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FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 6

Posted on May 6, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Today is the final day of FPA Retreat 2011, and Bill will soon be flying to Baltimore for a short weekend visit before returning to Dallas next Monday. As the events at Retreat unfolded, we’ve taken brief breaks to cover the best of technology news for advisers this week.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

TechCheck: Archiving for QuickBooks gets quicker from InvestmentNews.com

This InvestmentNews update covers a new Quickbooks integration in eFileCabinet Inc., a free social media policy resource, and news of the partnership between Trust Company of America and Black Diamond Performance Reporting.

TradeWarrior and TradePMR Announce Integrated Partnership from MarketWire.com

TradeWarrior and TradePMR announced today an integration between the two firms. The partnership provides TradePMR advisors with the ability to seamlessly export their client data files into TradeWarrior’s powerful rebalancing and trading system. The affiliation marks the first time TradePMR has made rebalancing software available to their advisors.

Lean on Me at FA-Mag.com

The major custodians are taking a leaf from the page of the independent broker-dealers who, in the best of cases, look beyond their advisors’ need for trade execution to the entire area of practice management.

Dropping Out of the Tech Arms Race at RegisteredRep.com

But even while confidence has slowly crept back among advisors, as the market has cooperated as well, many are still holding tight to the lessons of the past few years — spending on technology, but with a new kind of financial savvy and discretion.

Read Bill’s column for the May issue of the Journal of Financial Planning, Five Misconceptions About Document Management

Financial planners have benefited tremendously from new technologies introduced in the digital age by being able to conduct much of their business while on the go. However, one area of the digital movement that financial planners have been slow to adopt is document management technology.

The Tech Needs of Advisors on Advisor TV at Financial-Planning.com

At the Tiburon CEO Summit, Stuart DePina, CEO of software provider, Tamarac Corp., discusses what firms need to do with technology to service clients more effectively.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 29

Posted on April 29, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Today is the beginning of a busy itinerary for us at FPPad. We’re starting a short vacation to visit family in the Mid-Atlantic, then flying to Ft. Myers, Fla. for FPA Retreat 2011, swinging back north to Baltimore for a few days, then returning to Dallas May 9.

We’ll do our best to provide a weekly update on May 6, but if not, this week’s Bits and Bytes will have to hold you over for two weeks.

TD Ameritrade brings software elite to Dallas for an API summit from RIABiz.com

TD Ameritrade Institutional welcomed around a dozen financial adviser technology providers to its two-day Technology Summit this week in Dallas, TX and provided updates on using its Application Programming Interface.

BlazePortfolio Unveils ATOM ALIGN Cloud Service from BlazePortolio.com

BlazePortfolio today announced the launch of ATOM ALIGN Cloud Service, a hosted rebalancing and trade order management solution for investment organizations.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm-Part 4: Building an Action Plan from AdvisorOne.com

The fourth update in a six-part series by Spenser Segal of ActiFi designed to present best practices to advisors on how to choose, implement and monitor new technology for an advisory firm.

 

And in case you missed our earlier post, read BrightScope Launches Advisor Pages™, Aggregates SEC/FINRA Sources to Improve Adviser Search

One innovative company is attempting to change the way consumers search for financial advisers.

 

Sign the Petition to Express Your Support of a Fiduciary Standard

Posted on April 27, 2011 by in General

Many FPPad readers give advice in the best interests of their clients each and every day and feel that all advice givers should uphold a fiduciary commitment at all times.

If you support the application of a fiduciary standard to all who personalized investment advice, please take 15 seconds to sign the Fiduciary Standard for Financial Professionals petition.

The petition is embedded below. If you cannot view it, click here to open the petition at change.org. We’ve also added the petition link to our sidebar for a limited time.

 

Petitions by Change.org|Start a Petition »

BrightScope Launches Advisor Pages™, Aggregates SEC/FINRA Sources to Improve Adviser Search

Posted on April 26, 2011 by in Professional Development

BrightScopeOne innovative company is attempting to change the way consumers search for financial advisers.

BrightScope, the San Diego, Calif.-based provider of independent investment research and financial data, today announced the release of BrightScope Advisor Pages™.

Click here to read the press release at MarketWire.com

Changing Search

In the past, consumers searching for financial advisers faced an uphill battle of gathering information from multiple disparate sources, including information publicly available from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Often, consumers likely turned to search engines like Google and Bing to enter queries for advisers in their city, but the results offered no way to compare the basic information of one adviser to another.

Enter BrightScope Advisor Pages, where much of the public data is aggregated into one searchable database that supports filters to narrow search results. Adviser profiles include firm affiliation, contact information, registration type (Registered Representative of a Broker-Dealer, Registered Investment Adviser, or dually registered), and assets under management in addition to other information.

Adviser Search Legacy

Websites to search for financial advisers are not new. Roughly two years ago, a trio of sites were launched that provided a searchable database of financial professionals, including EvaluateMyAdvisor.com, FABeetle, and financeanswers.com. None of these sites are active today (hence the absence of hyperlinks). While we do not know the specifics of these sites’ reasons to shut down, we suspect that the controversial feature of allowing visitors to post ratings and reviews of advisers led to tricky compliance issues.

