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DataPoints® demo: How to incorporate behavioral science tools to help clients meet their goals

Posted on March 19, 2019 by in Live with Bill Winterberg, Technology

Get your special pricing at http://fppad.com/datapoints

An Introduction to DataPoints®

I first met Sarah Stanley Fallaw, Ph.D., founder and president of DataPoints®, in 2016 as the company is based in Atlanta, making it super convenient to connect. As I learned about the financial technology startup’s value proposition of introducing behavioral science tools into the business of financial planners and coaches, I encouraged them to apply to the XY Planning Network’s first fintech competition. While they didn’t win that year’s competition, DataPoints® presented along with five other finalists to XY Planning Network attendees and received immediate feedback from those interested in adopting behavioral science tools.

Behavioral Science Tools

Fast forward to today, as DataPoints® is now in production as software solution designed to help financial planners and coaches add behavioral science to the services they offer to clients. I met with Sarah Fallaw, Ph.D., founder and president of DataPoints®, to learn about her background and how she’s bringing decades of research and industrial psychology principles to the domain of financial services to improve the outcomes of clients and investors.

Watch the demo video embedded above to learn how adopting the DataPoints® tools can facilitate conversations and planning strategies that can help your clients meet their goals.

Win a Copy of The Next Millionaire Next Door

In addition, Sarah and I arranged a giveaway of five copies of the new The Next Millionaire Next Door (<-Amazon affiliate link!) book, co authored by Sarah Stanley Fallaw Ph.D. and her late father Thomas J. Stanley Ph.D. Just hit the like icon and leave a comment below the video on YouTube before March 31, 2019, and I will select five random commenters to receive a free copy of the book. Good luck, and thanks for watching!

0:14 Introduction and Sarah Fallaw’s background
1:50 How Industrial Psychology can be applied to personal finance
4:53 The mission of DataPoints®
7:25 Who DataPoints® works with
9:13 Ways DataPoints® is used by financial coaches and planners
11:52 The Behavioral Science Toolkit
12:22 The DataPoints® software demo
15:07 The DataPoints® dashboard
17:02 DataPoints® Advise and the survey process
19:35 Example of advisor reports
23:10 Additional education resources provided by DataPoints®
23:42 How long does it take to learn how to use DataPoints®?
25:02 The Financial Perspectives assessment
25:38 How reliable are the DataPoints® assessments?
28:12 What additional reference materials are available in DataPoints®
34:11 How assessment insights can facilitate conversations around money and finances
37:16 Example of reports available for clients and customers
39:55 How to connect with DataPoints® and try the software (and get a discount code for FPPad viewers!)
41:03 How to win a copy of The Next Millionaire Next Door book!

Tech Alley Tour with John Connor at Schwab IMPACT® 2018

Posted on November 7, 2018 by in Conferences, Technology

From Schwab IMPACT® 2018, I connected with John Connor, Vice President of Digital Advisor Solutions for Schwab Advisor Services to tour the “Tech Alley” section of The Exchange exhibit hall.

Watch the Tech Alley Tour on Youtube: https://youtu.be/V4oW-JO1nv0

We toured seven of the technology providers exhibiting during IMPACT® 2018, including:

IMPACT® 2018 coverage sponsored by Envestnet | Tamarac. Sign up for a demo at http://www.fppad.com/tamarac

Music: Hysterical by Strength to Last, licensed via Soundstripe: https://soundstripe.grsm.io/billwinterberg

Alexa is NOT spying on you! Flash briefing for May 25, 2018

Posted on May 25, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Aquiline Capital Partners Acquires Compliance Software and Solutions Provider RIA in a Box from BusinessWire.com

Don’t Freak Out About That Amazon Alexa Eavesdropping Situation from Wired

Orion’s May 2018 Product Updates Empower Financial Planners, Chief Compliance Officers from BusinessWire.com

(Disclosure: RIA in a Box and Orion Advisor Services have engaged Bill Winterberg for consulting and/or marketing services over the past 12 months. Full updated disclosures are always available here fppad.com/disclaimer)

Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar, register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference coming June 11 in Chicago.

