I have some exciting news. For the last 2+ years, we have been working on FinFolio 2.0 and are finally ready to share. We are launching our powerful REST API as a stand alone product: wealthlab.io.
A few years back something interesting happened. All of our major competitors were acquired. Black Diamond in 2011, Tamarac in 2012, then in a single week in 2015 both Advent and Orion were acquired. I've been in this industry my entire career and have never seen anything like it.
I have intimate experience with portfolio management software acquisitions and know how poorly they can go. The founders and key managers always do well financially, but if the acquisition is mismanaged the users and the products can suffer. Product lines are mothballed, the key people move on, with the users soon to follow.
The latest round of acquisitions may be bad for advisers, but for FinFolio it was *possibly* an opportunity. If even just a few of the acquisitions had problems, it would create an opening in the market for new startups. Unfortunately we weren't well positioned to do anything about it at the time. But this industry moves slow... maybe we could catch up. We decided to go for it.
2 years ago, a week after the Advent and Orion acquistions, we started working on FinFolio 2.0.
We put a lot of thought into how a modern portfolio management offering should work. We ditched the desktop and surrounded ourselves with modern best-of-breed apps. Microsoft was out and GMail, GDrive and GSuite were in. Our developers dropped TFS for GitHub. Slack replaced our internal email. We moved finfolio.com from IIS to Hubspot. ZenDesk replaced Dynamics, we started using Asana for project management, and client bills are now sent automatically via Freshbooks.
Then we started analyzing how we could make FinFolio the GMail/Slack/Asana/Hubspot/etc of portfolio management. One common thread jumped out at us--all the apps talked to each other. Every app had a REST API and they all integrated, either directly or via intermediaries like Zapier. This is where we started with FinFolio 2.0, building a comprehensive REST API as a foundation for integrations.
Then a funny thing happened. People started using the API on their own without our help. They created their own integrations and stand-alone apps. Not just existing clients--new API users were finding us even though we had no mention of it on our web site. We scratched our heads, until realizing they had called every portfolio management software company asking about a REST API until they found somebody who had one.
To address this need we are launching wealthlab.io, a headless, API version of the main FinFolio portfolio management app. It is not the only API in our industry, but it is the deepest, most comprehensive one and it can run stand-alone without per-account fees. Or you run it in parallel with our main portfolio management software, having FinFolio do your reconciliation.
The API has everything our main app does. 100+ calculations, rates of return, a tax engine, rebalancing, trading, FIX connection, billing, etc. It imports from 25+ data sources and the multi-currency engine handles stocks, bonds, fixed income, options and more. Everything your portfolio management software can do, you can do with the API.
If you are are a startup targeting professional wealth managers this will jumpstart your app. If you are a wealth manager with customization needs you can create custom client portals and reports. If you are a power user you can make interative spreadsheets.
Contact us today for a demo.
(And stay tuned for more FinFolio 2.0 announcements over the next few weeks.)
