Addepar: The Wealth Management Platform for the Modern Advisor

The world of finance is in the midst of a seismic transformation. Large pools of capital dominate global financial markets. Yet many firms are forced to rely on outdated legacy systems that can’t scale, and the most pervasive financial technology, globally, is still Excel. As a result, many asset owners are challenged to answer the most basic questions and take timely action on their investments.

Addepar was founded over a decade ago with the goal of creating a more transparent financial system. We believe that everyone should be able to understand the assets they own, where they’re invested and how they’re performing, at any given moment.

Addepar is a software and data platform that is purpose-built for professional wealth, investment and asset management firms to deliver outstanding results for their clients. More than 700 leading firms trust Addepar to unlock the power and possibility of more informed, data-driven investing and advice. With client presence in more than 25 countries, Addepar’s platform aggregates portfolio, market and client data for more than $3.5 trillion in assets.

Firms can also use Marketplace, a digital experience offered through Acervus Securities (member FINRA), to access and transact in a range of investment products with a focus on alternative and private market investments. Addepar’s open platform integrates with more than 100 software, data and services partners to deliver a complete solution for a wide range of firms and use cases. Addepar embraces a global flexible workforce model with offices in Silicon Valley, New York City, Salt Lake City and Edinburgh, Scotland.

Better Insights Mean Better Outcomes

Addepar provides wealth managers with real-time portfolio reporting and insights required to make and implement better investment decisions. By helping people achieve the best possible outcomes, the company aims to get more assets flowing into more impactful investments and ideas, benefiting the society as a whole.

Originally established to address the complex needs of single-family offices, today Addepar serves hundreds of clients and thousands of wealth managers — including family offices, independent advisors, private banks and broker-dealers — in more than 25 markets, around the world.

The company's wealth management platform integrates with the applications you use every day. Addepar's pre-built integrations with its extensive market-leading partner network, so they can connect Addepar to the tools they use to run business.

One RIA Uses Addepar to Stay Lean

When Loren Walden and Tom Baker founded Blue Oak Capital in the late 1990s, they set out to build on what they’d learned at other investment firms. In particular, they wanted to eliminate all the bureaucracy that interfered with their ability to build great client relationships. So they decided to make their new company as lean as possible: No staff, just partners.

“Blue Oak’s philosophy is to do things better, smarter, faster, more thoughtfully,” said Matt Kenaston, who joined in 2009. He’s one of the firm’s two current employees, both partners. “Even today, it’s considered avant-garde,” Kenaston added. “Many people then and now say that it can’t be done – that we as a firm would run into too many challenges, too many difficulties, and that we would have to add people.”

Of course, eliminating administrative staff doesn’t do away with the paperwork. To make the business structure work, Blue Oak’s partners needed to find smart, sophisticated tools to allow them to automate things like performance reporting, reconciliation, and report building. Building a solid technology infrastructure was crucial to delivering top-notch investment management to clients while also cultivating deep, trust-based relationships.

Even though Blue Oak was founded on the idea of eliminating bureaucracy, partners discovered they couldn’t completely avoid it. Before they adopted Addepar, Blue Oak used a software provider that required partners to jump through cumbersome hoops to make changes in how data was formatted and presented to clients. Adding or renaming a column in a client’s financial report could require submitting a ticket and waiting several weeks for the feature to be created or changed.

With Addepar, partners can make those changes themselves. “Addepar gives us the flexibility to create column titles that meet clients where they are,” said Kenaston. Instead of columns titled “year-to-date time-weighted return,” it uses titles like “year-to-date change” that are easier for clients to understand. “It’s really subtle but to me, it says we’re being really thoughtful.” Blue Oak’s partners can go even farther if they want. For example, with a client who lives in Thailand for half the year, they can adjust the report to show the client’s portfolio denominated in Thai baht and in U.S. dollars.

Eliminating human involvement in the collection or reporting of data is a key tenet of Blue Oak’s business model. “If the computer’s doing all the work, I don’t have to,” said Kenaston. “I can be more proactive.” With the right technology partners, the firm can deliver comprehensive reporting for even the most sophisticated portfolios and expand its capacity in ways that weren’t possible before.

For example, Addepar allows Blue Oak to create model portfolios for groups of clients or individual clients that can then be used to identify where the portfolios might be drifting off track. “Before Addepar, that was a nightmare,” Kenaston said.

That level of customization and functionality allows partners to spend more time focused on relationship building. “When a client picks up the phone and calls Blue Oak, they have direct access to a decision-maker, a portfolio manager, somebody who knows them, who knows what’s happening in their portfolio, who can relate what’s happening in the broader market specifically to them,” said Kenaston. With Addepar and its integrations with Redblack and Salesforce, “There’s a massive amount of power there for us to demonstrate to our prospective and current clients that we’re listening to them.”

About the Leader

Eric Poirier, CEO

As Addepar's CEO, Eric continues his career trajectory of solving intractable data and scale challenges in the financial sector with innovative technology. Prior to joining Addepar, Eric spent nearly 7 years at Palantir Technologies, a multi-billion dollar software company that allows organizations to make sense of large, disparate datasets.

Eric co-founded his first technology business when he was 15, scaling mission-critical websites with high performance requirements, winning eBay, Priceline and Novartis as customers. Eric graduated from Columbia University with a B.S. in Computer Science.

"More than 700 leading firms trust Addepar to unlock the power and possibility of more informed, data-driven investing and advice."