RIA in a Box Gets Acquired

In compliance news, RIA in a Box, a leading provider of compliance solutions to registered investment advisers, announced it has been acquired by New York private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount. RIA in a Box serves approximately 2,000 investment advisers in the country with compliance solutions ranging from initial business registration, online compliance calendar and reporting programs, as well as automated employee trade monitoring. According to a press release, Aquiline plans to help RIA in a Box pursue organic growth initiatives as well as an acquisition strategy in the wealth management software and compliance industry.

Alexa is NOT Spying on You

Is your Alexa spying on you? A Seattle news channel reported that a Portland, Oregon couple’s Echo device surreptitiously recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random person listed in their contacts. While the story quickly stoked backlash among the see-I-told-you-so crowd online, Amazon was quick to reply that the couple unintentionally activated their Echo’s wake up word followed by the phrase “send message,” which activated the Echo’s built in messaging feature. It’s the smart speaker equivalent of a butt dial. Nevertheless, however unlikely the string of events may be, Amazon said that the company will continue to evaluate options to make cases such as this one less likely.

Orion Advisor Services May 2018 Release Details

And finally, Orion Advisor Services released its May 2018 Software Update that includes updates to fee billing for one-time financial planning engagements, new integrations, and additional compliance automation. Here’s Orion’s Director of Technology Support, Joe Leyboldt with more details:

Today we announced the details of our May 2018 Tech Release. The most impactful updates are new billing functionality enabling advisers to generate bills for financial planning and advice, the addition of a tool called Supervise to Compass, our compliance app. We’ve also strengthened Compass’ AML screening capabilities. Finally, we’ve launched an integration with BlackRock’s iRetire and updated our Salesforce integration to run on the new Salesforce Lightning user interface.

To see all the detail of the Orion Software update, be sure to visit FPPad.com/flashbriefing for all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Robinhood raises $363 million in new capital: Flash briefing for May 11, 2018

Posted on May 11, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Robinhood, With No-Fee Trading App, Sees Valuation Soar To $5.6 Billion from Forbes

BlackRock, world’s biggest investing company, is planning to nickel-and-dime you from CNBC.com

BlackRock and Acorns Partner to Expand Financial Participation Among the Next Generation of Investors from PRNewswire

Live with Arcons Technology: Demo of ClientPort and BillPort technology solutions from YouTube

(Promotional consideration for the demo was provided by Arcons Technology. See my full disclosures by clicking here.)

Welcome to the latest FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Robinhood Raises $363 Million in New Capital

Several investing apps announced new rounds of fundraising this week, with the biggest announcement coming from Robinhood, the commission-free stock and cryptocurrency trading app. Robinhood said it officially raised $363 million in Series D funding, valuing the company at $5.6 billion, confirming a report published by the Wall Street Journal earlier in March. Robinhood says it now services more than 4 million stock trading accounts and has rolled out cryptocurrency trading to users in ten states, although the company declined to say how many users pay for the Robinhood Gold premium membership or whether the company is profitable.

Acorns Raises $50 Million in Round Led by BlackRock

Another company raising new capital is Acorns, as the spare change investing app announced it raised $50 million in a round led by Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager with more than $6 trillion dollars in assets under management. According to a company press release, Acorns now has over 3.3 million investment accounts on its platform and says Blackrock’s participation won’t influence the allocations among the exchange-traded funds in customer portfolio allocations, which include a mixture of ETFs from Vanguard and Blackrock.

BillPort Supports Complex Adviser Fee Billing

And with all these free apps available for investing, consumers are getting much more sensitive to paying fees, including the they pay for financial advice from their financial advisers. So if you’re a financial professional, how are you managing the different fee schedules you want to support overwhelming your staff with custom spreadsheets to monitor your billing. I recently connected with Hemant Moré to learn more about how his solution called BillPort can address nearly every method an adviser wants to use to calculate fees:

There are some clients who like to prorate the fees, there are some clients who like to provide credits, write offs, discounts, minimum fees, maximum fees, minimum or maximum fees on tiers. So there is a whole different kind of way that each firm behaves, and BillPort can handle many of those situations.

