Wilshire Partners with FinTech Firm GoalBased Investors to Fuel New Retail Mobile App with Institutional-Quality Manager Research

App helps democratize access to goal-based financial planning and advice for individual investors, backed by the same research used to advise large institutions.

SANTA MONICA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Wilshire, a leading global financial services firm, today announced a partnership with GoalBased Investors (GBI), a new fintech company that connects investors and advisors with a community-driven mobile app. Wilshire will provide manager research as an input to GBI’s innovative financial planning and advice discovery process focused on helping people find better financial outcomes.

GBI is the firm behind Lasso, a mobile-first digital platform that democratizes access to goal-based financial planning and advice. Lasso enables individual investors to quickly build financial plans designed to meet important life goals. After creating a plan, investors anonymously share it with financial advisors, who can then make proposed enhancements in the form of an optimized investment portfolio.

Through this partnership, GBI will use Wilshire’s investment manager research as an input when constructing optimized portfolios. Proposals built in the Lasso app will be backed by Wilshire’s investment expertise, allowing individuals to indirectly benefit from Wilshire’s institutional quality insights.

“Individuals are increasingly asked to take more responsibility for their financial results,” said Jason Schwarz, President and Chief Operating Officer of Wilshire. “Successful financial outcomes depend on quality research, and we have decades of experience in researching investment managers for large institutional clients. We’re excited to extend access to that same quality research through GBI’s innovative mobile app.”

“Wilshire is widely recognized in the institutional investment community for the quality of their manager research,” said Chip Castille, founder of GBI and former managing director at BlackRock. “We are delighted to partner with them and bring institutional-quality research to the Lasso process.”

Unlike other digital platforms that make individuals create complicated financial plans with dozens of questions and inputs, GBI offers a gamified experience that makes financial planning fun, interactive and simple. And it puts the experts—financial advisors—right at the fingertips of individuals who need help reaching their goals.

“One of the problems in today’s financial landscape is that while there is an increased focused on financial literacy, we’re not increasing access to people who already have very high levels of financial literacy: financial advisors,” said Becca Long, who formerly led development of fintech advisor-facing technologies at BlackRock and now heads up GBI’s sales and client experience. “Using Wilshire’s research in our process is a great way to provide financial expertise to those who need it most: individual investors.”

The Lasso mobile app, powered by GoalBased Investors, will launch this fall. Visit the GBI website at goalbasedinvestors.com to join the waitlist and get notified when the app is available for download.

About GoalBased Investors

GoalBased Investors (GBI) is a fintech company dedicated to helping individuals quickly build meaningful financial plans for life’s important goals and easily match with an expert financial advisor who can help make their plans successful. Through the Lasso mobile app, GBI is delivering on its mission to create more access to financial planning and advice by facilitating effective and efficient conversations around financial goals. Learn more at goalbasedinvestors.com.

About Wilshire

Wilshire Advisors LLC (Wilshire®) is a leading global financial services firm, dedicated to improving outcomes for investors worldwide. An independent firm since its founding in 1972, Wilshire advises on over $1.3 trillion in assets and manages $87 billion in assets. Specializing in innovative investment solutions, consulting services and multi-asset analytics, Wilshire serves more than 500 institutional and intermediary clients worldwide from 10 offices around the globe. Learn more at wilshire.com.