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FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 1

Posted on June 1, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Wow, it’s June already? I returned from presenting at FPA NorCal this week on top apps for financial advisers. If you want some of the inside scoop, check out the #FPANorCal hashtag or tweets from Michael Kitces while they’re still on his timeline (you’ll need to scroll down to see tweets from May 29).

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

How Can RIAs Improve Efficiency? from Financial-Planning.com

[Donna Mitchell covers a new report from Pershing Advisor Solutions with three ways advisers can be more efficient, but it doesn’t list any resources to use. So here’s a recap of Pershing’s insight with a resource thrown in: 1) Identify an ideal client profile (self explanatory), 2) Have a consistent business process (so you need a tool to define workflow), and 3) avoid overloading staff members (I wish I had a solution for that!)] Principals of RIA firms need to pay closer attention to workflow and operational issues at their firms, especially if they want to stay viable amid rising operational costs, Pershing Advisor Solutions said.

Advisers still shaky on social media policy from Reuters

[Guess what: you need a social media policy, even if your policy is ‘we don’t use social media.’ And what about Facebook ‘Like’ buttons? It appears that as long as a ‘Like’ stands on its own without any additional commentary, advisers aren’t violating regulatory rules prohibiting testimonials.] As the securities industry finally warms up to using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, regulators are discovering that brokerages and investment advisers are off to a rocky start.

Plantly launches “missing allocation tool” to the public from FPPad

[It’s my blog so I get to link to my own posts once in a while. Most of you are familiar with Personal Capital, Betterment, SigFig, and Wealthfront in the race to deliver online financial advice to investors. Plantly is yet another startup aiming to equip DIY investors with simple plans based on MPT models. Oh, it’s free to use today.] Brooklyn-based startup launches free asset allocation planning tool to the public.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 25

Posted on May 25, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

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 Software Selects ByAllAccounts to Provide Retail Account Information to Advent OnDemand® Users from PRWeb

[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.

Personal Capital app demo

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 18

Posted on May 18, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Be sure to see the new video posted to my About page and learn of the ways you can engage content here at FPPad.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Smarsh releases Web Archiving, an automated solution to archive adviser websites from FPPad

[If you have a website, you need some solution to capture and archive all your content for compliance purposes. Printing pages to PDFs doesn’t cut it, especially if your site has embedded video or social media feeds.] New automated tool will help registered professionals eliminate tedious manual processes to meet FINRA and SEC requirements.

Schwab taps Tamarac as its next integration partner from RIABiz.com

[I wrote yesterday of Schwab’s selection of Tamarac to its Intelligent Integration initiative. See Schwab adds Envestnet | Tamarac to its Schwab Intelligent Integration™ initiative. Here’s more detail from Brooke Southall at RIABiz with reaction from Schwab’s Neesha Hathi and Tamarac’s Stuart DePina.] Schwab Advisor Services announced today that it has chosen Tamarac to participate in Schwab Intelligent Integration — sticking with the theme of getting CRM integrations in place first.

Austin Powers Can’t Save Your Startup from Benzinga.com

[Another startup retail financial services provider is MyGDP, founded by Scott Bell. I first connected with Bell via Twitter and have enjoyed getting to know him as the development of MyGDP has matured. Here’s a good feature from Benzinga on the lesson Bell learned pitching MyGDP to investors via a not-so-subtle YouTube video.] The International Man of Mystery might be popular, but he can’t help entrepreneurs promote their startups.

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 11

Posted on May 11, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

I spent much of the week in San Francisco attending FinovateSpring 2012. Be sure to read my recap of relevant presentations for advisers from Day 1 and Day 2 and watch these videos.

Also, read this month’s Morningstar Advisor column, Client Reports: How Less Can Be More.

Here is this week’s story of interest:

Pinnacle’s Kitces: Virtual firms could leave traditional planners in the dust from InvestmentNews.com

[Two new online companies aiming to deliver financial advice directly to consumers were at Finovate this week: Personal Capital and FutureAdvisor. In his presentation at FPA Retreat 2012 this week, Pinnacle Advisory Group’s Michael Kitces cautioned advisers “should think about eliminating quarterly meetings and written financial plans” and embrace a more dynamic, virtual experience for select clients.] Prepare to dump written financial plans and quarterly meetings, and get ready for a more dynamic world of virtual financial planning, industry commentator Michael Kitces said Monday at the Financial Planning Association retreat in Scottsdale, Ariz.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 4

Posted on May 4, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Recent travel and a nasty cold this week prevented me from setting aside time for regular updates to FPPad. I just returned from giving a presentation in Phoenix, got sick, and want to get better before I head to San Francisco on Monday for Finovate Spring 2012.

