Jessica Devenyns

You didn't mention the vast exit of talent from Learnvest, or the $325 million budget to Learnvest each year since being acquired. It is a huge mess. Another case of smoke and mirrors with a smile gets some a huge payday.

A decade before Swensen's  Yale Endowment Model, Northwestern earned outsized returns on 10% of its portfolio devoted to private equity, so venture capital is part of its DNA. Northwestern Mutual alumni collaborated with the old PaineWebber to pioneer biotech-finance, but there were only a few investments that would change medicine and the world  FinTech affords similar disruption which will reorder the financial services industry. It will be fascinating to watch Northwestern Mutual fid its way. This is good old American &lt;a href="http://Innovation.at" rel="nofollow"&gt;Innovation.at&lt;/a&gt; its best. Yes, there are skeptic until overnight the world seems to change. Wall Street could learn a lesson or two from Northwestern. SCW

You want to understand how the acquisition is going, just follow the messaging from leadership. Why did NM acquire learnvest? 2015 the story was for the technology. They had a great planning tool and it was going to help NM own the planning experience. 2016 when the technology was clearly not what was promised and was going to be over a year behind schedule (along with untold millions off budget), the story become it was for the talent. But all the "talent" either left or was people like Aditi who were hired after the acquisition. Interesting, so why did NM buy them again? 2017 version is to drive transformation and innovation. Stay tuned to watch this next batch of leaders from NY who have been elevated beyond their capabilities actually have to produce. The story is bound to get real interesting from here....

The disruptive innovation required will not come from Wall Street which fights fiduciary duty for its brokers. As a consequence, acquisitions wither on the vine. Either an entirely new order is required (likely large scale RIAs like Edelman, Carson, CapTrust, etc. with ten billion plus) or a new generation of process and technologically astute top management with a deep understanding of prudent process and expert fiduciary standing in advisory services. No fiddling around at the margins that is going nowhere. It is incredible that top industry executives are satisfied with incremental progress that has little or no practical impact on the professional standing of the advisor in rendering advice. A preemptive advisor value proposition is in the offing but without technical competency, we have a long way to go. SCW

How Northwestern Mutual may still get ROI on its $250M LearnVest investment but maybe only by anteing up $50M more

Northwestern Mutual

LearnVest

Alexa von Tobel

Stripped down to its essentials, financial advice is a fairly straightforward proposition. Done well, a highly ethical individual stewards the assets and actions of an investor in a personal and professional interchange.
 
But now a vibrant new class of entrepreneurs is staking their fates and their fortunes on the premise that financial advice can be delivered in a better, cheaper, easier, more ethical, more transparent manner and, as a bonus, in a way more devoid of human annoyance on both ends of the transaction.
 
Cue the robo-advisors, arguably a callous misnomer for automated asset management. 
 
The prototypical robo-advisory entrepreneur has more brands on his or her resume than NASCAR. The bona fides of these industry upstarts often include Ivy-level colleges and MBA programs at Harvard or Stanford. They are often flush with IPO dollars realized at concerns like LinkedIn, Facebook, eBay, Amazon  and Microsoft. 
 
Robo-folk believe that technology is not an enabler of advice but rather, if engineered correctly, advice itself in digital form. 
 
And, they believe the best solutions originate in Silicon Valley or academia, not Wall Street. Robo-entrepreneurs are white-boarding the whole business model, culture and technology from scratch in the conviction that little can be learned from a legacy advice system still rooted in an investment banking culture acting under the core premise that if stockbrokers get rich some of the good effects will trickle down to clients – with the clients none the wiser. 
 
Robo-advisors are a scintillating topic for students of the advice game as they grow by hundreds of millions in assets every month, constantly evolve their business models and receive cash infusions from ever-larger swaths of venture capitals.
 
Throw in the fact that robo-advisors have yet to see a dime in profits -- and won’t in the foreseeable future -- and you have real intrigue. 
 
RIABiz has avidly covered the fast-evolving robo-advice phenomenon and will continue to do so. We present the growing body of articles here.

Robo-Advisors

<p>The RIA business has many tech vendors working hard to serve its diverse needs, and we're seeing technology become a more crucial part of setting up and running an RIA than ever before.</p>

<p>The Technology section includes unbiased tech reviews, tech-related news, and coverage of tech-related conferences.</p>

Technology

The promised January reveal at the financial planning robo never happened but the insurer is using new mother Alexa von Tobel as its sourdough-starter to bake up a venture ecosystem

How Northwestern Mutual may still get ROI on its $250M LearnVest investment but maybe only by anteing up $50M more

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Stephen Winks

Truth

Stephen Winks

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