Backing Conquest to support AI-powered adaptive financial planning

Financial planning is anything but static. Advisors need dynamic tools that can handle clients’ changing goals, interpret market signals and automatically complete routine tasks. Legacy financial planning tools, relying on manual inputs and often outdated data, have proven time consuming, less accurate and complex. Advisors sacrifice time with clients and miss opportunities to craft unique and adaptive plans.

Technology is changing that, helping advisors become more efficient and creating windows for personalized plans that meet client demand for actionable, real-time financial advice. The need for personalization – at scale – will only accelerate in the future, given the lack of financial plans for clients in key markets: only 39% of people in the United Kingdom have them, compared to just 35% of people in the United States. The lack of financial plans translates into a clear market opportunity, with the industry poised to grow to $18.2 billion by 2033 at a CAGR of 16%.

Conquest Planning (Conquest) is a category leader among the next generation of financial planning solutions. The company has created a technology platform that treats financial plans more like a journey than a destination, and that is why we are so proud to announce that they are the newest member of the Citi Ventures portfolio. Launched with the goal of making financial planning accessible, yet unique, for investors across the wealth spectrum, Conquest is using its AI-powered software to help advisors create personalized advice at scale.

Product overview and impact

At the heart of Conquest’s efforts is its open API, which helps the company pull and push data to firms’ existing tech stacks. Conquest has links to the leading financial custodians and account aggregators, meaning it pulls the most relevant and comprehensive data.

Advisors using Conquest leverage that data and the company’s AI-based Strategic Advice Manager (SAM) to create financial plans in seconds. SAM takes those financial plans and constantly updates them, making thousands of real-time calculations and scenario analyses to surface next best financial decisions. For example, Conquest’s financial plans have solutions in place to respond to everything from a sudden market crash to a client’s decision to retire.

Conquest’s ability to be bespoke at scale stems from the structure of its platform: it is customizable across jurisdictions for clients anywhere on the wealth spectrum. That means companies that used to use multiple vendors to service different types of clients can now rely solely on Conquest, which will adapt to and grow with clients as they progress along their financial journeys.

The market has responded, with Conquest now having more than 60% of the Canadian financial advisor market share. The company plans to use the proceeds from this recent funding round to replicate that growth in the U.S. and U.K markets, where it already has a growing presence.

The road ahead

Conquest’s success was not by chance. CEO Dr. Mark Evans and his founding team have designed and scaled financial planning solutions. Its executive team has taken what they have learned from their initial efforts to position Conquest as the premier next generation, cloud-based and API-first financial planning solution.

Our investment in Conquest reflects Citi Ventures' consistent focus on wealthtech, Gen AI and the startups democratizing financial services. By making financial advisors more efficient and improving client satisfaction and outcomes, we believe Conquest will play a crucial role in modernizing financial planning.

Our congratulations go out to Mark and the rest of the Conquest team!