Winnipeg-headquartered IG Wealth Management has partnered with Montreal-based fintech estate services provider ClearEstate to offer online estate planning and settlement services to Canadians.
“Every Canadian needs a will,” said Brent Allen, head of strategy and business operations with IG, in an interview. “You need to properly settle your affairs and provide direction on how to do that.”
Through the partnership, IG advisors will work with ClearEstate staff to help clients generate and execute wills, create power of attorney documents and facilitate the appointment of a professional executor, the wealth management company said in a release on Oct. 1.
Prior to this partnership, IG advisors would refer clients to a local estate planning professional or lawyer, Allen said. Now, ClearEstate staff, IG advisors and clients can meet via videoconference to discuss clients’ estate planning needs.
ClearEstate’s online platform is set to be integrated into IG’s client portal over the next 12 months, Allen said. IG clients will receive a discount on ClearEstate’s services, he noted.
IG’s parent company, IGM Financial, has also made an investment in ClearEstate to support the fintech company’s ongoing expansion. Terms of the deal were not made public.
New dashboards, U.S. trading feature on Addepar
On Sept. 24, Addepar, a global tech and data platform for investment professionals, launched new dashboards and a trading feature to help advisors navigate the platform and improve their workflows.
“Dashboards were among the top requests by clients,” said Don Nilsson, chief product officer with Addepar, in an interview. “You can pin them as a homepage, so over time, I think this will be the starting point for everybody in their day.”
The new dashboards allow advisors to customize colour palettes and toggle between light and dark viewing modes, the California-headquartered company said in a release.
Advisors can also drag and drop widgets in the dashboards, providing them with access to different tools, such as for reviewing portfolios and rebalancing them, Nilsson said.
The new trading feature includes pre-trade compliance checks, bulk trading and model portfolio construction.
Trading within the Addepar platform will provide advisors with data that is consistent from trading to reporting, meaning they won’t have to switch between different software, said Phil Senseny, senior director and head of trading with Addepar, in an interview.
The trading feature is currently only available in the U.S. market, but will expand to Canada and Europe in the near future, Senseny said.
Addepar is used by more than 1,000 firms in more than 45 countries, including Canada. The Canadian market makes up about 5% of Addepar’s total client base, its largest outside of the U.S.
A Great-West Lifeco firm buys equity plan platform
Retirement and wealth management firm Empower, a Great-West Lifeco Inc. company, has acquired Plan Management Corp., the creator of equity plan administration platform OptionTrax.
Great-West Lifeco announced the acquisition of Pennsylvania-headquartered Plan Management Corp. in a release on Sept. 23, but did not disclose the deal’s financial terms.
“The acquisition of OptionTrax is … ultimately aimed at helping public or privately held employers of all sizes access equity compensation services,” said Edmund F. Murphy III, president and CEO of Empower, in the release.
OptionTrax will be integrated into Empower’s existing tech platform and will be rebranded as “OptionTrax by Empower.” Colorado-headquartered Empower also said it has established Empower Stock Plan Services, LLC, which will be led by Dave Gray, executive vice-president for enterprise solutions with Empower.
More than 300 employers, with about US$62 billion in equity compensation plan value, use the OptionTrax platform, the release said.
HUB advisors now have access to LDA
Canadian managing general agency HUB Financial Inc. has partnered with London, Ont.-based sales software company Life Design Analysis (LDA) to give HUB advisors access to LDA’s tech platform.
Through the platform, HUB advisors can create insurance quotes, interactive policy illustrations and client presentations, a release said.
Advisors will also see recurring in-force policy feeds from major insurers and have access to LDA’s LeadGen feature to generate new leads on potential customers from public-facing websites.
LDA’s quotation information comes from insurance quotation service LifeGuide. In July, Montreal-based insurance and investment software company Equisoft, which owns LifeGuide, penned a deal with LDA to allow it to continue using the data.