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Tradier Brokerage, Inc., the cloud-based financial services brokerage firm, today announced a collaboration with trading analysis platform, Equities Lab, to provide university students with real-world trading experiences.

Goldman Sachs is recognizing Kensho Technologies Inc. CEO Daniel Nadler as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2015 at its Builders + Innovators Summit in Santa Barbara, California.

Goldman Sachs selected Nadler as one of 100 entrepreneurs from multiple industries to be honored at the two-day event. Nadler is active in several fields: In addition to Kensho, Nadler is the Director of Research for Financial Technology atStanford University’s School of Engineering. He completed his PhD at Harvard University. Nadler previously served as a Visiting Scholar at the United States Federal Reserve. In addition to being an entrepreneur and a scholar, Nadler is a poet whose work has been widely published in leading American literary journals. His debut collection of poetry, Lacunae, is forthcoming from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2016.

 

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International tuition payments startup Flywire is expanding its overseas footprint.

Boston-based Flywire says it has acquired Uni-Pay, a similar business based in the UK. Uni-Pay’s six employees will join Flywire.

Flywire’s online service works like a wire transfer, letting people use their local currency to pay tuition at international schools. Flywire says that it saves students money on those transfers because it bundles payments and negotiates lower ­currency exchange rates with banks.

With the acquisition, Flywire said it works with more than 800 schools in 12 countries. The company says it processed $1 billion in payments during the 2014-2015 school year, and expects that to double this year.

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Global payment solutions company peerTransfer is rebranding as Flywire and expanding its US and European operations, after seeing its payment volume and revenue double in the last year.

The company hopes its change will better reflect its role in order to build brand recognition and trust among its client base.

“We want to be the brand that international citizens trust for large cross-border payments – in education and beyond,” a spokesperson told The PIE News.

The company has also opened new US headquarters in Boston, and has relocated its office in Valencia, Spain to double capacity.

“The office expansions in Boston and Spain help us address the rapid growth we’ve experienced in our existing business the last six months and also give us the room to capitalise on additional growth opportunities in education as well as other adjacent markets that require large, cross-border payments,” the spokesperson said.

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A big asset manager is embracing “robo” finance advice.

BlackRock Inc. said Wednesday it is purchasing FutureAdvisor, a privately held pioneer in the fast-growing business of using automated computer models to build and manage investment portfolios.

The terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the fourth quarter, weren’t disclosed. BlackRock said the financial effect isn’t material.

With over $600 million in assets under management, FutureAdvisor will continue to serve both existing and new individual clients from its offices in San Francisco. But BlackRock is most interested in selling FutureAdvisor’s automated advisory services to the banks, securities firms and insurance companies that are customers of BlackRock Solutions. That unit, which accounted for $161 million of BlackRock’s $2.9 billion in revenue in the second quarter, sells a system that allows financial institutions to place trades and assess how those trades will affect their portfolios’ risk profiles, among other features.

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As if there weren’t already enough options in the robo-adviser movement for financial advisers, now there’s yet another: the build-your-own digital platform.

Tradier, a cloud-based, open-source brokerage technology provider, creates white-labeled online investment platforms for advisory firms and other financial-services companies. Dan Raju, chief executive of Tradier, said advisers pick the build-it-yourself option for robos because they want to stand out from everyone else.

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