Fidelity is making a bet on online support for its RIA clients and its broker-dealer clients' advisors.

Yesterday the Boston Behemoth unveiled a deal to buy a majority stake in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based eMoney Advisors from New York City-based Guardian. The deal is meant to amp up Fidelity's offerings for its National Financial Streetscape broker-dealer clients' advisors and its Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services (FIWS) WealthCentral RIA clients.

Looking ahead, Fidelity spokeswoman Erica Birke confirms that FIWS and National Financial's next phase in enhancing the Streetscape and WealthCentral platforms will focus on "comprehensive data management," "streamlining key tasks" to help advisors have "efficient and integrated" offices, and increasing collaboration between the home office, the advisor and the investor. The eMoney deal provides some help along those lines, Birke tells MFWire as eMoney's technology has three fundamental components that attracted Fidelity: advisor-investor collaboration tools, data aggregation, and financial planning tools.

Guardian will retain a minority stake in eMoney and will continue to be an eMoney client. eMoney will remain a separate company, with Fidelity as a client, too. And the eMoney leadership team, including founder and CEO Edmond Walters, will stay on. The deal is expected to close within 30 to 60 days.

Michael Wilens, president of Fidelity enterprise services, calls eMoney "another important vehicle" to help Fidelity "maintain its edge in a rapidly changing technology environment." (For context, Fidelity spends about $2.5 billion on technology each year and has about 10,000 "technologists" on staff, one quarter of the whole Fidelity team. 

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