I still need to unpack my bag from Wednesday and repack it for Monday, but you are free to proceed with this week’s stories of interest:

SigFig offers to tune up your investment portfolio from GigaOM.com

[Over the past few months I’ve highlighted new platforms like Personal Capital aiming to reach investors directly through simple websites and mobile apps. SigFig is another one to watch that officially launched earlier this week.] SigFig, a product born from portfolio tracker Wikinvest, is finally launching formally Tuesday, offering to make understanding investments easy. The free service, which has been in beta, allows users to sync all their investments and monitor them in real-time from one dashboard with extensive analysis conducted in the background to help find where users can save money.

Why Betterment, Wealthfront, and Other Online Investment Firms are Wrong about Financial Advisors from Forbes.com

[For more on the “robo adviser” trend, here’s an op-ed piece from Brightscope’s Mike Alfred in Forbes. My take: clients of the future will still want to engage and interact with human being advisers, only they want their advisers to be proficient in technology and support virtual engagement, both online and on mobile devices.] In a recent blogpost, Betterment made the broad-sweeping claim that Financial Advisors are Bad for Your Health. To make their position clear, they included an unfortunate image of a human face on the body of a pig. It didn’t take long for the Reformed Broker Josh Brown to draw the conclusion that Betterment thinks Financial Advisors are Pigs.

Redtail Technology Launches Integration with NetDocuments from PRWeb.com

[So Redtail CRM already has a document storage system called Imaging, but it lacks a number of components found in a true document management system. Redtail could either update Imaging to include new features, or it can support an integration with a third party document management provider. Alas, it appears Redtail’s strategy is to pursue the latter.] NetDocuments, a leading cloud content management service provider, announced a new integration today with Redtail Technology’s innovative web-based Client Relationship Management (CRM) solution for Financial Advisors.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 27

Posted on April 27, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Sometimes one is better than two from InvestmentNews.com

[I shared Orion Advisor Services’ new Orion Connect app in the Salesforce appexchange last week. Here’s an update from Davis Janowski with an interview of one adviser already taking advantage of the Salesforce-Orion integration.] Essentially, what Orion Advisor Services LLC has done is meld Salesforce’s customer relationship management application and Orion’s popular portfolio management/reporting application, using Salesforce’s programming interface.

The Top 10 Technology Trends for Financial Advisors, Pt. 2: Increasing Technological Capability from AdvisorOne.com

[In his first technology trend report, ActiFi’s Spenser Segal singles out opportunities to harness business intelligence due to the negligible cost of storing terabytes of data, access to processing power measured in petaFLOPS,  and inexpensive broadband Internet service available today. While captivating in theory, I think financial advisers should first focus their efforts on ditching Microsoft Outlook as their default CRM.] The first trend, Increasing Technological Capability, underpins all the other trends that we’ll discuss in future posts.  The concept of increasing technological capability covers a lot of territory and includes cheaper/faster storage, increasing processing power and increasing bandwidth/wireless speeds.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 20

Posted on April 20, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

My first item of note this week is an Operations and Technology Survey currently being hosted by ByAllAccounts. In return for providing your email address and survey responses, you’ll receive an executive summary of the survey results. I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.

Click here to take the 5-minute survey.

Now on to this week’s stories of interest:

10 Apps to Keep Your Business Organized from Mashable.com

[He’s a general interest article from tech website Mashable.com with 10 great app suggestions. Kudos to Mobile Assistant for being recommended in tip #9!] We asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs for the mobile apps that keep them on track in their work and on the go. Here are their favorite suggestions.

Advisors Assistant® Now Offers Integration with Orion Services from i-newswire.com

[Advisors Assistant is a top-five CRM program, according to the 2011 Financial Planning Tech Survey, and is very popular with small firms with revenue under $1 million. With a new integration with Orion, Advisors Assistant users can save clicks when wishing to view portfolio information associated with a client record.] Client Marketing Systems, Inc., parent company of Advisors Assistant®, is pleased to announce a new integration with Orion Advisor Services, LLC, an online service bureau and portfolio management system.

Unlike iCloud, Google’s Rumored Cloud Storage Could Be a Privacy Nightmare from Cult of Mac

[I like this article’s balance between opportunities of Google’s long-awaited file storage service and the potential privacy pitfalls of such a service. Advisers seeking client-friendly file sharing solutions similar to Dropbox and Box will want to take note.] Google could easily amass a good deal of data on users of its expected cloud storage service.

