InvestCloud acquires Advicent and the NaviPlan platform

InvestCloud aims to create the world’s leading financial planning solution through the acquisition of Advicent, which bridges the adviser-client communication gap by combining the companies' technology and platforms

InvestCloud, a provider of cloud-based financial digital solutions, has acquired Advicent, a specialist in cash flow, trust and tax financial planning technology.

Advicent, a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company, provides financial planning technology for more than 140,000 financial professionals across nearly 3,000 firms worldwide.

Through its NaviPlan platform, Advicent creates scalable financial planning software built on APIs as well as cash flow and goal-based planning engines. It aims to help thousands of financial professionals and their clients understand and affect their financial future. Its global headquarters are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and its European base is in the Netherlands.

InvestCloud is a global company specialising in digital platforms that enable the development of financial solutions, pre-integrated into the cloud. It supports more than $4 trillion of assets for more than 500 direct clients, including some of the world’s largest banks.

The company offers on-demand client experiences and intuitive operations solutions using a library of modular apps, to create powerful products.

InvestCloud aims to create the world’s leading financial planning solution through the acquisition of Advicent, which bridges the adviser-client communication gap by combining the companies’ technology and platforms.

The acquisition comes as market volatility has accelerated a focus on financial planning—a market worth $52.9 billion in the US alone, and predicted to grow 3.5 percent in 2021, according to InvestCloud.

Advisers require connected experiences for their clients to enable seamless integration from financial plans to proposals, and on to implementation. The acquisition will give them a full-scope unified platform to achieve this, alongside providing client management and ongoing maintenance functions.

The acquisition will offer a comprehensive digital experience across an adviser’s entire book of business, from mass affluent to ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

John Wise, co-founder and chief executive officer of InvestCloud, says: “InvestCloud’s planning engine will be enhanced with the combination of Advicent (NaviPlan). Advicent is a highly differentiated planning engine covering the simple goal-based assessments that most of the known financial planning engines cover; however, and importantly, Advicent also has advanced retirement income scenarios and estate/trust planning focusing on the very difficult planning aspects of tax and cash flow. This will be greatly leveraged by the market-leading InvestCloud planning solutions and platform used by advisors today.”

Wise continues “I’m delighted that, with the support of our investment partners Motive Partners and Clearlake Capital, we are able to substantially grow both organically and by enabling great acquisitions such as Advicent.”

Angela Pecoraro, chief executive officer of Advicent, adds: “We deliberately focused on the most complex components in the functional area of financial planning. InvestCloud is functionally strong and also extremely well known for design of intuitive user experiences. We are delighted to be joining forces with InvestCloud, the world’s best and most comprehensive financial digital platform for wealth, which specialises in intuitive and empathetic digital experiences, visualisations and workflows.”

“The opportunity we see together is massive and our team has thought this for years—how powerful a partnership would be with InvestCloud. As digital plays a more and more critical role in the advisor experience, InvestCloud’s platform will enable our clients to reduce complexities, increase flexibility, and be a game-changing power for client-to-advisor collaboration by applying behavioural science to improve client outcomes.”

InvestCloud’s latest acquisition further expands its global client base in North America and Europe, while deepening its presence within wealth management, trust and estate planning, as well as private banking.

The new capabilities are available to InvestCloud’s existing global client base through its digital app store. Clients will be able to leverage its design-first approach to digital and the power of the Advicent engines to create unparalleled empathetic plans for all clients.

Image: Shutterstock

Mark Dugdale