Former InvestCloud and Envestnet executives launch RIA operating company Singularity Financial Partners

Three wealth technology veterans have launched Singularity Financial Partners, a Henderson, Nevada-based operating company that takes ownership positions in established RIAs and puts its own staff inside them to run operations, hiring and technology. The company was founded in February and officially launched this month, according to InvestmentNews, which reported the launch on October 9.

Its founders are Michael Roth, chief executive and co-founder; Oleg Tishkevich, managing partner and co-founder; and Jim Zimmerman, chief technology officer. Their careers include senior roles at InvestCloud, Envestnet and Microsoft. Roth co-founded retirement planning software RetireUp before its 2020 acquisition by Tegra118, which was later consolidated into the InvestCloud platform, where he was chief product officer and chief revenue officer of Digital Wealth. Tishkevich founded financial planning platform Finance Logix, which Envestnet bought in 2015, and served as chief technology officer of financial planning there. Zimmerman previously led Azure Red Hat OpenShift at Microsoft and is chief AI officer at Invent.

Roth's pitch centers on the operator bottleneck. "Most advisory firms were built by exceptional advisors who never set out to be operators," he said in the statement announcing the launch. "They can see the growth. They cannot reach it, because the technology, the hiring and the operations all land on the same few people."

Singularity says its economics are tied to each firm's results rather than to a software contract or consulting fee, with ownership positions that can come through capital, operating work or both. The company describes itself as "not a plugin, not software, not a consultancy and not an aggregator," and says its structure borrows from operating companies that have already taken root in accounting, law, healthcare and IT services.

A February survey by F2 Strategy found that 79% of wealth firms have plans to change their operating model within the next 12 to 24 months. F2 reported a consistent need for integration, data and product management specialists who can get platforms working together, and said the gap is not necessarily a sign those firms are falling behind on technology. "There are very few things that we do that everybody across the industry needs to be thinking about, but everyone has an operating model," said Scott Lamont, senior managing director and head of bank trust at F2 Strategy.