Scivantage Boosts Data-Aggregation Through ByAllAccounts
October 13 2009 - 11:55AM
Dow Jones News
Middle- and front-office technology maker Scivantage says a new
partnership with a data aggregator will give advisers who use two
of its applications a sharper view of their clients' holdings.
The aggregator, ByAllAccounts, will link users of the Methuselah
and Financial Compass applications to account-level data on both
clients' "held away" and in-house assets. Methuselah is a
financial-planning engine; Financial Compass generates
proposals.
The tie-in is supposed to reduce administrative busywork and
help advisers provide planning and advice that's more tailored to
the needs of individual end clients.
Scivantage has a substantial footprint in the independent
broker-dealer space, and ByAllAccounts is a smaller vendor that
does much of its business in the independent RIA realm. Their
partnership may have strategic implications linked to proposed
changes to the compliance regimes governing their respective
markets.
"From a regulatory and compliance standpoint, you're looking at
a possible extension of the fiduciary standard - perhaps a modified
fiduciary standard - to include brokers," says Douglas Dannemiller,
a senior analyst with the Boston-based research and consulting firm
Aite Group. "Scivantage and ByAllAccounts may see this as an
opportunity to reach into their respective client bases."
ByAllAccounts Chief Executive James Carney isn't so sure about
the compliance angle, but he says his firm's latest partnership has
definite strategic implications. It "allows us to get into the
broker-dealer space, and it allows them to get into the RIA,
family-office and the generally more traditional wealth-management
space," he says.
Deals like the one with Scivantage, one with Thomson Reuters'
Eximius wealth-management technology platform, and another
partnership it is about to make public play into ByAllAccounts'
strategy of fostering growth without straying from its core
capabilities, he says.
"A classic hazard of being a small business - and anything under
$100 million in annual sales is a small business - is spreading
yourself too thin, trying to do too much" says Carney. "We're a
data company; we're not going to try to be an applications company.
These deals allow us and our partners to cross sell into new
markets while maintaining our focus on what we do really well."
Jersey City, N.J.-based Scivantage says it has more than 50
institutional clients, including five of the 10 biggest banks and
seven of the twenty biggest brokerages in the U.S.
Woburn, Mass.-based ByAllAccounts was a subsidiary of State
Street Corp. (STT) between mid 2004 and January 2008, when Carney
led a consortium of investors that bought back the company he
co-founded in 2000.
-By Tom Coyle, Dow Jones Newswires, tom.coyle@dowjones.com;
718-545-8628