Rich Friedberg, chief information security officer at Envestnet.
Shaping Wealth has also added a seasoned fintech veteran to its own C-suite, while Nitrogen unveils an AI agent alongside other updates to enhance client meetings.
Envestnet has announced another addition to its C-suite leadership, while Shaping Wealth welcomes another C-level exec and Nitrogen introduces an AI agent alongside updates to redefine client meetings for advisors.
Envestnet appoints Rich Friedberg to sharpen cybersecurity focus
Envestnet has hired longtime cybersecurity executive Rich Friedberg as chief information security officer, underscoring how central data protection and governance have become to large-scale advisor platforms.
Friedberg – who follows a couple of other C-level appointments at Envestnet over the past few months – brings more than two decades of security leadership across financial services, SaaS and national security roles, including stints at Live Oak Bank, Blackbaud and Capital One. At Live Oak, he focused on weaving cybersecurity into governance, strategic planning and digital product development, leaning on AI and automation to boost regulatory confidence and operational resilience.
Envestnet chief executive Chris Todd said in the announcement that Friedberg brings “deep expertise aligning cybersecurity with enterprise risk, regulatory expectations, and board-level governance” and that his approach will “support our next phase of growth.”
At Envestnet, Friedberg will report to chief technology officer Bhaskar Peddhapati, a structure that ties information security directly to platform engineering. He will oversee enterprise security strategy, cyber risk management, AI-enabled security operations and resilience initiatives across the firm’s wealth platform, which supports trillions in assets for advisors and institutions.
Friedberg said his priority is to “embed security early, align governance with enterprise risk, eliminate unnecessary complexity, and use AI-driven automation to deliver security at speed,” arguing that when security is integrated into “strategy and engineering from day one, it accelerates innovation and protects enterprise value.”
Shaping Wealth adds Corey Westphal to drive AI-powered revenue growth
Shaping Wealth is also reshaping its leadership bench as it leans harder into AI for behavioral finance. The Chicago-based company has named fintech entrepreneur Corey Westphal as chief revenue officer, tasking him with turning its education roots into a broader embedded technology business.
Shaping Wealth stands among a handful of well-regarded providers offering behavioral science-based technology aimed at advisors and their teams. With a new platform, Lydia, it is positioning itself as an AI-native provider of “behavioral intelligence” that can sit inside existing advisor workflows, surfacing real-time coaching prompts during client and team interactions.
Westphal previously founded Mobile Assistant, a dictation and workflow business that secured approved-vendor status with large firms including LPL, Osaic, TIAA and Truist. His team built CRM-integrated APIs designed to capture and structure insights from client meetings, experience that translates directly to Shaping Wealth’s push to sit inside the tech advisors already use every day.
“With Lydia, Shaping Wealth is solving the right problem at exactly the right time: guiding advisors to stay deeply human as AI reshapes the industry,” Westphal said in the announcement.
Lydia has already been tested inside Shaping Wealth’s Compass content platform, processing thousands of user questions and surfacing demand for practical guidance on tough conversations, major financial decisions and advisor wellbeing.
As CRO, Westphal will lead revenue strategy, partnerships and go-to-market efforts as Shaping Wealth pursues integrations with CRMs, planning software, and digital engagement tools (see its connection with Focal’s AI meeting platform announced late last month) and builds out fintech partnerships with firms such as Conquest Planning and YCharts.
Nitrogen rolls out Nucleus agentic AI and tax-planning upgrades
Advisor software provider Nitrogen is pushing further into AI as it tries to own what happens before, during, and after a client review.
At its Fearless Investing Summit, the firm unveiled Nucleus, an “agentic AI” engine that lives inside the Nitrogen platform and is pitched as a workflow component rather than a standalone chatbot. Advisors can assign Nucleus tasks such as setting risk targets, sending questionnaires, converting client statements into portfolios, generating retirement income maps, and drafting proposals, all tied to a single client record.
Those were the very same pain points addressed by Contio, a startup established to “kill broken meetings.” That venture was set up by Aaron Klein, the founder of Riskalyze, which was later rebranded to Nitrogen in 2023.
“Client meetings are where advisors demonstrate value and trust is won,” chief executive Dan Zitting said in a release announcing the launch, declaring his firm’s goal to be “the most compliant, secure, and powerful AI tools in the industry.”
The company says Nucleus runs within a structured data environment, with advisors approving actions before they are executed, and is backed by SOC 2 and ISO-42001 compliance.
Nitrogen also introduced upgrades around the meeting experience. In its Tax Center product, new report elements help advisors generate client-ready PDFs that visualize current tax data and show the tax impact of shifting from existing portfolios to proposed ones, with a Roth conversion calculator on deck.
A Premium Statement Capture tier adds human verification on top of AI-driven statement conversion for a monthly fee, while Income Center now includes stress tests that model real-world market scenarios for retirement income plans.
The firm says it also boosted the capacity and speed of its Research Center, aiming to let advisors handle larger portfolios and more complex questions in real time.
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