If you want a financial plan, but don’t have a hundreds of thousands of dollars to invest, there’s a new company that wants to help, as Baltimore-based Facet Wealth recently raised $33 million dollars in funding to offer financial plans by CFP professionals to Americans nationwide. Facet Wealth charges a flat fee for financial planning services that range from $480 a year to $5,000 per year based on the complexity of the plan. Facet Wealth also said it will use some of its funding to transition certain clients from other financial advisers that don’t meet that firm’s ideal client profile.
RightCapital Announces Strategic Partnership with Betterment for Advisors
Continuing with the financial planning theme, earlier this week, RightCapital announced that the financial planning software provider has secured a strategic partnership with Betterment for Advisors. The partnership builds on an integration that was rolled out last year, and means that RightCapital will help advisers streamline the process of managing investment accounts with Betterment for Advisors, and advisers using Betterment for Advisors will be able to launch Right Capital software and access its planning features all under one login.
PIEtech Unveils MoneyGuidePro Version G5
And finally, MoneyGuidePro, one of the industry’s largest providers of financial planning software to advisers, announced the launch of G5, the fifth generation of its planning software. G5 features enhanced planning for anticipated health care expenses, custom rate-of-return estimates for assets outside the adviser’s management, a cash reserve bucket strategy, and sophisticated life insurance needs analysis illustrations.
Here’s executive vice president Kevin Hughes with more details on G5
Our customers view MoneyGuidePro less as a financial planning tool and more as an integral part of their business model. G5 builds on that successful collaborative experience helping advisers position their advice and motivate their clients to implement their recommendations.
For more information, 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.
Clarification added February 28, 2018 at 1:38 PM ET: XY Planning Network members can use up to 20 client households in Capitect for no additional fee. Accounts in addition to 20 require additional fees. See Capitect XYPN Pricing for details. Prior versions of this post did not specify how many accounts could be used for free.
Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.
Acorns Surpasses 3 Million Accounts
You’ve heard that “mighty oaks from little acorns grow,” right? Well, in the case of Acorns, the micro-investing app for investors, that saying rings true, as the company announced it recently crossed 3 million investment accounts on the platform, adding 500,000 of those in just the last 3 months. Acorns co-founder and CEO Noah Kerner said that the service is differentiated from Betterment and Wealthfront because it isn’t targeted to investors who already have assets to manage, focusing instead on hardworking Americans who are saving roughly 5 to 7 percent of their income each year. Fees for Acorns are $1 a month for account under $5,000 and 25 basis points a year for accounts above $5,000.
XY Planning Network Partners with Capitect
In news from the XY Planning Network, the company announced it recently partnered with Capitect, a portfolio management software provider, to offer the client portal and performance reporting software to its nearly 600 members for no additional fee. Network members will be able to use Capitect to manage portfolios, perform portfolio rebalancing with the Capitect’s Rebalance Architect, deliver performance information to through the client-friendly portal, and more.
What’s New from Capitect
So if Capitect is a name you haven’t heard before among portfolio management software providers, you’re in luck, because I recently connected with Capitect co-founder Edwin Choi to learn a little about what’s new in their technology solution for advisers:
Some of the newest features that we’ve added in the last few months, and are going to be adding in the coming months, are recently introducing fee billing, which has been one of our most-requested features over a long period of time, so we’re very excited to be launching that. We recently added unrealized gain loss and cost basis, that we’re able to capture from the custodians, and some of the things that we’re working on in the coming months are primarily in the integration space, so financial planning integrations, deeper CRM integrations, and essentially any other system that the adviser wants us to connect with, we’re very open about integrating with other tools.
To watch my full interview with Edwin Choi, 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.
Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.
Brokerage Websites Offline During Market Volatility
With huge increases in market volatility this week, brokerage customers have experienced unresponsive websites from some of the largest providers like Fidelity, Charles Schwab and Vanguard as well as smaller automated investment services Betterment and Wealthfront. According to Bloomberg, brokerage companies acknowledged that customers did lose access for short periods of time on Monday, but as trading activity subsided, account access was restored to all customers by Tuesday morning.
Personal Capital Adds Socially Responsible Personal Strategy®
In socially responsible investing news, Personal Capital is hopping on the responsible investing bandwagon with the addition of its new Socially Responsible Personal Strategy®. The strategy screens US equities based on environmental, social, and governance factors powered by Sustainalytics data to generate investment strategies that align with customers’ socially responsible preferences. Personal Capital joins Betterment, Wealthfront, Motif Investing, OpenInvest, and many others to help investors align their portfolios with their socially conscious preferences.
