Oakville, Ont.-based Invisor Investment Management Inc. is expanding its robo-advisor offering to financial advisors and their firms with the launch of its new Invisor CoPilot platform, which was announced on Tuesday.
Invisor CoPilot allows financial services firms and their advisors to outsource the investment management portion of their client relationships through a referral to the financial technology (fintech) start-up, or they can use the platform as a white-label solution.
In the case of a referral, an advisor can send an invitation to the client via email to sign up with Invisor. The client can do this his- or herself, or the advisor can walk the client through the online onboarding process. Once completed, Invisor will construct and manage a portfolio for the client, which can include ETFs and mutual funds. Advisors will have the ability to view the client’s Invisor account through a secure dashboard.
“That way, [advisors] free up a lot of their portfolio management and administration time,” says Pramod Udiaver, Invisor’s CEO, “and [are then able to] focus more on existing clients, providing more services to them and expanding their reach.”
As part of the Invisor CoPilot interface, clients will have access to Invisor’s goal planning and tracking solution, InvisorGPS, which allows clients and advisors to view an aggregate of a client’s financial position.
“Our goal is to make the financial plan real time and front and centre of the client experience,” says Udiaver.
To use the Invisor CoPilot platform, clients pay an investment management fee of 0.4% as well as a fee set by the advisor based on the level of service provided.
In terms of the white-label offering, the platform would use the advisory firm’s branding, and portfolios would be built based on the firm’s own model portfolios and risk assessment.
Invisor would handle the technology behind that process and take care of rebalancing the portfolio. If requested, however, Invisor can also construct and manage the portfolio on the white-label platform. Firms would pay a monthly licensing fee to access Invisor CoPilot.
Invisor CoPilot is currently being rolled out to 400 advisors at two national firms licensed with the Mutual Fund Dealers’ Association of Canada (MFDA). The platform, however, is only available to those advisors in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec.
In addition to portfolio management, Invisor CoPilot clients in Ontario and Manitoba will also have access to term life insurance policies of up to $500,000 through Invisor’s new digital insurance platform, which was announced last week.
Read: Robo-advisor begins selling life insurance
“If a client goes through the experience and buys insurance directly through us, we would be open to sharing that revenue with the advisory firm,” says Udiaver, adding that the fintech company would also refer clients back to advisors who are looking for different insurance products.
Invisor is not the first robo-advisor firm to launch a platform for financial advisors. Nest Wealth Asset Management Inc. and Wealthsimple Financial Inc., both based in Toronto, launched their own advisor-focused platforms in 2016.
Read: Wealth simple launches platform for advisors
Read: Nest Wealth readies launch of new tool for financial advisors
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