Some family offices are betting on both human and roboadvice at the same time by supporting a Silicon Valley startup and its new alliance. Cyborg advice is gaining fans.

Marthin De Beer BrightPlan & Prumentum Group, Inc. Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yesterday San Jose, California-based Prumentum Group unveiled both the closing of its $25-million Series A round, from unnamed "family offices representing America's most successful entrepreneurial families." Yesterday Prumentum also unveiled its purchase of a "significant equity stake" in Plancorp, a 34-year-old, St. Louis, Missouri-based RIA that manages $3.6 billion in assets and has 55 employees. And Prumentum and Plancorp will be teaming up to create Prumentum's new "direct-to-consumer hybrid-robo financial planning platform," called BrightPlan, which is set to publicly launch this year.

Pricing and exact terms of the Prumentum-PlanCorp strategic partnership were not disclosed. Yet Plancorp president Chris Kerckhoff tells InvestmentNews that Prumentum bought a 40-percent stake in Plancorp. And the door is open to Prumentum eventually buying up the remaining 60 percent of Plancorp (currently held by 14 Plancorp employees, including founder Jeff Buckner).

PE Hub and TechCrunch also reported on the Prumentum and Plancorp news.

"We're taking the financial planning methodology Plancorp has been using for decades," Marthin De Beer, CEO of Prumentum, tells TechCrunch. "Now we can bring it to anyone regardless of their net worth."

"Our partnership with Prumentum enables us to provide the hybrid solution we've been searching for," Kerckhoff states.

De Beer, a Cisco alumnus, co-founded Prumentum with Robert Wallace.

The Prumentum-PlanCorp partnership, in which a Silicon Valley techie shop is buying into a Midwestern traditional RIA, is reminiscent of when 401(k) advice giant Financial Engines bought the Mutual Fund Store last year. 

Edited by: Neil Anderson, Managing Editor


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