BNY Pershing Sunsetting Wove Wealth Platform
BNY Pershing is dismantling its wealth management platform, Wove, to bring its best components into the custodian’s larger wealth solutions business, according to the firm and clients familiar with the platform.
The effort will see New York-based BNY move away from the branded wealth platform, aiming to offer advisors a unified wealth offering along with custodial services from BNY or a custodian of their choosing.
“BNY is focused on building a more connected, flexible set of capabilities for advisors and investors,” a BNY spokesperson wrote via email. “We are well-positioned to advance innovations that support a comprehensive wealth ecosystem and strengthen our role as a long-term wealth solutions provider for clients.”
The effort is being overseen by Adam Vos, who took over BNY Pershing and Wove earlier this year in the newly created role of global head of wealth solutions. Specific areas of focus will include modernizing the firm’s clearing and custody stack, enabling easier API-enabled integrations, providing a unified managed accounts platform, and improving the investor experience.
Wove launched in 2023 at the firm’s annual Insite conference. It was spearheaded by Ainslie Simmonds, then head of Pershing X, a start-up unit within BNY charged with creating new products.
Simmonds, who joined the firm about five years ago, left the bank in June to spend more time with her family in Canada, according to an announcement to clients and employees. Last year, she had also given up the product head role to Carolyn Weinberg, who joined as chief solutions and innovation officer.
BNY had been investing in upgrades to Wove over the years, including announcing at last year’s Insite conference an integrated view for investors of their portfolio, information and relevant tools on its NetX platform, a fixed-income portfolio management upgrade and a unified managed account tool.
This January, however, BNY announced an executive reshuffle that included Vos’s promotion to lead BNY Pershing and Wove, along with the firm’s Archer Managed Account Solutions, a technology service provider for managed accounts that it acquired in 2024.
The New York-based bank and custodian declined to disclose how many advisors use Wove. Firms that have been on record implementing the wealth platform include large wealth managers TIAA, Sanctuary Wealth and Steward Partners.
George Guidotti, director of enterprise solutions for AI-wealth management platform ARQA, said that BNY’s move away from its legacy wealth platform, Albridge Wealth Reporting, to Wove never really took hold among advisors.
“As I saw it evolve and become Wove, it never really got to a point where I heard of people using it,” he said. “They were moving in the right direction with multi-custodial … but that was the end of evolution.”
Guidotti does, however, see a strong opportunity for BNY Pershing if it can leverage its size and client base to build a multi-custodial wealth platform, comparing it to TD Ameritrade’s Veo One, a cloud-based platform and digital dashboard that was discontinued after Schwab acquired TD Ameritrade. To compete with other wealth platforms such as Orion and Envestnet, however, Guidotti said BNY needs to create a seamless front and back-end experience across the wealth platform and custody.
“It can’t just be a face mask on what is already out there,” he said. “It needs to be an infrastructure play that allows for that flow to benefit the investors who just want something fast, and the advisor at the broker/dealer or a RIA who needs to deliver.”
Wove is competing in a wealth technology landscape under increasing pressure from more open-architecture options for advisors and rapidly advancing AI implementations.
Envestnet, one of the largest wealth platforms for registered investment advisors, has been working to invest $1 billion into AI-driven tech enhancements, including its Tamarac wealth management platform. Orion Advisors Solutions has also been accelerating cross-platform connections with its AI Denali. The custodian Altruist also recently agreed to be acquired by asset management behemoth Vanguard, with its CEO, Jason Wenk, championing plans to make Altruist a full-service wealth management platform.
Vos is leading the firm from a background in markets and investing. His most recent role at BNY was global head of markets, a position to which he was promoted after starting at BNY as global head of FX in 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. He took that role after a 12-year run at Deutsche Bank, where he had been head of FX for the Americas.
The executive shuffle that elevated Vos included moving Jim Crowley from global head of BNY Pershing to executive vice chair, with a focus on client relationships across platforms. Crowley had been the head of Pershing since 2023 after a lifelong career at the bank. In addition, Laide Majiyagbe moved from global head of liquidity to global head of markets, overseeing work with asset managers, asset owners, banks and broker/dealers, among others.