To view the full promotional demo of the BillPort solution, visit fppad.com/flashbriefing for the links to today’s top stories

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Learnvest to shut down accounts by June 5: Flash briefing for May 7, 2018

Posted on May 7, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

LearnVest to drop financial planning while ‘further integrating’ into Northwestern Mutual from Financial-Planning.com

Financial Engines Announces Agreement to Be Acquired by Hellman & Friedman for $45.00 Per Share in Cash from Businesswire.com

Alexa can remember birthdays and other things for you now from TechCrunch.com

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Learnvest to Shut Down Accounts by June 5

One of the larger acquisitions among financial planning startups in recent years is closing out with a whimper, as Learnvest told its customers that it will be shutting down its online investment tools next month, according to an email sent by the company and highlighted by Financial Planning Magazine. Back in 2015, Learnvest received substantial fanfare as Northwestern Mutual announced the acquisition of the online financial planning startup, and while terms of the deal were not disclosed, it was widely reported that the deal’s valuation was somewhere around $250 million.

Now three years later, Learnvest said it will turn off access to customer accounts on June 5 and plans to relaunch later this year as a “digital resource focused on educating consumers on how to meet their financial goals” according to a company statement. Some 8,000 customers will be affected, and may turn to other low-cost online financial planning services available from members of groups like the XY Planning Network or Garrett Planning Network.

Financial Engines to be Acquired for $3 Billion

In other acquisition news, Financial Engines, the nation’s largest independent investment adviser, announced it has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm Hellman & Friedman in an all-cash transaction valued at just over $3 billion. The transaction will merge Financial Engines’ $169 billion in assets with $21 billion in assets from Edelman Financial Services, which is another company in the Hellman & Friedman portfolio.

According to the Financial Engines statement, the combined companies will create the leading provider of scalable, comprehensive, and unbiased advice for all investors.

Alexa Adds “Remember This” Skill

And finally, did you forget your mother’s birthday or the last time you changed the filters in your HVAC? Well now there’s a skill for that, as Amazon rolled out a new skill for Alexa called “Remember This.” Simply ask Alexa to remember just about anything, including important dates, names, clothing sizes, you name it, and Alexa will remember the information and repeat it back to you when you ask in the future. I think this is a very slick feature, as you’re essentially building your own personal database of reference information that you can recall anytime in the future, all without any programming or writing a single line of code. You can’t do that with SQL!

For all the links to today’s top stories, be sure to visit FPPad.com/flashbriefing.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Company uses “Drew Cloud” pseudonym to promote financial products: Flash briefing for April 27, 2018

Posted on April 27, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s stories:

Drew Cloud Is a Well-Known Expert on Student Loans. One Problem: He’s Not Real from Chronicle.com

Addepar Celebrates $1 Trillion Assets on Its Platform from LinkedIn Pulse

Tope Awotona – A Founder Story from AtlantaTechVillage.com

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Company Uses “Drew Cloud” Pseudonym

In this week’s shocking news, it turns out that you can’t trust everything you read online about personal finance.

This week, the Chronicle of Higher Education revealed that a journalist who went by the name Drew Cloud is not actually a real person at all. In it’s exposé, the Chronicle explained how a company called LendEDU made up the pseudonym of “Drew Cloud” to represent a group of authors who wrote content for Student Loan Report, a company LendEDU owns, but also failed disclose its financial interest to Student Loan Report readers!

The admission by LendEDU sheds light on controversial practices where content and influencer marketing tactics are used to lure readers into buying financial products recommended in blogs and websites sites that are actually owned by the product providers themselves, who don’t disclose the conflict of interest to their readers.

So be careful out there, you can’t always trust what you read online about personal finance recommendations!