As many advisers subscribe to our blog, we recommend that you visit Advisor Pages and search for your own profile. If any data is incorrect, use the “Claim Your Profile” link to create a free account and contact BrightScope staff to correct the discrepancies.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 22

Posted on April 22, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

We spent the week finalizing details on several new speaking engagements and attended Redtail University in Dallas on Tuesday to get a better look at Redtail’s Project Leapfrog CRM (a name we’re fond of as Bill once wrote software for LeapFrog Toys).

See our speaking page to view details on new engagements added for FPA chapters and NAPFA conferences later this year.

Without further ado, here are this week’s stories of interest:

Commonwealth Finds Compliant Solution to Interactive Social Media from FA-Mag.com (additional coverage from AdvisorOne.com)

FPPad readers know about Commonwealth Financial Network’s relationship with Erado from our Bits and Bytes coverage on April 8. In June, Commonwealth will be the first broker-dealer to roll out what it considers to be a FINRA-compliant social media solution to its reps. What remains to be seen, though, is exactly who is responsible for creating and maintaining social media policies and procedures: Commonwealth’s compliance department, individual reps, or both?

Trust Company of America adds inexpensive Black Diamond technology — in its own way from RIABiz.com (and press release coverage from FA-Mag.com)

With an eye toward creating a slick package of integrated, easy-to-use software for breakaway brokers, Trust Company of America reported today that it became the latest asset custodian to make Black Diamond Performance Reporting part of its arsenal.

Make sure all your data are safe from InvestmentNews.com

Keeping client data safe has become even more important in light of all the sensitive information that is now being stored on portable devices.

Read the final part of an interview AdvisorWebsites.com conducted with Bill on financial adviser technology:Bill Winterberg Talks Technology: Part 4 (be sure to read Part 1,Part 2 and Part 3).

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 15

Posted on April 15, 2011 by in Bits & Bytes

Did you file your tax return yet? We managed to file a few days before the potential government shutdown.

But if you’re still scrambling to complete those last few client returns (or extension filings), here’s a 60-second breakdown of this week’s top stories in financial planning technology so you can get back to your forms.

The inside story of a giant RIA’s move to Tamarac from Advent from RIABiz.com

The thought process behind $2-billion Signature Estate’s move from Advent to Tamarac for its portfolio management technology.

Mobile Apps 101: 10 Must-Have Applications for Every Advisor from Financial-Planning.com

Whether it’s an iPad, Android, BlackBerry or iPhone, just about everyone these days is walking around with a digital appendage to keep themselves constantly in the know and able to communicate with friends, family and business associates around the clock.

Read this month’s MorningstarAdvisor.com column Avoid E-mail Audit Headaches to determine how technology can prevent last-minute scrambling to assemble e-mail records for examiners.

And finally, read part three of an interview AdvisorWebsites.com conducted with Bill on financial adviser technology:Bill Winterberg Talks Technology: Part 3 (read Part 1 and Part 2)

 

Arkovi and MarketeRIA® Partner to Facilitate Adviser Use of Social Media

Posted on April 14, 2011 by in Compliance, Practice Management

Arkovi, a social media archiving provider, today announced a partnership with TripleStop, LLC, a marketing agency that offers a social media and web marketing solution to advisers called MarketeRIA®. The partnership will allow advisers to consolidate their website, content management, and social networking activities into one web-based dashboard that features archiving to satisfy regulatory requirements.

Click here to view the press release. (opens at Arkovi.com)

Regular FPPad readers will recognize Arkovi from our regular mentions of companies that provide social media archiving solutions to financial advisers.

Back in January of this year, we introduced TripleStop and its marketing platform in this post, MarketeRIA® Offers Advisors Social Media and Web Marketing Solution.

Adviser adoption rates of social media continue to rise, but one of the challenges advisers face is maintaining profiles spread across multiple networks and managing a consistent message and presence. Add to that the regulatory burden of capturing and archiving messages sent out through various networks, from short 140 character tweets on Twitter to ten minute videos posted to YouTube.

While we have yet to review the Arkovi-MarketeRIA integration, we are hopeful that it will provide a streamlined, consolidated platform advisers can use to efficiently manage their content and better connect with clients and prospects.

NAPFA National 2011 Early Bird Deadline is April 20

Posted on April 13, 2011 by in Professional Development

Bill’s second conference appearance in May will be NAPFA National 2011 held May 18-20 in Salt Lake City, Utah.

He will appear as a panelist for Thursday’s Technology Panel at 11:20AM, featuring Jeffrey Daniher, co-owner of Ritter Daniher Financial Advisory, LLC, Frank Moore, founder of Vintage Financial Services, and moderated by Davis Janowski, technology reporter for InvestmentNews.

The early bird registration deadline is next Wednesday, April 20. If you register now, you’ll save $100 off the regular conference rate.

Click the banner below to view additional conference information.

Wealth management? There’s an app for that…

Posted on April 9, 2011 by in Technology

Bill was interviewed last week by Reuters about how financial advisers and wealth managers are using iPads in their practices.

Click here to read the article, Wealth management? There’s an app for that at Reuters.com.

Also visit our popular post here at FPPad, The iPad for Financial Advisers and Wealth Managers.

Preview TD AMERITRADE Institutional’s Veo® Mobile App for iPad

Posted on April 8, 2011 by in Technology

Thank you to Andy Gluck and Advisors4Advisors for recording a four minute preview of TD AMERITRADE Institutional’s new Veo® Mobile app for iPad.

Click here if you can’t view the embedded video (opens on YouTube).