Tag Archives: ByAllAccounts

T3 2014: MoneyGuidePro to integrate Yodlee for account aggregation

Bob Curtis, President and CEO of MoneyGuidePro (right) forecasting the future of financial planning with Harold Evensky (left)

Bob Curtis, President and CEO of MoneyGuidePro (right) forecasting the future of financial planning with Harold Evensky (left)

Popular MoneyGuidePro financial planning software to aggregate held away accounts through a new Yodlee integration

Ask most technology consultants and financial advisers about their account aggregation options, and you’ll likely hear just a few common names.

ByAllAccounts, Fiserv’s CashEdge, and perhaps Intuit.

But Yodlee?

That solution almost never gets mentioned.

Until now.

MoneyGuidePro Integrates Yodlee

In a packed general session at the 2014 Technology Tools for Today (T3) conference, Bob Curtis, President and CEO of MoneyGuidePro announced that the popular financial planning software program will soon integrate account aggregation functionality using services from Yodlee.

One of the reasons I believe Yodlee hasn’t gained traction among financial services technology solutions is price. Yodlee is a rather expensive solution relative to its counterparts in the marketplace.

But MoneyGuidePro is breaking down the potential barrier of cost with very aggressive pricing.

Yodlee For $1 a Day

In his general session, Curtis announced that MoneyGuidePro will offer the Yodlee integration at an introductory cost of $365 annually. That’s right, just $1 per day.

And as to when the Yodlee integration will be available, Curtis told advisers that the account aggregation functionality is anticipated to be rolled out in Q2 of 2014.

For more information on the Yodlee integration with MoneyGuidePro, read the full press release at BusinessWire.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 25

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 April 20

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 December 2

It was a slow week in financial planning technology news, but thankfully, December marks the release of the annual Financial Planning Technology Survey. Joel Bruckenstein’s review of what tools and technology advisers are using dominates this weeks update. Otherwise, companies must be entering that post-Thanksgiving quiet period in advance of the December holiday season.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Tech Survey from Financial-Planning.com

[Redtail leaps ahead of CRMs, advisors flock to iPads, and firms still operate without any form of real document management. Read this and other insights in Bruckenstein’s annual review.] From iPads to Androids to cloud providers, technology evolves oh-so-fast, and FP’s annual tech survey reveals that advisor technology usage is changing rapidly too.

Advisor Tech Survey: Tablets Are What’s Hot Now from Financial-Planning.com

[When I spoke to a room full of advisers at NAPFA Connections in Dallas last month, over 80% of them raised their hands when asked if they owned an iPad. How much more proof does one need?] For financial advisors, the introduction of iPad over the past year has changed everything. Notoriously resistant to new technologies, advisers have become envious of the remarkable advancements taking place in the consumer tech market.

UBS Gets Serious About Mobile With iPad App Test Drive from Financial-Planning.com

[Financial advisers affiliated with UBS Wealth Management Americas will soon have access to the UBS FA Mobile app for iPad. Perhaps the intro sentence would be better if the hope was to create more effective engagements with clients. AUM growth is just a side effect of that.] Some 60 UBS Wealth Management Americas financial advisors will kickoff a three-month test drive this week of an iPad application designed to make it easier to interact with clients and access research reports — all in the hope of generating more assets under management.

The Mitigator from Financial-Planning.com

[How do you manage $300+ million AUM with just a staff of three? Get Tamarac Advisor X and leverage ByAllAccounts.] When a Midwestern regional bank bought the independent firm financial planner Marc Henn worked for in 2002, his clients questioned where their interests ranked on the firm’s list of priorities. “My clients encouraged me to start my own firm,” Henn says. In 2008, he did, founding Harvest Financial Advisors of West Chester, Ohio.

Tamarac announces Advisor® Xi, new integration partners, facilitates document management for advisers

Tamarac’s integrated platform expands connections to popular document management software applications. 

In a press release today, Seattle-based Tamarac Inc. announced the first wave of integration partners for the latest iteration of its platform for advisers, Advisor® Xi.

Click here to read the full release on PRNewswire.

Three popular document management software applications headline the integration, with support announced for Laserfiche® from Cities Digital, Worldox® from Trumpet, and NetDocuments®. In addition to the document management integrations, Advisor Xi will also include integrations with Laser App for online form submissions, MoneyGuidePro™ for financial planning, ByAllAccounts® for account aggregation, and Rackspace for hosted Microsoft Exchange®.

