Franklin Templeton cedes control of AdvisorEngine to ex-InvestCloud founders
What's the deal? Franklin TempletonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → is selling a majority stake in wealth-tech firm AdvisorEngine to Just Build ItDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, keeping a minority stake, Citywire reported on October 28. Terms were not disclosed. AdvisorEngine founder and CEO Rich Cancro confirmed the deal.
Who is buying? Just Build It is new to the fund industry. John Wise and Colin Close, the former CEO and president of wealth-tech firm InvestCloud, founded it in late 2023.
Its main business is CommunifyDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, which absorbed the Fincentric unit of S&P Global and bought EmpaxisDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → in October 2025. AdvisorEngine is the largest deal Just Build It is known to have made.
What Franklin bought. AdvisorEngine began as a private-label roboadvisor called Vanare. Franklin acquired all of it in May 2020, three months after Jenny Johnson became chief executive officer.
At the time, AdvisorEngine said about 1,200 advisory firms with more than $600 billion in assets used its platform. It ran as an independent subsidiary, with Cancro staying on.
Why now? Neither Franklin, AdvisorEngine nor Just Build It has formally announced the deal, and Franklin has filed no 8-K. The firm reports its fiscal 2026 results on November 6.
What changes for advisors? The report does not say whether Franklin's Goals Optimization Engine, which it launched through AdvisorEngine in 2020, goes with the sale or stays. Nor does it detail changes for the registered investment advisers using AdvisorEngine's CRM, onboarding, rebalancing, and client portal tools.
The signal: The sale lands amid continued consolidation in wealth management infrastructure. VanguardDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →'s reported agreement to buy custody and technology platform Altruist for about $4 billion shows the strategic pull of software serving independent advisers — though without a disclosed price, this change of control is harder to weigh.
Read more: mfwire.com
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