Less than two weeks removed from making its stateside debut, Australian fintech Lumiant is celebrating the next step of its U.S. expansion with a major investment from one of the nation’s top billion dollar wealth magnets.
Lumiant has secured a $3 million investment from Savant Wealth Management, the Rockford, Illinois-based RIA with more than $13.5 billion in assets under management. Complete details of the deal were not disclosed, but it includes Savant owning a minority stake in the startup and Savant CEO Brent Brodeski joining Lumiant’s board of directors.
Brodeski will join Gavin Spitzner, president at Wealth Consulting Partners, and Matthew Brinker, managing partner at Merchant Investment Management and a former United Capital executive, on the Lumiant board.
“We’re super excited … for years we’ve been frustrated because while there is a decent amount of fintech in our industry, it’s all focused on investments and accounting in almost all regards,” Savant CEO and founder Brent Brodeski told Financial Planning. “But there has never been anything that addresses what our clients really care about, which is what is my ideal future? What is my best life?
“I think our industry has been very derelict in being very investment and numbers focused, and frankly, clients don’t really care about that. What they care about is am I OK, what can I accomplish and what can my family accomplish?”
Founded in 2020, Lumiant has developed an engagement platform that aims to deepen client relationships by families first. The company’s leaders say they want to help advisors more easily merge a client’s personal goals and financial goals by placing a greater emphasis on life outcomes.
Lumiant also extends the planning conversation beyond whoever may be considered head of the household by removing key person dependency and focusing more on family members like the “non-financial spouse.” To accomplish this, the company’s software tracks and measures goals that have more to do with values, ideals and aspirations than dollars and cents.
In the wake of the news, there was shared excitement from Brodeski and Lumiant’s newly named U.S. CEO Blake Wood.
Wood said Savant is the perfect strategic partner for Lumiant, noting that Savant’s approach, values, and interests align closely with their own. He added that the Lumiant team is eager to leverage Savant’s experience to continue to develop solutions for advisors as it establishes its brand in the United States.
“It’s a greater sense of responsibility because we have a big firm that’s placed a bet of confidence in us. At the same time, it helps us get out of our own echo chamber,” Wood said. “As technologists, most of us haven’t been advisors. But now we have their team and advisors as sounding boards, and we start rolling this out. It’s huge to have them as a vested partner that’s not looking at us like another vendor platform. They are in it with us, co-creating and helping us understand the market.”
Scroll down to get caught up on other recent fintech news you might have missed in our Wealthtech Weekly recap. And check out last week’s recap here.