Today, wealth management platform provider Dynasty Financial Partners announced a partnership with investment manager Eaglebrook Advisors to bring bitcoin investment infrastructure to its network of nearly 50 Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs).
Eaglebrook’s platform integrates with many major portfolio management tools used by wealth management firms across the United States, which will now allow advisors to model, bill and advise clients on Bitcoin within a unified ecosystem.
“The demand for bitcoin and other digital assets only continues to grow, and the addition of Eaglebrook’s SMAs [separately managed accounts] to our network provides advisors with an efficient way to obtain safer, customized access to this emerging asset class.” said Nick Gerace, senior vice president of investments at Dynasty Financial Partners, in the release.
Dynasty’s network of RIAs manages more than $50 billion in assets.
“Our SMA platform creates a simplified end-to-end bitcoin and digital asset investment experience for RIAs and advisors,” said Christopher King, CEO of Eaglebrook Advisors, per the release. “We are proud to partner with Dynasty as the leading independent platform in the RIA space to enable more advisors throughout the country to give their clients the benefits of integrated and secure access to bitcoin and digital assets. To me, this partnership is further validation of Eaglebrook’s business model and the opportunity for digital assets as an asset class today and in the future.”’
Today’s announcement demonstrates the growing trend of independent wealth management firms responding to client demand for bitcoin. A 2020 Bitwise survey of financial advisor attitudes towards cryptocurrency assets revealed that 76% of financial advisors reported receiving questions about such assets from clients and 72% thought clients may be investing in cryptocurrency on their own, outside of an advisory relationship. Those were significantly higher than the percentage of advisors planning to allocate portions of their clients’ portfolios to cryptocurrency, which was 13% (up from 6% the year before).
Bitcoin Magazine spoke with the CEO of an RIA with just over $2 billion in assets under management this morning who confirmed this trend.
“Over the past year, dozens of our high-net-worth clients have come into the office to ask our advisors about bitcoin,” the long-time financial advisor said. “From the conversations I’ve had, this phenomenon — more and more RIA clients wanting bitcoin, and advisors seeking ways to assist them — is widespread.”