The Mobile Adviser, debuting at FPA Business Solutions 2013, March 7-9, Chicago
I’m in Chicago to wrap up the week, debuting my latest presentation The Mobile Adviser: Everything financial advisers need to stay safe, connected, and productive in the Mobile Age at FPA Business Solutions 2013. Follow the conference hashtag on Twitter, #FPASolutions.
But I still managed to take time to assemble this week’s top stories in financial adviser technology:
Newly Affluent Unimpressed With Advisors’ Use of Tech and Investment Strategy from AdvisorOne.com
[Guess what: if you haven’t upgraded your technology in the last 2-3 years, new clients will likely opt to work with a firm other than yours. Here’s what prospects are looking for: they’re checking out your “social cred,” or your presence on the web, including a compelling bio, video content about what makes you an ideal adviser for certain clients, social media interaction, and more. Then when prospects engage your firm, they want to work through digital channels, view reports on a tablet, exchange text messages with you, and sign documents electronically. So if you push pens and paper in front of them, they’ll likely be turned off by your “archaic” processes.] A large portion of up-and-coming affluent people around the world, though generally satisfied with their wealth managers’ use of technology, are unimpressed with the way advisors use that technology to show them how to invest their money, according to a new study.
How Black Diamond is working out — or not — as Advent’s agent of deliberate cannibalization from RIABiz.com
[While Orion has not-so-quietly surpassed $100 billion in assets managed under its platform (see: TD Ameritrade’s open technology helps push Orion Advisor Services over the $100 billion in platform assets mark), Black Diamond has been relatively quiet since its acquisition by Advent back in 2011. Why is that? RIABiz’s Brooke Southall gets some candid feedback from Advent chief executive Peter Hess about the company’s languishing growth. Want my opinion? Maybe it’s because Black Diamond hasn’t yet nailed down its data quality and customer service concerns expressed by advisers.] In one respect, Black Diamond Performance Reporting has not lived up to the expectations of executives of Advent Software Inc., which acquired it in 2011.
Review: AssetBook’s Radar Gets Stronger from Financial-Planning.com
[This is a very good review from Joel Bruckenstein about web-based portfolio management software provider AssetBook. If you’re in the market for a system that allows you to ditch your local servers and on-premises software, AssetBook is definitely worth a look now that it has rolled out Radar.] Radar, AssetBook’s new software as a service portfolio management system, was built to address [some existing] weaknesses. And it includes some new features that advisors are sure to like.
[Kudos to RIABiz’s freelance contributor Kelly O’Mara for highlighting NerdWallet. So if you are terrible at generating your own leads and prospects with your online marketing materials, maybe there’s a chance you can attract some new business with NerdWallet’s lead generation tools. Guess what: If you’re an adviser in Atlanta, GA (i.e. FPPad headquarters), there are zero, that’s right, ZERO advisers currently showing up in NerdWallet’s “Find an Advisor” search engine. Talk about a blue ocean!!] Acquiring useful leads that can be converted into actual clients — without spending too much money or wasting too much time — is a holy grail of the RIA business.
New from Balance: Digital Office & Solution Templates from BalanceFinancial.com
[Buried deep on my “companies-with-whom-I-should-connect” list is Balance Financial. So here’s a quick look at how they’re continually developing their product, now releasing Digital Office that is aimed to clean up problems with client portals. Again, my take: client portals will soon be dead, replaced by access to files and information via apps and desktop sync tools like Box and ShareFile.] Balance is excited to announce that today we … are launching a new suite of capabilities we are calling our Digital Office.
Erado Achieves the Largest Growth in Company History from Erado.com
[Remember Erado, the social media archiving provider for financial advisers (see: Six More Designate Erado as Their Social Media Compliance Provider)? Well they’ve evidently been on a tear with respect to growth, experiencing “the largest growth in their history” and being named “Cool Vendor” in Gartner’s Cool Vendors section. If you recall, they’re the preferred archiving provider for most of LPL’s reps using social media. How about that for a boring social media archiving company!] Erado, the nation’s leading compliance and archiving firm in electronic communication, announced their company milestone report for 2012.
Advisors Want Clarity On SEC Custody Complaints from FA-Mag.com
[While not specifically technology related, oh boy did the SEC just step up its rhetoric on custody. The problem is that custody continues to be an ambiguous term for compliance officers. Look, clients deserve to receive a complete picture of their wealth from their financial adviser, not just a slice that happens to be held with the adviser’s custodian of choice. So in comes held-away account monitoring and aggregation. Well often the easiest way to monitor held-away assets is to obtain client login credentials for those external assets and do some data gathering a dozen or so times a year. Whoops, turns out obtaining those credentials might (or might not, nobody has a definitive position) trigger custody! It’s a tangled web to navigate, and in many cases, not worth the hassle for advisers. So they give up and return to giving clients just a limited view of their overall wealth. Who is best served by that?] Leading figures in the financial advisor industry are asking the Securities and Exchange Commission for more clarity in the wake of new SEC complaints Monday about custody of client funds.
