Envestnet Acquires Upside
Envestnet Continues Mission to Increase the Relevance of the Financial Advisor with Upside Acquisition
CHICAGO, Feb. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Envestnet, Inc. (NYSE: ENV), a leading provider of unified wealth management technology and services to financial advisors, announced today that it has acquired Upside, a technology company providing digital advice solutions to financial advisors. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Upside helps financial advisors compete against other digital advisors, or "robo advisors," by leveraging technology and algorithms to advise, manage, and serve clients who want high quality, personalized investment services delivered to them when and where they want it. The company's design-led, advisor-branded platform provides investors with an intuitive investment management experience, including paperless onboarding and required trading and rebalancing.
The acquisition will combine Upside's streamlined and easy-to-use, advisor-labeled, investor-facing financial planning and investment management platform with Envestnet's broad suite of investment solutions, portfolio analytics, account servicing infrastructure and reporting capabilities.
"Advisors leverage our technology today to automate operations and effectively deploy many elements of a robo or digital advisor offering," said Stuart DePina, Group President Envestnet | Tamarac. "Adding Upside to our platform will allow advisors to compete more aggressively to engage current clients online and reach a new class of investors. While many see robo offerings as serving the mass affluent, advisors know a growing percentage of their High Net Worth clients are demanding to access their financial portfolios and interact with their advisor online."
"The investment advisory market is undergoing a period of significant change through the adoption of technology," said Tom Kimberly, co-founder and CEO of Upside. "When the dust settles, we believe that the winning model will combine the best aspects of the human relationship with the most powerful capabilities of technology. Joining Envestnet is a big step that will help accelerate and amplify that vision."
Envestnet expects to significantly augment the scale of Upside's digital advisor solution by leveraging the time-tested operations and servicing functionality of its platform technology. The deal will give Upside access to Envestnet's industry-leading technology services, as it accelerates onboarding new financial advisors while serving its existing advisor partners on its managed account platform.
"Serving nearly 40,000 advisors, Envestnet is uniquely positioned to understand what it takes to support the evolving needs of today's advisors and tomorrow's investors," said Bill Crager, President of Envestnet. "We have the technology, investment products, people, knowledge and infrastructure to empower financial advisors to deliver a competitive and cutting edge offering to their clients. By providing access to managed portfolios from some of the world's leading investment strategists through Upside's platform design, we can extend the automated advice delivery model in a way that further increases the relevance of the financial advisor."
Mr. Kimberly and Juney Ham, co-founder and President of Upside, will join Envestnet as Senior Vice Presidents.
"With a common mission to help advisors improve their practices with technology, it was clear from the beginning that Envestnet and Upside were a perfect match," said Ham. "Envestnet's impressive ability to provide class-leading portfolio and practice management solutions to its growing population of advisors will help us scale successfully and more rapidly bring a transformative client experience to the industry."
About Envestnet
Envestnet, Inc. (NYSE: ENV) is a leading provider of unified wealth management technology and services to financial advisors. Our open-architecture platforms unify and fortify the wealth management process, delivering unparalleled flexibility, accuracy, performance and value. Envestnet solutions enable the transformation of wealth management into a transparent, independent, objective and fully-aligned standard of care, and empower advisors to deliver better outcomes.
Envestnet's Advisor Suite® software empowers financial advisors to better manage client outcomes and strengthen their practice. Envestnet provides institutional-quality research and advanced portfolio solutions through our Portfolio Management Consultants group, Envestnet | PMC®. Envestnet | Tamarac provides leading rebalancing, reporting and practice management software.
For more information on Envestnet, please visit www.envestnet.com and follow @ENVintel (https://twitter.com/envintel).
About Upside
Upside helps registered investment advisors beat the "robo-advisors" by leveraging technology and algorithms to advise, manage, and service clients who want next-generation investment services. The company's fully-automated, white-labeled managed account platform provides advisors with paperless account opening, portfolio selection, automated trading and rebalancing, client and advisor portals, and practice analytics in an intuitive, design-led user interface. For more information, contact Upside at [email protected] or visit www.upsideadvisor.com.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
The forward-looking statements made in this press release and its attachments concerning, among other things, Envestnet, Inc.'s (the "Company") expected financial performance and outlook, its strategic operational plans and growth strategy are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve risks and uncertainties and the Company's actual results could differ materially from the results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Furthermore, reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ from those expressed by the forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, difficulty in sustaining rapid revenue growth, which may place significant demands on the Company's administrative, operational and financial resources, fluctuations in the Company's revenue, the concentration of nearly all of the Company's revenues from the delivery of investment solutions and services to clients in the financial advisory industry, the Company's reliance on a limited number of clients for a material portion of its revenue, the renegotiation of fee percentages or termination of the Company's services by its clients, the Company's ability to identify potential acquisition candidates, complete acquisitions and successfully integrate acquired companies, the impact of market and economic conditions on the Company's revenues, compliance failures, regulatory actions against the Company, the failure to protect the Company's intellectual property rights, the Company's inability to successfully execute the conversion of its clients' assets from their technology platform to the Company's technology platform in a timely and accurate manner, general economic conditions, changes to the Company's previously reported financial information as a result of political and regulatory conditions, as well as management's response to these factors. More information regarding these and other risks, uncertainties and factors is contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC") which are available on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov or the Company's Investor Relations website at http://ir.envestnet.com/. You are cautioned not to unduly rely on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. All information in this press release and its attachments is as of February 26, 2015 and, unless required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise any forward-looking statement to reflect circumstances or events after the date of this press release or to report the occurrence of unanticipated events.
Contacts
Investors: Media:
Investor Relations Laura Simpson
[email protected] JCPR
(312) 827-3940 [email protected]
(973) 850-7319
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SOURCE Envestnet, Inc.
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