A colleague of mine sent an email the other day with the subject “Who is WealthTouch,” along with a link to a recent FA Magazine article covering what I thought was a new entry in the account aggregation domain. After reading the article, my reply back to my friend was “I suppose it’s comparable to that solution BAA (ByAllAccounts) offers – WebPortfolio… but a much, much more sophisticated platform for the uber rich.” After a little digging, it appears that I was spot on.
WealthTouch (WT) is an account aggregation, expense management, and wealth reporting platform for Ultra-High Net Worth families. Unlike your typical HNW individual who has one or two advisors and a handful of accounts at various custodians, the WT client has great diversity across a much larger spectrum of investments and a number of different money managers watching over their finances. This client, according to WT, requires a more sophisticated platform to pull together a much more complex estate structure which consists of hedge funds, private equity, investments, and other assets — The typical WT client is a family with over $100 million in assets.
The WT platform, which has apparently integrated ByAllAccounts data harvesting engine, aggregates, reconciles, and reports on the accounts, while providing a central place for the family and all their managers to log in and track portfolio performance. Whether WT leverages add’l tools offered by ByAllAccounts, such as WebPortfolio, is a mystery at this point. I’ll see what I can find out.
Although not a new company, they were established in 2001, their recent growth is putting them on the map. In late 2008 they were reporting on roughly $400 million in assets on a nightly basis. Today that number has swelled to approximately $15 billion. And they are growing at just over $1 billion in new assets each month. They also just closed an $11 million round of financing from private investors.
They hope to become the “performance-reporting leader for family offices.” And with an $11 million dollar war chest, they may have the capital to make a big enough splash to own that self-proclaimed title.
FYI – According to several recent press releases, their top competitors include Rockefeller and Co.’s Rockit Solutions LLC, Private Client Resources LLC and Fidelity Investment’s Family Office Services group.
