Open Finance for Wealth Management

The financial industry faces constant regulatory and technological shifts that provide both challenges and growth opportunities for financial institutions. More and more customers require enhanced digital services from their wealth and investment managers, including open access to their financial data through third-party apps and solutions. While the recent CFPB 1033 regulations do not yet apply to investment and brokerage accounts, wealth management firms can achieve a competitive advantage by leaning into open finance and securely integrating customer financial data with third-party applications and tax data.

How Does Wealth Management fit into Open Finance?

Each year, financial institutions must integrate increasing amounts of data from disparate data systems, combat new security risks, and deliver seamless client experiences to remain competitive. Wealth and investment managers face growing customer demands for secure access to information about assets, investments, and other finances. These customers want to track their accounts and transactions – brokerage, 401(k), retirement, etc. – through a growing list of personal financial management (PFM) and financial wellness tools that require connectivity to financial data and the ability to initiate banking transactions “in-app”.

Additionally, many wealth firms are expanding product offerings to deliver personalized client solutions, through an increasing number of custodial relationships. This expansion increases costs and overhead, and introduces challenges regarding client reporting, financial planning, accurate billing, and the ability to represent the full financial view of increasingly complex client portfolios. Most aggregators are not equipped to integrate wealth data or provide a unified view of assets, leaving wealth management firms having to build their own solutions or workarounds.

Furthermore, the recent 1033 CFPB regulations mandating consumer protections and data-sharing standards have not yet extended to investment accounts, but the regulations have successfully highlighted the importance of open finance. Consumers now expect even more control over their financial data and greater transparency in how their data is used. This gap in financial data accessibility that does not account for wealth management accounts can prove to be an issue for account-holders wanting secure, flexible access to complex information about diverse assets.

Banks and wealth management firms that proactively meet the goals of 1033 – regardless of regulations – have the opportunity to build stronger relationships with their customers by improving data quality, security, and customer experience.

Ninth Wave’s Solution for Wealth Management Data

Ninth Wave addresses this market gap by tailoring open finance solutions for wealth managers. Ninth Wave’s Platform is designed to efficiently handle all external data sharing traffic with apps, aggregators, and other third-parties, delivering flexible, open access to account, investment, and transaction data while eliminating the threats associated with screen scraping. It provides a broad and growing portfolio of APIs for digital wealth management tools, to power a wealth and investment manager’s connectivity to the third-party solutions customers prefer to use.

By accounting for wealth data in the open finance ecosystem, this integrated approach enhances the digital experience, improving customer satisfaction and retention by giving high net worth account holders the ability to:

• Achieve a unified, consolidated view of all their assets – no matter how complex – through whichever app or solution they choose;
• Initiate and monitor transactions “in app”;
• Maintain full confidence that their data is always timely and accurate, as well as safe and secure.

Ninth Wave also delivers solutions for Wealth Managers to capture high-quality, complete financial views of client portfolios to drive business development and operational needs, such as financial planning, billing, compliance, and digital user experiences.

Why Ninth Wave?

Ninth Wave is a leading provider of secure data connectivity solutions for wealth and investment managers, and works with financial institutions of all sizes to deliver secure, integrated open finance solutions. Our robust, comprehensive wealth management data API increases reliability, transparency, and security, empowering these institutions to efficiently share timely, accurate, and complete account, investment, and transaction data with the mission-critical apps and solutions their high net worth customers use to manage their assets.

Ninth Wave’s platform:

• Simplifies and streamlines data sharing with many popular PFM and financial wellness apps;
• Makes it easy to connect to new solutions as needed, to meet emerging customer requirements;
• Eliminates the time and cost required for internal IT teams to build and maintain integrations;
• Future-proofs connectivity for wealth and investment managers and their customers.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions, including eight of the top ten U.S. wealth managers, rely on Ninth Wave as a single, secure point of connectivity with applications and aggregators seeking permissioned access to account holder data.

2025 Offers New Opportunities for Innovative Financial Institutions

In 2025, the financial services industry will be shaped by regulatory developments, technological advancements, and shifting consumer expectations. Just as much, the landscape will be shaped by institutions that embrace change, invest in robust data solutions, and prioritize security and compliance. Choosing the right solution to integrate wealth management data is critical for financial institutions striving to meet the demands and opportunity presented by open finance.

Ninth Wave provides the tools and expertise needed to thrive in this evolving environment, by focusing on financial institutions to improve data integration and navigate regulatory complexities. Ninth Wave’s commitment to innovation, security, and compliance ensures its clients are well equipped for the challenges and opportunities 2025 will deliver.

Explore Ninth Wave’s open finance platform and transform your approach to wealth management data integration to deliver enhanced efficiency, improved customer service, cost savings, and seamless regulatory compliance.