Between a presentation in Charleston, SC on Monday, Redtail U in Dallas on Tuesday, filming more Spotlight Video on Wednesday, and taking my son to the zoo on Thursday, updates to FPPad rank about number nine on my list of important things to do. But I still can set aside time this morning to give you the best financial planning technology news from around the Web.
Here are this week’s stories of interest:
[Advent isn’t the largest portforlio management software by number of users among RIAs, but it’s definitely a top ten vendor. In this latest announcement, advisers will benefit from ByAllAccounts’ thousands of connections with held-away accounts they may not ordinarily aggregate, or perhaps aggregate manually.] Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, announced it has selected ByAllAccounts, Inc. to provide retail account information to users of the Advent OnDemand® service.
Retire Logix to link with FPA’s PlannerSearch from Financial Advisor Magazine
[Financial planning software provider Financial Logix and the Financial Planning Association have partnered to make it easier for consumers using the Retire Logix software to find a financial planner through the FPA’s network of thousands of member planners.] Consumers using Retire Logix on their mobile phones now will be able to search for financial planners with a simple click.
Personal Capital is featured in four updates this week. Evidently one can “buy” widely distributed press by building a compelling financial dashboard from scratch.
Personal Capital’s Beautiful App Convinces The Wealthy To Trust Their Money To Strangers from FastCompany
[What buzz does Personal Capital consistently generate? Highlights of their data aggregation and comprehensive dashboard. But what most media outlets overlook is Personal Capital’s 10 employee financial advisors and how successful they are at managing assets to generate revenue for the business.] Personal Capital, a startup cofounded by Bill Harris, the former CEO of Intuit and PayPal, has created a new service that’s part “high tech,” part “high touch” to tackle both parts of the financial management equation.
Wealth management: Private pursuits from The Economist
[The next wave of multi-millionaires (and billionaires) from Facebook’s IPO is about to hit Silicon Valley. When they do, which method of wealth management will they choose? Traditional institutions or the nimble, tech-enabled startups?] Silicon Valley is already awash with traditional wealth managers. UBS, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and others are expanding in San Francisco and around Silicon Valley. They have recently been joined by online rivals such as Wealthfront, MarketRiders and Personal Capital, all of which use technology to help clients build customised asset portfolios at a small fraction of what traditional wealth managers would charge.
Personal Capital app demo from TechCrunch (embedded below for your convenience)
[Here’s a long interview of Personal Capital’s Bill Harris by TechCrunch, including some short segments of an app walkthrough. At least in this video you discover Personal Capital has 10 employee advisers ready to service clients under their RIA.] The CEO and VP of Engineering of Personal Capital demo their financial app.
Online RIAs will mostly fail — and here are 10 reasons why from RIABiz.com
[This article is last, because its author, Jack Waymire, misses the point in my opinion. I feel one must take the perspective of the prospective client, perhaps a 30-something startup employee that is looking to cash out some lucrative stock options. Where is that individual going to go for financial advice? A shop that has paper account forms, paper quarterly reports, and no mobile app? Forget it! It’s 2012 for goodness sake.] I believe these companies and their financial backers have badly underestimated the strength of the relationships that exist between investors and advisors. For this reason, I believe these websites will fail or, at best, be marginally successful. Here’s why.