AdvisoryWorld Update on ACQUIRE Solution
And how do you stay up to date on what’s new this year in fintech? Well if you visit the FPPad YouTube channel, you’ll see the first batch of dozens of interviews filmed with fintech solution providers at last week’s National LINC conference, including a conversation about an updated from Advisory World called ACQUIRE. Here’s AdvisoryWorld COO Mike Wilson with the details.
We continue to work on what we refer to as ACQUIRE, which is our digital onboarding component. With that, advisors are able to embed links on their websites and social media accounts that helps get new business through the doors. It’s a questionnaire that points, again, to a model.
More interviews are being uploaded to the FPPad YouTube channel every day, so visit 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, be sure to check back in with me later for more fintech news.
Fidelity Access℠ is an API-based account aggregation offering for Fidelity customers to grant permission to third-party financial websites and aggregation services and obtain account balances, holdings, and transaction information.
What is Fidelity Access℠ it and why it matters:
Fidelity Access℠ is a new API-based connection that enables third-party financial websites and account aggregation services to obtain information from Fidelity customer accounts, with the customer’s approval, without using customer login and password information in an attempt to “screen scrape” account information
Who’s onboard? Fidelity Access℠ is available now (November 2017), but no large account aggregation services (other than the obvious eMoney Advisor, a Fidelity company) as of yet have disclosed or announced their adoption of the Fidelity Access℠ API
Improved account security: Moving to API-based account aggregation reduces the number of times customers share their login credentials with third-party financial websites and aggregation services
Expect short-term frustration: Customers who leverage third-party financial websites will need to be patient as their providers transition away from using Fidelity login credentials to the new API. All providers must first meet Fidelity’s security and access requirements before connecting via the API. It’s quite possible that multiple aggregation providers and personal financial applications will not be approved by Fidelity to leverage Fidelity Access℠
What customers must do: All Fidelity customers will eventually have to manually enable account access to third-party financial websites using the Fidelity Access℠ dashboard when logged in to their Fidelity account
What financial advisers must do: Financial advisers who use data aggregated from clients’ Fidelity accounts will need to instruct clients to manually enable permissions through Fidelity Access℠ to the third-party aggregation services used by the financial adviser
Fidelity Investments announced the introduction of Fidelity Access℠, a new service that allows Fidelity customers to grant account access to third-party websites and aggregation services to obtain account balances, holdings, and transaction information using an API.
With Fidelity Access℠, Fidelity joins other financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo (Gateway Channel) and others that have already introduced an API for third-party account aggregation as an alternative to “screen scraping” by logging in using a customer’s online account credentials.
Ending Online Credential Sharing
Historically, investors provided their financial account login credentials to popular aggregation and personal financial management apps like Intuit’s Mint.com, Personal Capital, Betterment, Wealthfront, Learnvest, Clarity Money, Quicken and more.
One problem with sharing login credentials with third-party websites is the protection of the account login information and specifically the account password. Given the rapid increase in attacks on financial institutions, including the large security breach of Equifax affecting over 140 million customers in the U.S., hackers are obtaining passwords in record numbers for a variety of online logins that they then use in brute-force attacks to compromise online financial accounts. Many customers are at risk when they do not follow good online password hygiene by using the same password for multiple online accounts.
Cleaner Data
A few positives emerge from an API-driven connection like Fidelity Access℠. First, account authentication and data exchange is performed using well-defined protocols. Overall, security is enhanced as Fidelity Access℠ authentication is performed using the OAuth open standard.
Second, the quality of data obtained via API is much higher than “screen scraping” since the data is transmitted using conventional API functions. Such functions clearly identify datatypes being relayed over the API, so there’s no ambiguity over what pieces of data represent a security name, security symbol, transaction date, transaction amount, or total value of a holding.
Finally, institutions like Fidelity are able to reduce the bandwidth demands for websites customers use to log in to view account information, which were never intended to be accessed in high volumes by third-party aggregators.
Instead, institutions will now be able to shift the bandwidth required for account aggregation to separate services that support access over the API and reduce the demand on public website login page access.
Expect a Rough Transition
Sometime in 2018, Fidelity will no longer allow third-party account aggregation services to log in to customer accounts using shared online credentials and ultimately “break” the aggregation functionality.
At that time, Fidelity customers will need to manually enable account access via their own Fidelity Access℠ dashboard for each of the aggregation services they wish to continue to use.
