WEALTH MANAGEMENT│alooola

Mobile App design and DriveWealth integration enable established investment firm to launch digital-first Robo-Advisor for millennials

A dramatically improved onboarding experience—from multiple days to zero—modern UX/UI mobile app design and development, and integrations with Plaid and DriveWealth help RIA disrupt the industry by providing customized digital investment services, education, and guidance to a new generation of investors.

RIA created a digital-first robo advisor to serve millennial generation

51-200 employees

Mobile App design and development
Technical strategy
Plaid and DriveWealth integrations

OUR PARTNERS

Overview

Headquartered in Kingston, New Jersey, with offices in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, Glen Eagle Advisors is a full-service Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) and Broker-Dealer that specializes in financial planning, wealth management, and retirement plans. A multigenerational and WBENC-Certified Women’s Business Enterprise founded by CEO Susan Michel in 2002, Glen Eagle provides corporations, family offices, business owners, and families with trusted stewardship and transparent access to their wealth. Their team of advisors serves clients nationally.

Glen Eagle identified a younger demographic of professionals that was not being served by the traditional wealth management industry. With education being a major value of the firm, they wanted to share their knowledge with a new generation of investors, guiding them to make wise financial decisions and managing their wealth without charging them astronomical fees.

Glen Eagle launched alooola, an education-based wealth management and investment advisory platform that would allow them to meet the unmet wealth management needs of a younger demographic through education and high-quality financial advisory services tailored to them—and bring in a new generation of investors to the firm. Initially partnering with corporations and universities to offer education, they quickly realized these efforts were not scalable, and they would need a technology-driven solution to better serve these clients. In order to scale and improve the user experience, they needed to automate their third-party, mostly manual onboarding process and launch a mobile application with a modern look, feel, and functionality.

The problem

Glen Eagle was seeking to disrupt the investment and wealth management industries by choosing to serve the unique needs of millennial investors and ultimately address what they felt was a growing wealth divide. They sought to reach this population through education by partnering with corporations, universities, and the second generation of their existing clients but soon realized these efforts were not scalable enough to make a real difference—either for their new investors or their firm’s bottom line.

They wanted to build a platform—powered by a mobile app and integrations with digital custodians that would help them own and streamline the process from onboarding to management to growth—that would provide recommendations and education so users could take actionable steps to grow their wealth. However, they did not have the internal design and technical expertise required to build it.

How we helped

Praxent’s design and native app development expertise, as well as its deep understanding of the financial services industry and knowledge of off-the-shelf integrations like Plaid and DriveWealth, supported Glen Eagle in its launch of alooola.

Praxent proposed a technical strategy that helped Glen Eagle understand how they could best fulfill their goal of delivering a quality mobile app product without going over their budget constraints.

In addition, thanks to the integration of DriveWealth to enable continuous adjustment ‘robo-advisor’ trading and self-directed trading as well as manage KYC compliance during customer account creation, Praxent devised a strategy to get alooola to market quicker. An integration with Plaid will enable users to connect to their primary bank accounts and allow instant transfers to their alooola accounts.

Product Design

Technical Spike

Development

UX Design

Development

The outcomes

Glen Eagle expects to launch its mobile app for alooola in Q2 of 2022. In the meantime, they are thrilled with their new platform’s capabilities. They feel more in control of the alooola brand and like they have ownership of the entire experience and process.

With the new app and integrations, they feel confident they can accomplish their goal of becoming the first investor app to focus on empowering young professionals to understand their total financial picture and take action to grow their wealth.