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A startup taking on Schwab and Fidelity in the $128 trillion investment advisor market just raised fresh funding.  

With funding from Vanguard and Insight Partners, among others, Altruist is betting that its all-in-one software stack can save registered investment advisors (RIAs) time, money, and manual work. The lesson for legacy players? Modernize or partner up.

Watch out incumbents: Altruist aims to be the modern custodian for RIAs.  

It posits that “legacy custodians have little incentive to innovate and rebuild technology,” which hampers advisors’ potential reach. By comparison, its platform can be a “game-changer.”  

Altruist says that its integrated clearing, custody, and advisory tools help advisors eliminate disjointed software, paper processes, and high operational costs.  

“It’s a deeply technical problem at every level that the team has solved with an intuitive user experience that’s unlike anything the RIA industry has ever seen,” according to Insight Partners managing director Jonathan Rosenbaum.  

The company’s $112 million Series D was led by Insight Partners and included industry leaders Bill McNabb, Ron Carson, and Marty Bicknell. The firm also disclosed a $110 Series C from November 2021 led by Declaration Partners, with participation from Vanguard.   

Altruist will use its fresh funding to expand its capabilities in portfolio management automation and personalization for clients, among other things. As of now, it has 3,300 RIAs using its platform and aims to increase its slice of the RIA market, which has $128 trillion in assets under management.