Posted By 
Robo-Advisor NestWealth.com today announced it is acquiring Alberta-based Razor Logic Systems (makers of RazorPlan financial planning software.) NestWealth.com founder and CEO Randy Cass is positioning the combined entity as the first (and only) “B2B digital wealth management platform to offer both professional investment solutions and sophisticated financial planning capabilities.”
The acquisition is Nest Wealth’s first, Cass said in an email. In a press release embargoed till Wednesday morning, Cass said both firms “have always shared a common goal to make life better for the individual investor so this seems like a very natural fit … Because of what our two companies are able to accomplish together our users will be able to offer personalized financial plans integrated with their actual investment portfolios.”
Founded in 2011 by Certified Financial Planner and Chartered Life Underwriter Dave Faulkner, Razor Logic Systems is the developer of RazorPlan, the popular financial planning software that lets thousands of financial advisors quickly analyze a client’s needs, generating full financial plans in as little as 15 minutes. Its Financial Plan Advantage Ltd. (FPAdvantage) was expanded in 2012 to become Razor Logic Systems. In the press release, Faulkner — Razor Logic’s co-founder and CEO — said the deal with Nest Wealth will help enhance the value financial advisors create for clients: its tools help make complex financial planning easier to accomplish for advisors and understandable for their clients.
Fintech startup’s first acquisition
Nest Wealth is actually the newer company, a “fin tech” (financial technology) firm founded by Cass in 2014. It was one of the first Canadian robo-advisors on the market, although it prefers the term “digital wealth management platform.” Nest Wealth is the trade name of Nest Wealth Asset Management Inc.
Its “Netflix-like” monthly subscription model differs from asset-base-fee rivals, making it especially cost effective for more affluent investors. Wealth management firms and individual advisors can provide and manage most investments through any distribution channel with Nest Wealth’s configurable white label practice management tool. Among the major financial institutions that have chosen it to modernize their wealth management platforms is the National Bank of Canada (which is also a minority investor in Nest Wealth).
Cass views the deal as a significant one: “both from the fact it’s a start-up in fin tech reaching the stage where they acquire other companies to the fact that this represents the first meaningful step forward in the robo-advice industry in five years.” It will impact almost 5,000 financial advisors nationally and three big domestic banks. “It will also mean that with the integration of the planning and the investing, financial plans will move from things that are done and thrown into a drawer to things that adjust in real time to how a person is actually doing against their goals and help people make the changes they need to make when they need to make them.”
Financial planning gets more critical as you age and wealth rises