The challenge here for customer satisfaction will be the rate of adoption among the dozens, if not hundreds, of third-party personal financial management apps into the Fidelity Access℠ program. It is possible that the transition will actually limit choice among customers as to which personal financial management apps can access Fidelity account information. Today, customers can enter their login credentials into any financial management app they wish to enable aggregation of Fidelity accounts without first obtaining Fidelity’s approval.
Also, many customers maintain relationships with multiple financial institutions for a variety of reasons, so as this trend of migrating to API-based aggregation plays out, customers will be required to manage account aggregation access not only for accounts they hold with Fidelity, but also with accounts at a variety of other financial institutions where the conduct business.
The common denominator for client satisfaction here is the aggregation provider that is able to quickly adopt as many of the institution-specific APIs as possible.
After all, what good is it to permission Fidelity Access℠ to the Personal Capital dashboard when Personal Capital is not approved to connect with other financial institution aggregation APIs? The incomplete aggregation decreases the value of the consolidated dashboard in services such as Personal Capital when it is not able to aggregate all of a user’s accounts.
Tepid Adoption
One other interesting take on the Fidelity Access℠ announcement is that none of the major aggregation providers were identified as adopting the new API (eMoney Advisor is, of course, onboard, which is expected as it is a Fidelity company). Other API introductions launched with at least one major aggregator on board, such as JP Morgan Chase and Intuit’s announcement in January 2017.
Eventually, adoption of Fidelity Access℠ will be very likely among the major aggregators, but I wonder what the thought process was behind the announcement of Fidelity Access℠ without also announcing which of the larger aggregation providers have already begun to leverage the API.
We’ll have to stay tuned for more updates here as the success of Fidelity Access℠ (and satisfaction of Fidelity customers) depends heavily on how widely adopted Fidelity Access℠ is among the major aggregation providers.
Betterment adjusts its default fee structure to 25 basis points for accounts of all sizes for what is now called Betterment Digital (the 35bps, 25bps, and 15bps tiers are gone)
Betterment customers who formerly qualified for the 15 basis point tier will see their fees increase 67% to 25 basis points. Some customers are not pleased
New Plus and Premium plans are offered that introduce hybrid advice engagements from human advisers for an additional fee
Betterment Plus includes an annual planning call with the in-house adviser team and support via email. Betterment Plus pricing is 40 basis points and requires a $100,000 account minimum
Betterment Premium include unlimited contact with the in-house adviser team via phone and email. Betterment Premium pricing is 50 basis points and requires a $250,000 account minimum
All Betterment plan fees are capped, charged only on the first $2 million of a customer’s balance.
Betterment is introducing the Betterment Advisor Network™, launching with roughly ten advisers who have complete the Betterment vetting process, all of whom must hold the CFP® certification
There is no fee to be included in the adviser referral network
Betterment receives no referral fees for directing customers to any specific adviser in the referral network
Customers who work with an adviser in the Betterment referral network pay a fee of 25 basis points on their assets in their Betterment account. The adviser can set an additional fee on top of Betterment’s fee for services provided
Betterment introduces hybrid advice plans with access to in-house CFP® professionals
Betterment announced today that the company will introduce hybrid advice offering with access to an in-house team of financial advisers.
For the full details from Betterment, see the post below from the Betterment website:
One unfortunate consequence of the new 25 basis point pricing structure is the elimination of the 15 basis point tier that formerly applied to accounts over $100,000.
Reaction on Twitter was swift, as these customers will see their fees increase by roughly 67%.
@Betterment that's an awfully long email i just got just to say you're raising your fees from 0.15% to 0.25% 🙁
Despite the frustration of customers who formerly qualified for the 15 basis point tier, Betterment Digital’s pricing establishes parity with the pricing offered in the Betterment for Advisors (formerly Betterment Institutional) service.
Since the Betterment for Advisors introduction, I had been critical of the conflict the different pricing tiers presented for advisors who chose to implement Betterment for Advisors for their clients.
I often questioned how an adviser could meet his or her fiduciary obligation to clients with over $100,000 in assets, as that client would pay fees of 15 basis points using a “retail” Betterment account, where a minimum fee of 25 basis points would be charged on a Betterment for Advisors account, for asset management services that I felt were essentially equivalent.
Today, that fee disparity, and the fiduciary quandary, is eliminated, but at the expense of raising fees for customers who qualified for the former 15 basis point tier.
Betterment undercuts Personal Capital
One other observation is Betterment Premium now enters the competitive hybrid advice market, a space dominated by Vanguard Personal Advisor Services, that is also occupied by Personal Capital and the Schwab Intelligent Advisory offering scheduled to debut sometime in the first half of 2017.
