How AdvisorEngine Built an AI-Powered Wealth Management Platform (and Got Acquired by Franklin Templeton)
From a small frontend project in 2013 to a platform managing $600B+ in assets, acquired by Franklin Templeton. The architecture, the team scaling, and the lessons.
How it started
Back in 2013, a referral led me to a small project: help build the frontend for a niche wealth management solution. That’s how our team got involved in what became one of the biggest fintech projects we’ve ever been part of.
The wealth management market had long been rooted in tradition. Financial advisors preferred face-to-face meetings with clients. Technology was an afterthought. We quickly discovered that wealth management isn’t just about identifying investment opportunities — it’s about helping clients achieve their financial goals. A successful financial adviser needs financial acumen, strong interpersonal skills, and sometimes the ability to help clients discover goals they didn’t realise they had.
The project founders arrived with a vision. Our primary mission was to help them bring it to life through a Minimum Viable Product. Although we initially focused on UI design, our role soon expanded to include backend development. And then everything else.
After MVP
The MVP launch was a success. Fresh investment propelled us toward the next objective: crafting a comprehensive product and transitioning existing financial advisers onto the platform. This demanded full-scale implementation of workflows, from prospect generation to monetary transfers, investment execution, and portfolio rebalancing.
One of our pivotal findings was the value of third-party services. Building everything from scratch for a user-focused platform is lengthy and expensive. An efficient platform can often be a seamless integration of external services. We built integrations with TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, Pershing, and other custodians — each with its own API quirks and data formats.
We needed to quickly build expertise in unfamiliar domains: operating within a sales funnel, managing US money transfers, performing portfolio modelling, understanding the mathematical theories necessary for portfolio analysis, and learning how to rebalance an existing portfolio. This led to our second challenge: developing quick integrations with an array of external services.
The team grew from 3–5 people to 30–40. This expansion necessitated a shift in workflow. We transitioned from a single monolith to multiple Scrum teams of 3–7 members, each functioning independently. We instituted a two-tier management system, with separate focuses on team and project levels.
Communication, communication, and communication
Team expansion brought changes. Establishing development teams was relatively straightforward, but fine-tuning communication proved more intricate. Before the growth, we had direct interactions with stakeholders. Post-expansion, communications were often intermediated by managers not directly involved in decision-making, creating tension.
A valuable lesson: individual perceptions can be significantly divergent. It’s unwise to assume everyone perceives things the way you do. While you might view emails as concrete summaries and agreements, others might disregard them entirely. In certain situations, especially when communication is strained, a face-to-face conversation is far more effective than a call.
Notwithstanding these hurdles, the journey ended successfully — the company was acquired by Franklin Templeton.
The technical architecture
AdvisorEngine’s platform ultimately encompassed a purpose-built CRM, performance reporting, fee billing, rebalancing engine, digital onboarding, client portal, and business intelligence tools. The architecture evolved significantly over time:
The backend started as a Symfony monolith and was progressively decomposed into services as team size and feature complexity grew. The frontend was React, chosen for its component model which let different teams work on different parts of the UI independently. The rebalancing engine was the most mathematically sophisticated component — implementing modern portfolio theory, tax-loss harvesting logic, and drift-based rebalancing algorithms.
One architectural decision I’m particularly fond of: the information storage structure. We used a logic where every user was familiar with the way information was organized. The key insight was eliminating the distinction between folders and files. A note could contain other notes, creating a flexible structure where users could organise things however made sense to them. It seems obvious now — Notion uses a similar approach — but in 2013, it was genuinely novel.
“It seems obvious now, because there’s Notion. It is unlikely that they copied us, but I am pleased that the architecture I invented and implemented almost 10 years ago is still relevant today. We used the logic of storing information that every user was already familiar with. The only trick was the lack of distinction between folders and files. A note can contain other notes.”
What this project taught us
Even compelling stories can originate from humble beginnings. A small frontend project became a platform serving 1,200+ advisory firms managing $600 billion+ in assets.
Deep industry understanding is crucial when building a product. Without grasping its intricacies and how customers interact, you can’t create something truly good. Comprehension fosters productivity and yields superior results. We had to learn wealth management deeply enough to make intelligent architectural decisions — not just implement specifications.
Effective communication is the cornerstone of all successful relationships. Regardless of the nature of your services, any breakdown in communication can lead to failure. Dedicate time and resources to this, including enhancing the soft skills of your managers.
Managing multiple Scrum teams simultaneously delivering various features requires explicit processes, clear ownership, and a tolerance for imperfection. You won’t get it right immediately, and that’s fine — what matters is learning quickly.
AdvisorEngine provided services for more than 1,200 advisory firms managing $600 billion+ of assets in total. It remains the biggest project I’ve ever been involved in, and I’m grateful to its CTO, Vladimir, who pushed me to become more flexible and open-minded.
Building a wealth management or fintech platform? Contact us — we’ve done it at scale and can help you avoid the mistakes we made along the way.