Savvy has a 90-second demo and no published custody price

Savvy arrives with 150 users, no outside clients, and no published price. The one hard metric in its public positioning, 90 seconds, sits in a pitch built on software layered over Fidelity's clearing rails rather than a custodian's own balance sheet, and an RIA weighing a switch is being asked to judge that speed before seeing any published cost for the custody arrangement underneath.

The introducing-broker model is where an advisor should start, because Savvy does not hold client assets in this structure; it introduces accounts to Fidelity as the clearing broker and earns revenue from that relationship, so revenue moves while the assets remain on Fidelity's books. That makes the switch something other than a like-for-like swap with a bank custodian or a full-service clearing firm, and an advisor who chooses Savvy is betting that the software layer makes the existing Fidelity relationship efficient enough to justify paying for it out of the revenue stream Savvy takes.

The 150-user figure tells the same story from the other side, because with no outside clients the count reads as internal or pilot accounts rather than a custody book that has proven it can hold assets through market stress, regulatory change, or an operational disruption. Savvy has not yet shown that its software layer can inherit and keep even one outside client's assets, and the disclosed facts allow no stronger statement.

Savvy has no published pricing, and the terms that would settle an advisor's switch—ticket charges, basis point fees, minimums, cash sweep rates, platform fees—stay unpublished until a 2027 onboarding window. Without those terms an RIA cannot compare total custody cost, leaving the 90-second metric to carry the entire argument, and a workflow number, however attractive, cannot say whether the economics are better, worse, or neutral—only that the software is fast at something.

The coverage doesn't specify what the 90-second number measures: account opening, document collection, or something narrower. That ambiguity matters, because a 90-second application form says little about funding an account, transferring assets from a prior custodian, or resolving a rejected document, while an end-to-end onboarding claim would be a different matter entirely. Advisors should treat it as marketing until Savvy defines the metric.

The clearing arrangement underneath adds a second layer of risk. Software layered over Fidelity's rails inherits the clearing partner's balance sheet, insurance, and operational capacity, but if the clearing agreement changes—Fidelity adjusts terms or Savvy moves to another clearing broker—the advisor's custody relationship changes without the advisor renegotiating anything. The terms that matter are in the clearing contract and the custody fee schedule, and the 90-second claim contains neither.

The due diligence question is whether the software layer can inherit assets without owning the custodian relationship, because a full-service custodian owns the account, the balance sheet, and the liability while in Savvy's model the client's account sits at Fidelity and the advisor's contract is with Savvy. If Fidelity changes clearing terms, Savvy passes them through, so an advisor who chose Savvy for workflow may find the workflow unchanged while the economics shift underneath, a risk embedded in the clearing contract that a 90-second metric cannot disclose.

The deeper point is that Savvy is trying to change the question. Traditional custody evaluation asks which custodian offers the best mix of capital strength, service, technology, and cost; Savvy asks whether a workflow layer can make an existing clearing relationship good enough that the advisor no longer needs to think about the custodian. That is a legitimate thesis, and it may prove right, but it is not testable until the price and clearing terms are public. The 2027 onboarding window means the advisor can admire the demo for a year without being able to run the economics.

For an RIA, custody selection is a balance-sheet and contract decision wearing a software interface, not a workflow-software bet. The 90-second number is the only disclosed metric because it is the only number that flatters the product without exposing the economics. The number worth underlining is not 90 seconds; it is 2027.