Betterment Premium is more expensive than the 30 basis point fee Vanguard Personal Advisor Services and the 28 basis point fee from the upcoming Schwab Intelligent Advisory, but at 50 basis points, the service undercuts Personal Capital’s current 89 basis point pricing.
On today’s broadcast, get updates on hackathons hosted by Orion and eMoney, Motif Investing introduces subscription pricing, Betterment automates asset location preferences, and more.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Envestnet | Tamarac, providers of Advisor Xi, an industry-leading fully integrated web-based suite for RIAs. Tamarac’s Advisor Xi unifies portfolio management, modeling, rebalancing, trading, billing, and reporting with a fully customizable client portal and enterprise-grade CRM.
On October 20th, two innovative and rapidly growing firms will share how they leveraged the Advisor Xi Suite in their business during an interactive webinar. Space is limited, so secure your spot today by visiting http://fppad.com/tamarac
Now you’ve probably noticed that it’s been a few weeks since my last Bits and Bytes broadcast, and that’s because I’ve attended not one, but two hackathon events hosted by financial technology companies. The first was the Fuse event in Park City, Utah, where Orion Advisor Services assembled developers from dozens of companies to present innovative ways they leverage the Orion Notifications platform. My producer Steve and I vlogged each day of the event, which I highly recommend you watch to find out who claimed the coveted Best in Show award. And then two weeks later, eMoney hosted their own hackathon event, which had a bit of a different structure from Fuse, as four groups of advisors teamed up with eMoney product, design, and engineering employees to build new planning experiences onto the existing eMoney platform. We made vlogs of this event, too, which I also think is worth your time to watch. Now, I get that hackathons generate good PR and marketing buzz for the host companies, but quite honestly it’s exciting to see activities like these that promote innovation and experimentation with technology that’s all about helping you serve your clients AND be a better business owner.
Now, moving on to top stories, let’s start with Motif Investing, as the company just introduced a new subscription-based service called Motif BLUE. If you remember back in December 2014, I awarded the Best Back-Office Technology to the Motif Advisor Platform, but that was before the company switched from a flat monthly fee per customer to an AUM-based fee schedule. But with Motif BLUE, the monthly fee makes a comeback, as customers can pay up to $19.95 a month to invest in three motifs, get auto-rebalancing of professional motifs, and trade motifs three times per month commission free. So my theory is, customers can use the Motif BLUE Starter plan at $5 a month to mimic one of the asset allocations of the popular automated investment services out there, but instead of paying an AUM-based fee of, oh, 25 to 35 basis points, customers pay Motif roughly $60 a year. Do the math, and Motif is cheaper when assets go above about $20,000 versus an annual fee of 35 basis points. Now I admit, there are still other differences between Motif Investing and automated investment services, but I think you can sense I believe that fees for investing software should not be based on the size of the assets being managed, and I expect that trend to grow as customers gravitate towards subscription-based pricing models.
But to up the ante, Betterment announced its own new offering called the Tax-Coordinated Portfolio service, where Betterment automatically implements asset location preferences across taxable and tax-deferred or tax-exempt investment accounts. Now the concept of asset location preferences is nothing new, but what IS new is the ability to use software to automatically manage location preferences on the fly, such as when clients make one-time deposits or withdrawals across their various accounts. Betterment confirmed that this service will be available to Betterment for Advisors customers, so when I go back to that whole discussion around fees a moment ago with Motif Investing, one could argue that higher fees could be justified because of nuanced differences like automated asset location management.
And look, if you want to effectively mange asset location preferences, you really need to see all of your clients’ assets and accounts, which leads me to my final story that comes from Quovo, as the company announced the release of the Quovo Advisor Dashboard. The dashboard allows advisors to quickly view information on both assets under management as well as held-away assets, easily synchronize new client accounts, and generate simple reports based on the data obtained by Quovo. Now I know aggregating held-away assets has always come with its share of challenges (like expired account credentials), but with the Department of Labor fiduciary requirements coming in April next year, how will you be able to defend the advice you provide to clients if you don’t have a clear picture of their assets and liabilities? You can certainly get those details without using account aggregation, but it just won’t be very efficient, and with direct-to-consumer providers like Personal Capital and Betterment including account aggregation in their solutions, well, these are the new table stakes for technology in your business. So if you’re not using solutions like Quovo or alternatives like Morningstar ByAllAccounts, Aqumulate, eMoney, Wealth Access, Yodlee and others, there’s still time to add one of these to the tools you use today.
