Altruist, the modern custodian built for RIAs, today announced a $169M Series E round of funding led by ICONIQ Growth with participation from new investor Granite Capital Management, and continued support from existing investors Adams Street Partners and Sound Ventures.
The new round brings the company’s total funding to over $450M and values the company north of $1.5B. In conjunction with the funding, Yoonkee Sull, General Partner at ICONIQ Growth, will be joining the board of directors.
After growing revenue over 550% in 2023 and tripling assets under management for two consecutive years, Altruist has quickly become the third largest custodian behind Schwab and Fidelity (based on RIAs served). This year, the company was recognized by industry analyst, T3, as the #1 custodian advisors are considering switching to.
“With a fully-featured and vertically integrated platform built for RIAs, Altruist is breaking through in an industry desperate for innovation,” said Yoonkee Sull, General Partner at ICONIQ Growth. “It's rare to see a new company in the custodian space nail the fundamentals while carving out a substantial customer base in a market dominated by legacy financial institutions. Jason Wenk is a serial entrepreneur who has been pushing the category forward for nearly two decades, and with Altruist, he has built one of the most trusted names with RIAs today.”
While all custodians share responsibility for safekeeping assets and adhering to rigorous regulatory requirements, their business practices vary. Custodians can influence investment options, tax savings, yield on cash, portfolio performance, fees, and the quality of the user experience for clients and advisors alike. Considering the size and scale of the industry-approximately $114T assets across 61.9 million clients-even subtle differences can have significant downstream effects on client outcomes.
“In the 15 years I spent serving clients as an RIA, we’d run into the same problems over and over-it didn’t matter if we had $10 million under management, $100 million, or billions,” said Jason Wenk, founder and CEO of Altruist. “Features that were obviously better and available to retail investors weren’t available to people working with advisors. The best way to help more people get more from their money is to provide independent advisors with better software, better service, and the tools to drive better client outcomes.”
In addition to its self-clearing brokerage capabilities, Altruist offers technology that automates and simplifies administrative work, integrates with adjacent services, and streamlines portfolio management tasks so that advisors have more time for client-facing activities. These time-savings are complemented by an equal emphasis on cost savings. Last year, Altruist eliminated all software fees for advisors using its brokerage accounts. Earlier this month, they released the most simple, transparent, and competitive fee schedule in the industry.
“Altruist is able to innovate much faster than legacy incumbents because the company is solely focused on RIAs,” said Robin Murray, Partner at investor Adams Street Partners. “This focus produces significant productivity and cost benefits for independent advisors.”
Alongside further investments in technology, Altruist is scaling its service organization with highly trained staff to meet the needs of its rapidly growing customer base. “Addressing time-sensitive client requests is a big part of an advisor’s job,” said Wenk. “Our ability to resolve issues quickly is one of the main reasons RIAs are leaving legacy custodians and coming to Altruist. A responsive support organization helps advisors build and maintain client trust.”
The company has an exciting roster of new products and services lined up for 2024, including its 5.10% APY Altruist Cash account announced last month, an expanded service offering, and upcoming tax management features.