Never mind Tamarac, Envestnet is getting RIAs on board with its own stand-alone software from RIABiz.com

[Envestnet’s purchase of Tamarac, Inc. in February for $54 million certainly boosted the company’s technological capabilities, but they continue to win advisers with its own Vantage offering.] Envestnet took its Silicon Valley- and Trivandrum, India-based technology unit and began to offer it as a standalone service called Envestnet Vantage.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 13

Posted on April 13, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Wednesday’s post on client spoofing received tremendous response from readers and subscribers. Many of you shared your own stories of attempted client spoofing that was eventually detected, and several asked about practices that can be employed to increase the recognition of spoofing without overburdening back office staff and clients. I’m working on several follow up posts to break down examples and provide more information and resources advisers can use to be vigilant against spoofing.

And with that, let’s move on to this week’s stories of interest:

First up is this month’s Morningstar Advisor column, Laserfiche Offers Cloud Connectivity. This leading provider of on-premises document management software is now extending its product line to include a service delivered exclusively over the cloud. This makes the program, one that traditionally required large up-front costs, a more cost-effective option for advisers.

Advisers and iPads: Signs of a tipping point? from InvestmentNews.com

[You know all-too well that iPads are the tablet of choice among advisers. I have the following slide shown below in my iPad presentation showing how much traffic FPPad.com gets from the device. I get 53% from iPads, 27% from iPhone, 16% from Android and 4% for everything else. The FPPad adviser audience should be more tech-savvy than the broad InvestmentNews audience, and it shows! Thank you!] Roughly 36% of our mobile visits [to InvestmentNews.com] came from the iPad in March, compared with roughly 35% from the iPhone, which came in as No. 2 for mobile traffic sources.

 

2012 Is on Us: Egnyte Announces Box Buster Buyout Program from MarketWatch.com

[Advisers visit FPPad for information on cloud file storage services like Dropbox, ShareFile, and Box, but one that I haven’t specifically covered (though it’s on my resource radar) is Egnyte. This press release from the company features useful feedback from one Dallas-based RIA, True North Advisors, on how the solution satisfied the firm’s needs for security and easy deployment.] Egnyte, the leading provider of Cloud and HybridCloud File Sharing solutions for Businesses, today announced the Box Buster Buyout program. Aimed at businesses that are paying for Box accounts and found they’ve outgrown their usefulness, the Box Buster program allows paying Box customers to switch to a matching plan on Egnyte, at no cost for the duration of 2012 and free migration.

LogMeIn Prepares To Take On Dropbox & Box With Launch Of Cloud Storage Service Cubby from TechCrunch.com

[Like I said above, cloud file storage services are getting lots of attention from everywhere. Here’s yet another service from the folks at LogMeIn called Cubby to add to your list of potential resources.] LogMeIn, the company known best for its remote access tools, is today launching its own cloud storage service, as an alternative to those from Dropbox or Box, for example.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 6

Posted on April 6, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

At last, good content to share with you on financial planning technology from the last week! Here are this week’s stories of interest:

TD Ameritrade makes trading on iPads for RIAs available before mobile devices from RIABiz.com

[You found out Wednesday afternoon that TD Ameritrade Institutional rolled out an update to its Veo® Mobile app for iPad that includes trading, real-time client account access, and live streaming CNBC. In Brooke Southall’s article for RIABiz, he relates some clarity from Jon Patullo on why the company decided to support trading on the popular tablet.] Following the lead of Pershing LLC and Fidelity Investments but ahead of Schwab Advisor Services, TD Ameritrade Institutional is ma king it possible for advisors to place trades for mutual funds, ETFs and equities from chairlifts and hotel lobbies using iPads.

Mobile-Management from Financial Planning

[This is a decent short overview of a few apps with which advisers are finding success with clients. Included are goalgamiPro from Advisor Software (see my intervew on goalgami with ASI’s Neal Ringquist), AdvisorView from Tamarac, and mobile apps by Orion Advisor Services.] New and powerful planning tools lets advisors such as Betty Hedrick slash the time required for both nuts-and-bolts planning, as well as the once time-consuming transactional work of managing wealth.

Also note that AdvisorOne is starting a 10-part series by Actifi’s Spenser Segal on top technology trends for advisers. The first update is just an overview of what’s to come in the future, but it’s worthwhile taking note so you don’t miss subsequent updates in the future.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 30

Posted on March 30, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Remember, at 3PM Pacific today I’m delivering productivity tips on KLAV 1230 AM radio Financial Fridays. Click here to open the audio feed.

 

One thing’s for sure, if you want to make an announcement and not get drowned out by competing releases, do it at the end of March.

This week’s screens didn’t generate any items of interest in financial planning technology (that haven’t already been covered on FPPad).

So let me shamelessly self-promote the FPPad newsletter (sign up for free in the sidebar to the right), encourage you to subscribe to my podcasts on iTunes, and see the latest spotlight videos on the FPPad YouTube channel.

Enjoy a fast start to the weekend!