Addepar Surpasses $1 Trillion in Client Assets

In adviser technology news, this week, Addepar announced that its comprehensive portfolio management, reporting and aggregation solution passed $1 trillion dollars in client assets on the platform. Co-founded in 2009 by PayPal alumni Joe Lonsdale, Addepar provides investment management technology to over 300 large financial institutions, wealth advisors, and family offices according to a company statement.

Calendly Solves Scheduling Frustrations

And finally, are you tired of wasting time sending emails back and forth trying to book a meeting? Then check out the online calendar solution from Atlanta-based Calendly, which has helped close to 30 million people worldwide schedule their meetings. The Atlanta Tech Village recently highlighted the story of Calendly’s founder Tope Awotona which I recommend you check out, and then see if Calendly’s might help you save time when scheduling meetings with clients and colleagues.

Just visit FPPad.com/flashbriefing to find the links to all of today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Qapital raises $30 million: Flash briefing for April 20, 2018

Posted on April 20, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Qapital Secures $30M in New Financing via PRNewswire

Create personal Alexa skills in minutes via Amazon

Win gear to boost your content creation via YouTube

Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.

Qapital Raises $30 Million

The savings and goal-setting app Qapital announced it raised $30 million dollars in new capital this week, bringing its total fundraising to just over $47 million, according to data from Crunchbase. Qapital launched in the US in 2015 and helps users automate their savings using rules like automatic transaction round-ups, forced savings when shopping at specific stores, perhaps for your frequent coffee splurges, and also integrates with If This Then That to trigger savings for almost any event you can think of.

While its unfortunate that Qapital does not pay interest on savings held in customer accounts, the app does encourage its users to refer their friends to Qapital by paying a $5 referral fee for each new sign up.

Amazon Publishes Skill Blueprints for Alexa Skills

Do you want to try your hand at making personal skills for Amazon Alexa, but don’t know how? This week, Amazon released a new feature called Skill Blueprints, which allows Amazon Echo owners to choose from twenty pre-built skill templates to customize your own voice experience. Select from Blueprints like frequently asked questions for your houseguests, custom flash card quizzes, adventure stories for your kids, and more. The Skill Blueprints are a quick and easy way Echo owners can get more utility out of the voice command devices, which I believe is the next frontier in the client experience between financial advisers and their clients.

Win Gear for Video and Podcast Production

And finally, would you like to win some free gear to boost the production quality of your videos and podcasts? Then head over to the FPPad YouTube channel to see our videos from the 2018 NAB Show, where I’m giving away a Joby GripTight Action Kit for your mobile phone, a Grip Gear Movie Maker Kit, and a free one-year subscription to the Soundstripe music licensing service.

All you have to do is give each video a thumbs up, subscribe to the FPPad YouTube channel, and leave a comment on each video to be eligible to win.

Head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to find the links to my videos from the NAB Show as well as the other links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

Marcus by Goldman Sachs acquires Clarity Money: Flash briefing for April 16, 2018

Posted on April 16, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories.

Marcus by Goldman Sachs® Announces Acquisition of Clarity Money from Businesswire.com

United Capital Makes FinLife Platform Compatible with Other CRMs from Wealthmanagement.com

NorthStar Financial Agrees to Acquire FTJ FundChoice from Businesswire.com

Orion Advisor Services is one of my consulting clients. See my full disclosures at fppad.com/disclaimer

Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, I’m back from spring break, so here are the top fintech stories you need to know today

Marcus by Goldman Sachs® Acquires Clarity Money

Goldman Sachs, one of the largest investment banks in the world, is becoming a bigger player in the personal financial management space as it just completed its acquisition of a budgeting app called Clarity Money. First reported by Bloomberg back in February, the acquisition rolls in Clarity Money’s one million users into Goldman Sachs’ direct to consumer financial services brand that goes by the name Marcus, which currently offers no-fee fixed rate personal loans and high-yield savings accounts to consumers.

Terms of the the deal were not disclosed, but Clarity Money reportedly raised $14.5 million dollars in two rounds from its investors since 2016 according to data from Crunchbase.

