP Alpha launched enhancements to its Tax Projector tool that enable financial advisors to generate tax insights based on future client scenarios and build tax strategies using natural-language prompts, the company said.<\/p>\n The enhancements include Tax Projector Scenario Insights, which allows advisors to generate the platform\u2019s NextGen Tax Insights based on future client scenarios rather than historical tax returns, and the Tax Projector Agent, an AI-powered tool that enables advisors to build and optimize tax scenarios using natural-language prompts.<\/p>\n \u201cTax planning can create tremendous value for clients, but historically it has required advisors to know both the strategy they want to explore and exactly how to model it,\u201d said Andrew Altfest, founder and chief executive officer of FP Alpha. \u201cWe’re breaking down those barriers. Our goal is to give advisors an intelligent partner that can help them explore the ‘what ifs,’ uncover opportunities they may not have thought to look for and turn those insights into meaningful conversations and actions with clients.\u201d<\/p>\n With Tax Projector Scenario Insights, advisors can model potential changes such as Roth conversions, sales of appreciated assets or income shifts and immediately generate insights based on that scenario, according to the company.<\/p>\n The Tax Projector Agent is meant to enable advisors to describe situations they want to analyze in natural language rather than requiring them to know which fields to complete within the software.<\/p>\n The Agent includes an Optimize capability that analyzes key insights generated by a scenario and suggests specific dollar amounts associated with different strategies along with estimated tax savings.<\/p>\n Smarsh Shares AI Agent Internal Grades<\/p>\n Smarsh, which is a major provider of digital communications content capture, archiving, supervision and e-discovery within the brokerage and RIA industries, has announced some internal performance metrics on how its new AI-powered customer support agent, Archie (built on Salesforce\u2019s Agentforce platform), performed earlier this year.<\/p>\n The company reported that out of 405 interactions in the second quarter, more than seven in 10 customer sessions were resolved without requiring human support, a 72% deflection rate, in other words, and a 2.6 out of three resolution confidence score, surpassing Smarsh\u2019s internal benchmarks.<\/p>\n The communications data and intelligence company, which serves regulated organizations including banks, insurers and government agencies, launched Archie in 2025 to deliver faster, accurate answers while maintaining compliance standards.<\/p>\n \u201cThe most important result isn’t simply that Archie can resolve routine needs faster. It’s that our customers can trust us to get a consistent experience while our people have more time to focus on the complex issues where their knowledge and judgment matter most,\u201d said Rohit Khanna, chief customer officer at Smarsh.<\/p>\n Smarsh has extended the model<\/a> beyond customer service with Emmy, a second AI agent that provides support representatives with instant account snapshots and AI-assisted resolution guidance.<\/p>\n Launched in late March 2026, Emmy reached a 65% adoption rate among support representatives by the end of June, exceeding Smarsh\u2019s 50% target, with 120 of 185 representatives using Emmy since launch, according to the company.<\/p>\n Teams using Emmy saved an average of 7.5 hours per case compared with similar cases handled before AI was introduced, surpassing Smarsh\u2019s five-hour target, again, according to the company.<\/p>\n Smarsh announced the development of its first AI agent in September 2024<\/a>, a few months after announcing a partnership with OpenAI<\/a>.<\/p>\n