Here are several stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
It’s a request we’ve heard from a lot of advisors: make it simple to include individual bonds in a portfolio on Riskalyze. We’re excited to announce that coverage for over 30,000 individual corporate, government and municipal bonds will arrive on October 1.
Despite end-to-end encryption, Qumram enables financial services firms to meet client demand for social media interaction, via WhatsApp, without compromising compliance.
If you’re using G Suite, “Find a time” already lets you set up meetings much faster in Calendar on Android. Today it’s coming to iOS and by the end of the year, the web.
On today’s broadcast, get an update on LPL Financial’s technology roadmap, FutureAdvisor signs up the fifth largest bank in the US, Betterment forms a partnership with Uber, and more.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Nest Egg Guru, a stress testing app for your clients’ retirement planning.
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[Now on to this week’s top story that comes from LPL Financial, as this week the nation’s largest broker-dealer held its annual LPL Focus conference in San Diego.
I wasn’t able to attend the conference, but LPL CIO Victor Fetter kindly connected with me by phone to cover several of the key technology announcements made at the event.
First, ClientWorks, the replacement for the existing BranchNet platform, is now available to roughly 11,000 advisors, up significantly from the 500 beta testers this time last year. Next, an updated account opening solution is anticipated soon which will streamline the creation of LPL account forms, pre-populate forms for clients with existing LPL accounts, and automatically fire off an electronic signature workflow.
Fetter also highlighted a new Adoption Index score that advisors can use to gauge their own adoption of particular technologies and then identify areas where efficiency can be improved.
And finally, lots of attention was given to Guided Wealth Portfolios, LPL’s automated investment solution powered by BlackRock’s FutureAdvisor platform expected to be available in early 2017. Fetter told me that advisors can choose to add their brand to Guided Wealth Portfolios as an extension of their existing business, or they can create a new brand as a separate, but complementary, platform for certain clients.
Guided Wealth Portfolios will consist of ETF allocations managed by LPL Research and they will be visible in the ClientWorks dashboard. Clients can view their information using a mobile responsive website, but Fetter said a native app for iPhone or Android is not anticipated at this time. Oh, and I think fees for the service are still up in the air, so we’ll have to check back as the service gets closer to its official rollout.
And speaking of FutureAdvisor, this week, US Bank, the fifth largest commercial bank in the United States, announced that it, too, will be using FutureAdvisor to power an automated solution for its clients with portfolios designed by, you guessed it, US Bancorp Investments. Like LPL’s Guided Wealth Portfolios, US Bank said the service is expected to be available in 2017, and fees for the service were not yet disclosed.] To stay up to date with technological innovations, the independent broker-dealer LPL Financial is developing more tools for its new adviser dashboard and implementing smarter automation.
[Next up is news on Betterment, as this week the company announced a partnership with Uber, the multi-billion dollar global ride-sharing network, which allows drivers to open and fund a Betterment IRA account directly within the Uber app. Drivers get special fees, too, with their first year of Betterment completely free, and after that it’s 25 basis points per year on accounts below $100,000.
So guess what? The stakes for client acquisition just went up, in fact, way up. Millions of people recognize Uber, and when they see a partnership like this, they have to be thinking, “Hey, if Betterment’s good enough for a huge company like Uber, it’s gotta be good enough for me.”
And for Uber, they could have chosen anybody for this partnership. They could have teamed up with Vanguard, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, or even *cough* FutureAdvisor, but no, they chose Betterment.
So the way I see it, this is about distribution and decreasing client acquisition costs. Look, for years, industry commentators, myself included, have beat the drum about the high acquisition costs of automated investment services and how tough it is for robo advisors to actually make a profit.
Well, if an automated service can immediately get exposure to hundreds of thousands of potential customers by getting embedded in another app, what’s to stop Betterment from getting embedded in the eBay app to invest your extra cash, or even into SnapChat right along side the SnapCash feature? That’s a pretty inexpensive, yet clever way, to acquire new customers.
So welcome to the new front line in the battle for asset management, I hope your marketing team is up for the challenge.] Uber Technologies Inc. is partnering with robo advice provider Betterment Inc. to offer thousands of its drivers access to retirement accounts.
Here are links to stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Siftery helps you discover the right software product for your business. Great software is a force multiplier for your job. And picking the right solution for your company will make you look like a rockstar.
Guide Financial, the financial planning startup acquired by John Hancock in June 2015, told its users via email this week that the company plans to discontinue operations on October 11.