United Capital Financial Advisors Introduces FinLife CX

United Capital Financial Advisors, the nationwide $20 billion dollar rollup firm, announced an update to its FinLife technology platform called FinLife CX that will allow financial advisers to use the proprietary platform without having to migrate from the CRM software they already use. Introduced in mid-2016, the FinLife platform heavily leverages Salesforce and the Heroku cloud development platform, so advisers traditionally had to convert their existing CRM data to Salesforce in the first few months of adopting the FinLife platform. With the introduction of FinLife CX, United Capital hopes to reach a wider segment of advisers interested in the the firm’s consolidated portfolio reporting, client portal, and advisor dashboard tools.

Orion Advisor Services Parent Company Acquires FTJ FundChoice

And finally, Orion Advisor Services is in the news once again as its parent company, NorthStar Financial, announced the acquisition of FTJ FundChoice, a turnkey asset management firm with approximately $10 billion in assets under administration. The deal will allow Orion to complement its technology platform with a mature asset management provider under a single contract and service agreement. For more information on the acquisition, I connected with Orion Advisor Services CEO Eric Clarke:

Thank you Bill. At NorthStar and especially at Orion, we’re excited to announce the acquisition of a decade-long client partner of ours, FTJ FundChoice. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Dean Cook and his team to bring FTJ’s managed account capabilities to our Orion advisors and enterprise-level prospects.

Orion Advisor Services is one of my consulting clients, so visit fppad.com/disclaimer for my full conflict of interest disclosure, and visit fppad.com/flashbriefing to get the links to all of today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.

 

Orion Advisor Services Launches Compass: Flash Briefing for March 28, 2018

Posted on March 28, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to today’s top stories:

Orion Launches Compass, a Revolutionary New Resource to Help Firms Scale Compliance Operations from BusinessWire

DataPoints Launches its Comprehensive Assessment of Psychological Risk Tolerance, The Investor Profile from PRWeb

Conga Acquires Orchestrate from GetConga.com

Disclosure: Bill Winterberg provides consulting services to Orion Advisor Services. Click here to view all conflicts of interest.

Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories brought to you by Morningstar.

Register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference and see how they’ve helped lead the investing discussion for 30 years.

Orion Advisor Services Launches Compass App

Orion Advisor Services is in the news once again, as the company announced the launch of a new compliance application for advisers called Compass. The new app includes an Audit Tool that retrieves portfolio and trading information from Orion and formats it in a way that meets common regulatory requests from auditors during an SEC examination, and also a Verify Tool that facilitates anti-money laundering screening with an integrations with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions. These new compliance apps can help advisers recover days of lost productivity when preparing for a compliance exam, according to the company’s press release.

DataPoints Introduces Investor Profile Assessment Tool

In behavioral finance news, DataPoints recently announced the launch of its behavioral assessment tool called Investor Profile. According to a company press release, the Investor Profile assessment gives advisors a scientific way to assess psychological risk tolerance of investors and use a consistent framework to guide clients towards recognizing and correcting for their unique investing behaviors. The Investor Profile measures five unique characteristics, including confidence in investment decision-making, behavior during times of wild market swings, willingness to try new strategies or take new chances, and more.

Conga Acquires Orchestrate

And in industry acquisition news, Conga, a provider of document automation solutions for Salesforce users, announced it has acquired Orchestrate, a workflow automation provider with a focus on financial professionals that use Salesforce in their business. The acquisition will add Orchestrate’s expertise with RIAs and wealth management firms to Conga’s suite of enterprise-grade Intelligent Document Automation solutions. With more on that, here’s Orchestrate President and Co-CTO, Joshua Van Heukelom.

At Orchestrate, our mission is to enable best-of-breed efficiency for firms that are on the Salesforce platform. So we were born out of an RIA, so we know the language, we know the industry, we know what people need. We’ve been in wealth management for a number of years, and so our tools really help solve problems we know these people have.

To watch my full interview with Orchestrate, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get all the links to today’s top stories.

I’m Bill Winterberg, and those are your fintech headlines for today from FPPad.com. Check back in with me later for more fintech news.