Envestnet, which went private in a sale to Bain Capital last year, announced plans to sell Yodlee, the financial data aggregation subsidiary, to STG, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based private equity firm. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.
STG, previously known as Symphony Technology Group, was founded in 2002 and now manages over $12 billion in assets. Yodlee will come under STG’s global technology portfolio, which includes RSA, Trellix and SurveyMonkey.
“STG intends to leverage its transformation experience to help Yodlee deliver increased value to clients, attract and retain top talent, and achieve best-in-class business performance,” STG said in a statement. “With a focus on customer-centric innovation, the firms aim to rapidly invest in technologies and deliver enhanced solutions to the financial sector.”
Envestnet acquired Yodlee in 2015 in a cash and stock transaction worth $660 million. Yodlee was founded in 1999 and has since built a network of more than 19,000 data sources providing information to 38 million paid users and more than 700 fintech companies as of the end of 2023, according to its website.
“Yodlee sits at the intersection of trusted data access and intelligent analytics,” said Marc Bala, managing director at STG, in a statement. “It has built deep integrations across the financial ecosystem and earned the confidence of the world’s leading banks, asset managers, and wealth platforms.”
At the end of 2023, Bloomberg reported that Envestnet was exploring the sale of Yodlee, citing people with knowledge of the matter. The publication referred to a Raymond James analyst note that said the “persistent deterioration in the Yodlee business” was a concern for Envestnet.
In recent years, Envestnet and Yodlee have faced two lawsuits, one involving copyright infringement and a class action suit involving allegations of unsecured data and ‘unlawful collection and use of sensitive personal data from millions of consumers.’
In August 2019, software development firm FinApps filed suit, alleging that Yodlee had reverse-engineered FinApps’ code and claimed it as its own. In 2020, a U.S. District Court judge dismissed two key counts in the case but allowed it to continue based on seven others in the original complaint. That case is ongoing.
In the second case, filed in 2020, a New Jersey resident proposed a class action suit, asserting that the fintech entities had not done enough to safeguard domestic consumer data, including engaging in “various acts of deceit” and failing to implement some security protocols that are already in place for Yodlee users in Europe. Yodlee reached a settlement earlier this year on that case.
Last November, Envestnet sold the company to Bain Capital in a take-private deal, with the private equity firm paying about $4.5 billion for the wealthtech company, according to an announcement.
“This transaction is the first step in our value creation plan as a private company and will allow Envestnet to focus more deeply on its core connected wealth management platform, advanced insights and comprehensive solutions,” Envestnet CEO Chris Todd said in a statement. “Through our continued partnership with Yodlee, advisors will retain access to Yodlee data aggregation technology that helps power their business.”
Envestnet works with more than 500 of the nation’s largest RIA firms, has over 111,000 advisors and holds $6.5 trillion in total assets on its platform.
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