SS&C Advent’s Black Diamond wealth platform is now integrated with Portfolio Crash Testing by RiXtrema, one of the advisory industry’s leading Portfolio Analytics/Risk Management solutions.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Envision Consulting, providers of IT management and support, cloud computing, and cybersecurity services to RIAs. This October, Envision is hosting a cybersecurity event with Kevin Mitnick, the World’s Most Famous Hacker, where you can find out how to leverage Kevin’s knowledge of the latest hacking techniques to protect your business from attack.
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[Get ready for the robo news, as this week’s top stories come from Fidelity Investments and TD Ameritrade, as both financial institutions recently announced online investing solutions for the retail investor. A few days ago, Fidelity officially rolled out Fidelity Go, specifically targeting digitally savvy customers in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, with investment assets in the low six figures.
When asked by Investor’s Business Daily what happens when Fidelity Go customers get older and wealthier, Rich Compson, head of managed accounts at Fidelity, responded that customers would be referred “to other services like Fidelity’s Portfolio Advisory Services.”
Ok, ok, but advisors aren’t completely left out, as Fidelity did promise details about an automated service it’s developing for financial advisers by year-end. That’s, details, by year-end.
And a few weeks ago, TD Ameritrade announced it had completed updates to its Amerivest Managed Portfolios retail offering, including a digital overhaul for better goal setting, performance tracking, and more.
In ThinkAdvisor’s interview with incoming CEO Tim Hockey, he said that the company will be using Amerivest’s tech enhancements “to launch a new robo for the self-directed client’s needs” scheduled for sometime in 2017.
When asked about referrals to RIAs who custody with TD Ameritrade Institutional, Hockey added that retail clients with $1 million dollars or more are the “target referral” for affiliated RIAs.
That comment came out at the same time the company announced a program with the XY Planning Network to provide dedicated service and no minimum asset requirement to use TD Ameritrade Institutional’s custody services. That’s good, it’s gotta be awkward knowing TD Ameritrade is going to target digitally savvy investors, aka potential XYPN clients, with their own retail robo solution.
On top of all that, Wells Fargo also announced that it, too, is entering the robo market, with a solution expected also sometime in 2017.
And if you don’t like today’s current robo solutions, you can go build your own robo algorithm with Quantopian, who just received fresh venture capital this week from hedge fund investor Steve Cohen.
That’s it, all I hear all day long is how great robos do this, or how wonderful robos do that: robo, robo, robo!]
[Now in NON-robo news, how about an update from Envestnet | Tamarac, as the company released the latest version of its client portal to advisors who use the Advisor View™ application. If you watched my coverage of the Envestnet Advisor Summit earlier this year, you would have seen a preview of the updated client portal, plus the key enhancements highlighted by Brandon Rembe. So click right here so you can watch that video.] Envestnet | Tamarac has completely redesigned the client portal in its Advisor View™ portfolio management and performance reporting application. The new client portal will be implemented as part of Tamarac’s July 2016 technology release, and seeks to help RIAs create highly customizable client portal experiences to engage their clients and appeal to the next generation of investors.
[Also, MoneyGuidePro recently released a utility called Best Interest Scout, intended to gather information about client goals, expectations, and investment details in one place. This should help you from a workflow perspective, but the tool should also be helpful in identifying when you must engage in a Best Interests Contract with a client. If you’re concerned about compliance with the pending fiduciary rule from the DoL, expect more tools like Best Interest Scout to come to market.] PIEtech, the creator of financial planning software MoneyGuidePro, has built a tool to see how well clients’ portfolios are aligned with their best interests, including retirement goals and concerns, insurance needs, and health-care costs.
Now since I took a few weeks off, I just don’t have time to cover all the stories in my backlog, including news on the talent exodus at Wealthfront, the Betterment for Business 401(k) offering surpassing 200 plan sponsors and $5 billion in AUM, Quovo, Riskalyze and more, so links to those stories are below:
Wealthfront, founded in 2008, is experiencing its first big talent exodus — a flurry of departures that includes some C-suite titles and a Unicorn shepherd.
Betterment for Business, the only turnkey 401(k) service that includes personalized investment advice for all participants, announced today that it has successfully added 200 plan sponsors to the platform in the last six months.
Betterment announced today that it is the first independent robo-advisor to reach $5 billion in assets under management. The company now helps more than 175,000 customers intelligently manage and grow their wealth.
Apex Clearing Corporation will begin offering to its broker dealer and RIA clients the ability to digitally manage investments using Vanare’s digital advice platform. Vanare offers a wealth management technology platform with a highly customizable white labeled Roboadvisor.
Advisor Software, Inc. has teamed up with Quovo to provide wealth managers with seamless access to aggregated client financial data, which can help put together an all-encompassing financial picture for every client.