Matt Stroh, VP of Marketing at Tamarac said in the press release, “Partnering with these first-class vendors represents Tamarac’s commitment to taking integration to the next level. Together, we will offer a complete best-of-breed platform that will give financial advisors greater opportunities to replace manual processes with fully automated workflows that span across multiple, integrated products.”

FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 26

Again, I found myself fully engaged in content creation and research this week. I completed my Morningstar Advisor column for September and added new content to my Transformative Technology slide deck for a presentation in September. Next week I’ll be attending the Gemini + Orion Advisor Forum in Denver, CO, immediately followed by a week of vacation to escape this brutal heat in Dallas.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

There are multiple stories on Schwab Advisor Service’s Intelligent Integration initiative to kick off this week.

My take: Schwab’s Intelligent Integration is finally producing results. But will Schwab’s approach on limiting its integrations prove to be a prudent move or a platform-limiting one? Think about Apple’s success with app developers: Would the iPhone and iPad be so successful today if Apple were the only developer of applications for the devices?

ByAllAccounts and Redtail Technology Offer Centralized Access to Clients’ Comprehensive Account Data from GlobeNewswire.com

ByAllAccounts, Inc., the financial advisor’s choice for account aggregation, and Redtail Technology, a leading provider of Client Relationship Management software, today announced a partnership that provides financial advisors easy access to a more comprehensive client snapshot.

Special Report: The technology products advisers use most from InvestmentNews.com

My take: There are a few articles here about adviser use of technology plus two updates of survey results listing the most popular technologies overall and by category. I’ll likely compare the InvestmentNews survey results with those of the 2010 Financial Planning Magazine Technology Survey.

A Look Inside LPL Financial’s Social Media Strategy from Financial-Planning.com

[If you’re the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer by assets, just how do you implement social media across thousands of reps?] At focus11, LPL Financial’s national conference held earlier this month, it was clear that social media was clearly more than just a casual “focus” for the 5,000-plus attendees.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 8

I took advantage of the typical summer slowdown and spent most of the week on vacation. I’m back at FPPad headquarters for the next week and then off to Portland, OR to speak to the FPA of Oregon & SW Washington chapter on July 20. Drop on by if you can!

Now, on to this week’s stories of interest.

Fiserv purchase of CashEdge could affect account aggregation space from RIABiz.com

[CashEdge is one of those names that pops up every so often when discussing account aggregation. However, it’s an incomplete solution for advisers seeking reconciliation-ready data for held-away accounts. So I don’t see Fiserv’s acquisition of CashEdge for $465 million dramatically altering the account aggregation space] $465 million deal is mostly a payment processing technology-grab, according to ByAllAccounts.

Envestnet unbundles portfolio management software for RIAs and it won’t be a sideshow from RIABiz.com

[Envestnet is competing in the portfolio management software market with its Vantage product. Will it be powerful enough to compete with market dominators Advent and Schwab?] Envestnet has long been the undisputed leading platform for separate account managers, used by tens of thousands of advisors. The portfolio management software capability it provided, on the other hand, was always viewed as an add-on service.

The Relationship Manager from AdvisorOne.com

[Actifi’s Spenser Segal identifies the Achilles heel of poor CRM software implementation: people] Even though CRM systems have matured, with many systems built specifically for financial advisors, most firms are only scratching the surface when it comes to taking advantage of key features that are designed to help advisors grow their practices.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 18

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Pershing keeps ahead in the mobile space with an Android app and mobile trading from RIABiz.com

Pershing is launching an Android version of NetX360 in late April that includes mobile trading capability, adding to its lead in the mobile space over other custodians.

Choosing Software That Works for Your Advisory Firm-Part 1 from AdvisorOne.com

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

Latest MarketCounsel Acquisition Overlays Operational Expertise with its Leading Compliance Platform from MarketCounsel.com

[Bill’s note: Last week it was FamilyOfficeNetwork that merged with The Efficient Practice, this week the east coast version happened.] MarketCounsel, the leading business and regulatory compliance consulting firm to the country’s preeminent entrepreneurial investment advisors is pleased to announce the acquisition of Beneficial Concepts Group, LLC.

ByAllAccounts’ Survey Reveals Financial Advisors Are Missing Opportunity to Attract HNW Clients from Marketwire.com

ByAllAccounts, Inc., the financial advisors’ choice for account aggregation, today released results from a nationwide survey of financial advisors on fiduciary responsibility.

And if you missed our update earlier this week, be sure to download the FPA-ActiFi Adviser Technology Reports: Portfolio Management Edition, free for FPA members (and at $495 for non-members, it’s well worth the price to join FPA)