By Vasyl Solushchuk/Insart

Site: www.55-ip.com
Founded: 2015
Clients: Financial advisors, wealth managers and home offices
Value proposition: Investment strategy engine through a digital, advisor-branded software platform
The executive team: Paul Gamble, CEO Swati Bairathi, Chief Product Officer

 

55ip was founded by Dr. Vinay Nair, a Wharton professor and former hedge fund manager. This deeply ingrained quantitative investing background allowed 55ip to create an investment strategy engine that brings advanced capabilities to wealth advisors to build and manage intelligent, custom and automated investment strategies. 55ip provides capabilities for advisors to address the three most common frictions that get in the way of client outcomes — high fees, extreme losses, and taxes — so advisors can grow their business and deliver better outcomes for clients.

I spoke with Paul Gamble and Swati Bairathi of 55ip to better understand how their white-label software platform is changing wealth management through an intelligent, custom, automated investment strategy engine.

Paul Gamble, CEO of 55ip, has spent the better part of 20 years building and running the institutional business for Financial Engines, which Paul helped build into to the largest independent RIA in America.

Swati Bairathi currently serves as chief product officer at 55ip. Before coming to 55ip, she played a key role in developing WealthTech solutions for Charles River Development, Fidelity and Upstream Technologies (now owned by Fiserv).

Why choose 55ip?

Paul described 55ip as a platform that allows advisors to enhance strategies they already have or design their own advisor-branded investment strategies for clients. The platform allows advisors to outsource or control the five primary functions of the investment-management portfolio creation and implementation processes: asset allocation, fund selection, portfolio construction/risk management, tax management, and trading. The platform also offers real-time analytics and advisor-branded proposals for advisors to show their value and win business.

When it comes to delivering investment models to clients, advisors are faced with two sub-optimal choices. First, advisors can buy a model “off the shelf,” whether it be an ETF strategy or a model from an asset manager. These ready-to-use models can be low or high cost, depending on the platform they’re on, and typically come with limited customization. The alternative is that advisors try to build their own models. This is increasingly complex and time consuming since the number of investment products to choose from grows every day and advisors have to monitor and update the models across their book of business.

“There’s an explosion of ETFs, an explosion of models out there. Really what the world needs, and advisors in particular need, is help putting together these building blocks in thoughtful ways, and automated ways, to meet the unique needs for their clients at scale.” – Paul

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