Marstone, an innovative digital wealth company, and Quovo, a financial data science company for the wealth management industry, today announced that they have completed a partnership to enhance Marstone’s digital wealth solutions with Quovo’s industry-leading data aggregation.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Orion Advisor Services, the industry’s premier portfolio accounting service provider for advisors. Orion integrates with several automated investment platforms, but you’re not sure if now the right time to add a robo element to your firm.
Find out if you’re ready, or not, to add your own solution by downloading a free copy of the Orion pre-robo checklist today by visiting fppad.com/robochecklist.
[This week’s top story is all about Betterment, because in the wake of last week’s Brexit vote, the company notified financial advisors on the Betterment Institutional platform that it had suspended trading from 10am to 12pm Eastern on June 24th, citing their expectation of “highly unpredictable volatility,” a decision which has triggered all sorts of discussions across the investment community.
First, a primer. Betterment uses ETFs for all customer portfolios, and when trading gets volatile, ETF pricing can get significantly disconnected from the value of the ETF’s underlying securities. Remember the flash crash of August 2015? ETF pricing was all over the map, especially for lightly traded and illiquid ETFs.
So, when Betterment’s team identified undesirable trading conditions, they suspend all trading. And as a discretionary advisor to retail customers, they can totally do that. It’s disclosed right there on page 65 of the retail agreement, which every customer acknowledges they read by checking the I agree box next to the Sign Up button. <wink wink>
But the exact same language is on page 70 of the Institutional Agreement, and I couldn’t find anything that said trading *authorized by the Advisor* would be treated any differently. In the RIABiz coverage of the event, Michael Kitces said that treating financial advisors the same as clients “creates operational channel conflicts.”
And there’s the rub. If you’re an advisor using Betterment Institutional for your clients, when you authorize trades, you need to know whether those trades will be subject to Betterment’s suspension criteria.
But that’s one risk of using ETFs in Betterment Institutional, or any automated investment service for that matter. Sometimes the pricing gets out of whack, and you won’t always know in advance when that happens.
So on a volatile day, you need to understand that, as of today, your trade authorizations might not be processed right away, and your trades will be in limbo for who knows how long until Betterment decides it’s ok to resume trading. I suspect that policy might soon be changing for Betterment Institutional users.] Betterment, LLC, a pioneer in the world of automated investing, made an unusual move and suspended all trading Friday morning as markets were roiled by the U.K.’s vote to leave the European Union.
[My next story highlights TD Ameritrade Institutional, as I attended the custodian’s 7th annual technology summit in Dallas, and I made a vlog about it so you can get a glimpse of what the event is like, so be sure to check it out.
At the summit, executives offered updates on Veo Open Access, which now features 104 integrated solution providers, announced the introduction of Veo Advanced Alerts, and reiterated the pending release of the Veo One platform for late fall of this year.
There weren’t very many advisor dashboards available when Veo One was first announced in January of last year, but recently several tech providers have invested heavily in their own all-in-one dashboards, with notable names like Envestnet|Tamarac, supported by Envestnet’s acquisitions of Finance Logix and Yodlee, Salesforce, with its rollout of Financial Services Cloud happening now, and Fidelity’s Wealthscape platform anticipated by the end of this year, which will include technology from the eMoney acquisition.
So Veo One will go up against some stiff competition when it is rolled out later this year, so I recommend you make plans now to refresh what you know about the dashboard options for your business in the second half of this year.] A growing community of technology innovators, which has collaborated with TD Ameritrade Institutional1 to make Veo Open Access one of the industry’s leading platforms for independent registered investment advisors (“RIAs”), is again coming together to drive significant new enhancements to Veo and accelerate the pace of future Veo One integrations.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Junxure, the industry leading CRM solutions and technology company for financial advisors, this week announced new enhancements to its cloud-based CRM platform, Junxure Cloud®. As part of its ongoing work to integrate with leading platforms serving independent registered investment advisors (RIAs), Junxure Cloud has expanded its integration with Veo®, TD Ameritrade Institutional’s comprehensive trading and account management platform.
Vestorly Inc., the leading content marketing and relationship analytics platform in the financial services industry, today announced a unique partnership with Dow Jones that will enable all Vestorly users to access Dow Jones content, including The Wall Street Journal, in order to engage clients and generate leads.
Today, the company behind one of the more popular solutions for helping consumers manage their online accounts, Dashlane, is making its move into the enterprise.
Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company, today launched a suite of technology enhancements that provide wealth management firms with greater flexibility to digitally transform their business.
