Originally Published by InvestmentNews
When it comes to integrations among various AdviserTech solutions — with more and more integrations necessary as the breadth of the AdviserTech landscape map continues to grow — there is currently a never-ending conversation that typically goes like this:
Adviser: “Hello, financial planning tech! I’d love to pull my clients’ financial plan data into this other client portal that we use instead. How do we do that?”
AdviceTech integration rep: “Oh yeah, that sounds great! Unfortunately, that’s not how the integration works currently, and we don’t have enough clients who also want to do it that way to warrant pulling developers off of their current projects to build that edge case for you. Sorry! I wish I had better news.”
Alternatively, a financial planning tech company might say, “We understand, but that doesn’t really fit our strategy. Our client portal is central to our growth plans, and we prefer you use it instead. So we won’t be offering that integration. But can we give you a demo of our portal? It’s awesome!”
The problem stems from the fragmented landscape of financial advisers, ranging from independent RIAs to independent broker-dealers. Users of AdviserTech software often have different visions for its usage and how the components should connect. With more AdviserTech solutions, there are more points of integration, potentially leading to collective “integration fatigue” among financial advisers and their technology providers. Additionally, many AdviserTech solutions lack flexibility. The growing focus on “platform as a business” models drives many AdviserTech solutions to try to incorporate advisers into their broad offering instead of integrating with advisers’ preferred best-in-class solutions.
The end point for most advisory firms is two options:
- Either make do with the integration capabilities that are offered,
- or spend a large chunk of money to have a consulting firm come in and build custom integrations to make things work exactly how the firm wants them to (but then they have to be maintained by the firm, or entirely rebuilt if the firm decides to switch out a key component of its tech stack in the future!).
Jud and Kim Mackrill are by no means newcomers to this issue, having seen it front and center for years as they first led implementation and supported partnerships at Orion Advisor Services, and then more recently helped build out the Carson Group’s beautiful tech experience for its advisers (and dealing with and helping to solve firsthand the challenges that arise when trying to integrate a new firm’s existing data and tech stack into an existing adviser experience).
Thus Milemarker was born. Positioned as an Integration as a Service (IaaS) platform, Milemarker is trying to treat the cause of the integration disease, not just the symptoms. According to the Mackrills, the issue is not with integrations themselves, but rather stems from the structure of the underlying data and how it’s m
Accordingly, instead of waiting for other crucial legacy players to update their data models and product architecture to make integrations more flexible, Milemarker aims to create an extraction layer for the industry. This layer will connect to custodians, third-party asset managers, SMA providers, AdviceTech providers, and more. Instead of integrating one system with another, Milemarker will pull all the data into the cloud via a Milemarker container controlled by the advisory firm.
In simpler terms, Milemarker plans to create personalized data warehouses for advisory firms. These warehouses will allow firms to direct their client and firm data to specific destinations, giving them more control over their integration processes. Think of it like Mulesoft or Zapier, but tailored specifically for advisers. Others have tried to tackle this integration challenge before, but the problem persists. Time will tell if Milemarker has the right solution. Considering that financial advisory firms struggle to integrate 10 to 15 software pieces, while non-financial businesses seamlessly integrate nearly 100, there’s certainly room for improvement!
