Altruist raises $8.5 Million
Altruist, the Los Angeles-based fintech company on a mission to make financial advisors “better, more affordable, and accessible to more people,” has raised an $8.5 million in Series A round led by Venrock to build “the first-ever” fully integrated digital brokerage platform for financial advisors.
Founded in 2018 by Jason Wenk, who “made waves” with his first two companies, Retirement Wealth and FormulaFolios, Altruist will offer advisors commission-free trading, fractional shares, the ability to open accounts online in minutes, and seamless integration between brokerage services and native portfolio accounting software.
The company’s founder believes that recent moves of introducing commission-free trading to stay competitive among robo advisors are just the tip of the iceberg, explaining that there are far more hidden costs in things like fund expenses, kickbacks, and numerous unnecessary fees. Jason estimates that Altruist will save advisors upwards of 95% on software costs and enable them to grow their businesses much more rapidly.
Altruist kicked off at the beginning of 2019 and released a beta version of its Portfolio Accounting software in July. The full platform will be available to the public in early 2020.
“Today’s RIA technology products are not known for their efficiency, low cost or delightful user experience. Altruist combines these products in its seamlessly integrated digital investing platform, which results in extraordinary ROI for financial advisors and enables them to spend far more time with clients.” – Nick Beim, Venrock.
“Our mission is to make financial advice better, more affordable, and more accessible. To accomplish this, we need to modernize the tools available to financial advisors. The investment and support from Venrock will help us radically transform the way RIAs are able to serve their clients. One of the most exciting things we’ll be doing is putting more of investors’ returns back in their own accounts. The hidden costs of investing will drop about 60% and with the savings and efficiency gains financial advisors will experience, we think the cost for a qualified financial advisor will drop significantly, too.” – Founder and CEO of Altruist Jason Wenk.