On today’s broadcast, LPL Financial hooks up with BlackRock’s FutureAdvisor, Riskalyze and Advizr integrate their platforms, and bots might be the future of financial technology.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Twenty Over Ten, providers of beautiful, tailored, mobile responsive websites specifically for Financial Advisors.
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[Now on to this week’s top story which comes from LPL Financial, as the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer announced it will use BlackRock’s recently-acquired FutureAdvisor platform to power an online automated investment offering. LPL first hinted at its plans for a “robo advisor” back in the summer of 2015 at its annual Focus conference, which was roughly one month before BlackRock made its FutureAdvisor acquisition.
While the announcement sure generated some buzz, no details on specific pricing or availability were provided. What the press release did say is that the model portfolios will be provided by LPL’s research department, so at least initially, advisors and reps will not be able to create their own custom allocations.
The press release also said the automated solution will be integrated with LPL’s custodial platform, but it didn’t say if that was the existing BranchNet platform or the much-anticipated ClientWorks, which as far as I know, has still not been officially released.
So at least we now know what LPL’s robo strategy will be, but with so many forward-looking statements, we don’t know when that strategy will be ready for use by LPL’s financial advisors.] Leading retail investment advisory firm and independent broker/dealer LPL Financial LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:LPLA), today announced it will use BlackRock Solutions’ (BRS) FutureAdvisor platform to support a digital advice platform for use by LPL’s financial advisors and institutions and their clients.
[Next up is news from Riskalyze and Advizr, as the two companies announced a new integration to streamline financial advisor workflows. The new integration will import Riskalyze model portfolio sets into the Advizr financial planning software, allowing advisors to recommend the most appropriate asset allocation according to their client’s personal Risk Number.
Not only that, both companies offer effective lead generation tools for advisors, with Riskalyze offering prospects the opportunity to determine their own Risk Number, and Advizr offering a quick financial plan illustration with Advizr Express.
The combination of the two will help advisors gain more information about prospects’ risk tolerance and the building blocks of a complete financial plan.
The companies called the integration “a match made in heaven” because both of them are winners of the Best Client Facing Technology award announced right here on FPPad.
So as a result, and I am now officially accepting endorsements for matchmaking on my LinkedIn profile.] Advizr, the financial planning software recognized as the Best Client Facing Technology of 2015 by Bill Winterberg’s FPPad, and Riskalyze, the world’s first Risk Alignment Platform recognized for the same award in 2014, are integrating their award-winning products to provide an elegant, intuitive and seamless solution to financial advisers.
[And finally, this week’s top story comes from the future, oh wait, “THE FUTURE!” as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stage at this week at F8 conference and detailed the company’s roadmap for the next 10 years.
My best takeaway for you is the launch of the Messenger Platform that includes automated messaging powered by bots, no, not that bot, these are automated messenger bots.
With bots in messenger, you can make online clothing purchases, receive weather forecasts, view top headlines and more.
I can totally see bots making their way into your technology. Imagine if you could ask your Redtail bot when you next client meeting is scheduled, or your Orion bot how your AUM has grown over the past year, or even allow clients to ask the MoneyGuide Pro bot for their updated retirement confidence meter. How cool is that?!?
And if vendors eventually integrate bot into existing services, I bet that they’ll also include message archiving and retention so you can confidently use bots without violating your compliance requirements.
Oh, did I just give those vendors a little more work to do? I’m sorry!
Unfortunately there’s no word yet from FINRA or the SEC whether your bot has to be fingerprinted and subject to a background check. Thank you, I do two shows a night!] We’re excited to introduce bots for the Messenger Platform. Bots can provide anything from automated subscription content like weather and traffic updates, to customized communications like receipts, shipping notifications, and live automated messages all by interacting directly with the people who want to get them.
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Less than one month after an investment round that doubled its private valuation to around $700 million, the robo-adviser Betterment is adding a former top executive from Charles Schwab, John S. Clendening, to its board.
That’s why starting today, we’re introducing Goals in Google Calendar. Just add a personal goal—like “run 3 times a week”—and Calendar will help you find the time and stick to it.
Orion Advisor Services, LLC (“Orion”), a premier portfolio accounting service provider for financial advisors, has announced it is now integrated with FactSet, a leading provider of financial data, analytics, and service, to offer its advisor clients easy access to portfolio research and analytics.
Fidelity Access℠ is an API-based account aggregation offering for Fidelity customers to grant permission to third-party financial websites and aggregation services and obtain account balances, holdings, and transaction information.
