Dive Brief:
- Apex Fintech Solutions is partnering with Unifimoney to offer digital investment solutions for community banks and credit unions, the companies announced Tuesday.
- The collaboration aims to provide account holders of community banks and credit unions easy access to Unifimoney’s turnkey digital wealth management platform and Apex’s digital and custody engine.
- The services include robo advisory and self-directed trading for stocks and ETFs with prospects of more offerings in the future.
Dive Insight:
“Apex and Unifi are committed to innovation and tech-enabled solutions. We are actively exploring opportunities to expand our offerings and deepen our partnership,” Connor Coughlin, Apex’s general manager of fintech, said in an email response to Banking Dive.
Apex Clearing Corporation, a subsidiary of Apex Fintech Solutions, will offer the digital clearing and custody services for banks and credit unions.
Unifimoney, a San Francisco-based startup, is already integrated into several online banking platforms, including Jack Henry, Banno and Q2i. The company said it will soon add Alkami to that lineup.
The startup said its clients can deploy Unifimoney in less than three days on their online banking portal without using any code.
Oklahoma-based First Fidelity Bank is the first customer to go live with the services offered by the partnership.
The $2.6 billion asset community bank recently launched a digital wealth management service with Unifimoney in which customers can choose to invest in traditional or alternative assets and access financial planning software through Unifimoney’s existing online banking platform.
“Community banks and credit unions are the backbone(s) of the US economy,” Coughlin said in the press release. Demand from community banks pushed Unifimoney and Apex to partner and come up with solutions that would “empower” consumers to manage their wealth in the long run, Coughlin said.
Community banks have “to offer better value propositions than their competitors, not just parity,” Ben Soppitt, Unifimoney’s co-founder and CEO, said in an email.
“Community banks and credit unions are facing competition from mega banks, investment apps and neobanks, especially for younger, more digitally engaged consumers,” he said. “These competitors are already bundling banking and digital wealth management services.”
The New York City-based Apex, which has a global footprint with offices in the U.S. and Northern Ireland, performs thorough due diligence on the clients and partners involved to protect the assets of the end investors, Coughlin noted.
The fintech is an IRS-approved nonbank custodian of over $100 billion in client assets serving more than 20 million investors through over 250 clients using a diverse range of business models for their services.
Earlier, Unifimoney added investment options to its existing suite of products through DriveWealth’s application programming interface (API)-enabled technology.
“We took great care and time in choosing the brokerage platform needed to support what are some of the most heavily regulated financial companies in the world,” Soppitt said in the press release. “Apex stood out with its deep market experience, broad product mix, and robust compliance procedures as well as their understanding of and passion for credit unions and community banks.”
