Envestnet|Tamarac Archives - Page 2 of 3

FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 14, 2016

Posted on October 14, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, one Wells Fargo broker loses her job after a client spoofing attack, Envestnet acquires Wheelhouse Analytics, and another day, another new robo advisor.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

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

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

FINRA Disciplinary Action for Kathleen Kincade (enter Kathleen Kincade in the Individual Name search field)

[Now October is National Cyber Security Awareness Month, so my first story is about an unfortunate cybersecurity incident involving a broker from Wells Fargo. According to a FINRA letter released this month, Kathleen Kincade was targeted by attackers who used spoofed client emails to submit three wire transfer requests for nearly $350,000, two of which were processed before Wells Fargo became aware of fraudulent activity.

One wire transfer for $99,000 was reversed, but the company ultimately had to make the client whole for the remaining $250,000 that was transferred.

The letter goes on to say that Kincade used Wells Fargo’s forms to falsely report that she verbally confirmed the wire disbursement instructions with the client, which was not the case. Now I know you’ve heard me say time and time again that attackers are impersonating clients and are targeting you to get you to send money where it shouldn’t go.

So take this as a reminder that you need to continue to be vigilant and suspicious with respect to sporadic requests for client withdrawals, and always, ALWAYS follow a process to authenticate the identity of your client, usually with a phone call, or else you won’t allow any fund transfers to be processed.]

Envestnet Acquires Wheelhouse Analytics from PRNewswire

[Next up is news from Envestnet, as the company announced the acquisition of Wheelhouse Analytics in a move executives said will provide more insight on key performance indicators for asset managers, enterprises, and financial advisors.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and I have to admit, Wheelhouse Analytics was not on my radar at all until this announcement, so I checked out their website and learned about their solutions for data analytics, online education, and document management for sales and business development. This is more business intelligence than it is financial technology, but I can see how Wheelhouse Analytics can connect to the data stored in the Envestnet platform and ultimately deliver timely insight to financial advisors.

Also, think back to Envestnet’s acquisition of Yodlee last summer, and consider how data on client spending and consumption can generate key indicators on which clients might warrant a follow up phone call, versus those who are on a steady path to meet their goals. I think this is worth watching in the near future.] Envestnet, Inc. announced today that it has acquired Wheelhouse Analytics LLC, a technology company that provides data analytics, mobile sales solutions, and online education tools to financial advisors, asset managers and enterprises

Zacks Advantage Form ADV

Merrill Egde Guided Investing Form ADV

[And I think it’s safe to say that my broadcast wouldn’t be complete without a little robo news, so up first, Zacks Investment Management announced the launch of Zacks Advantage, an automated investment service built on the Schwab Intelligent Portfolios platform that adds a bit of active management to balanced portfolio investing. The minimum account size is $5,000, and fees are 50 basis points for accounts up to $100,000, which drops to 35 basis points for accounts greater than $100,000 according to the Form ADV.

And Bank of America offered more information about Merrill Edge Guided Investing, the company’s automated service that also has a $5,000 account minimum, but charges 45 basis points no matter how much money is invested in the account.

So, I want to ask two questions about all this robo stuff. First, if all the other financial firms have a low-cost automated investing solution, why don’t you? If the solutions are so commonplace, prospects might think that your firm is behind the times because you’re not leveraging a solution that is offered pretty much everywhere else.

But second, assuming you DO provide an automated investing solution, the next question you’ll face is why should a prospect choose your business over all the others, when they appear to do the same thing? And THAT is your opportunity to communicate why your business is different, identify your value proposition, and describe all the things you do that go far beyond portfolio asset allocation and frequent rebalancing.

No robo solution can compete with that!]

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 14, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for September 30, 2016

Posted on September 30, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

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.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Fuse 2016: Day One and eMoney Advisor Summit 2016: Hack-a-thon Day One

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.

Motif Enters Subscription Economy, Introduces Motif BLUE from BusinessWire

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.

Tax-Coordinated Portfolio™: The Latest Breakthrough in Tax-Smart Investing from Betterment

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.

Quovo Unveils Advisor Dashboard, Arming Financial Advisors With Enriched Client Data Insights in an Intuitive User Interface from Marketwired

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:

Riskalyze Rolls Out Coverage for Individual Bonds from Riskalyze

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.

Qumram launches fully-compliant WhatsApp social media record keeping from Qumram

Despite end-to-end encryption, Qumram enables financial services firms to meet client demand for social media interaction, via WhatsApp, without compromising compliance.

Save time with smart scheduling in Google Calendar from Google

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.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 29, 2016

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, it’s a robo free-for-all, so put on your best robo accessory, because FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

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.

Space is limited, so secure your registration today by visiting topsecurityshow.com, and if you use my promo code, FPPad, you’ll save 15% off the price of your registration.

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Fidelity Launches Automated Investment Advice Service from WSJ.com

Fidelity Go Vs. Pokemon Go: Be A Low-Cost Investor Or AR Zombie from Investor’s Business Daily

Better Together: Automated Investing with Professional Guidance from BusinessWire

TD Ameritrade Earns $240M in Quarter; Says Retail Robo Is Coming from ThinkAdvisor

TD Ameritrade Institutional, XY Planning Network Launch Program to Cultivate Next-Generation RIAs and Investors from TD Ameritrade

Wells Fargo Plans to Start Robo-Advisory in 2017, Sloan Says from Bloomberg

Big News for the Quantopian Community: Managing External Capital from Quantopian

[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!]

Envestnet | Tamarac to Roll Out Client Portal 2.0 from PRNewswire

[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.

MoneyGuidePro creator releases DOL fiduciary-focused software from InvestmentNews.com

[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:

Talent exodus hits Wealthfront including heads of product, marketing and operations from RIABiz.com

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 Surpasses 200 Plan Sponsors from PRNewswire

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 Becomes First Independent Robo-Advisor to Surpass $5B of Assets Under Management from PRNewswire

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 to Offer Vanare’s Digital Advice Platform from PRNewswire

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, Quovo Partner to Strengthen Goals-Based Planning Capabilities for Wealth Managers from PRNewswire

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 and Quovo Announce Partnership from MarketWired.com

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.

Riskalyze Autopilot for Retirement Plans from Riskalyze

LastPass introduces Emergency Access from LastPass

With the Emergency Access feature, you can give trusted family and friends access to your LastPass account in the event of an emergency or crisis.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 29, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 20, 2016

Posted on May 20, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, I’m on location at the Envestnet Advisor Summit. You’ll hear from Bill Crager about Open ENV, Stuart DePina on adding Salesforce integration to Tamarac, and hear how the Yodlee acquisition is enhancing the Envestnet platform.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Envestnet Unveils Open ENV from Envestnet

Envestnet, Inc. has unveiled Open ENV to offer differentiated user experiences, accelerate integrations and extend the availability of Envestnet’s solutions.

Envestnet | Tamarac Unveils A New Version of Advisor CRM® from Envestnet

Envestnet | Tamarac has rolled out a new edition of its Advisor CRM® application, Advisor CRM, which incorporates the latest Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2016 update and is compatible with Microsoft Windows 10 and Microsoft Office 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 13, 2016

Posted on May 13, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, learn about top advisor technology from the Finovate Spring 2016, two lessons you should learn from a Salesforce database outage, hear top technology tips from industry experts, and more.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by Riskalyze, the company that invented the Risk Number™ and twice named as one of the world’s 10 most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company Magazine.

Advisors use Riskalyze to show prospects they’re invested wrong and prove to clients they’re invested right. See how Riskalyze creates fearless investors by visiting riskalyze.com/fppad to book a guided tour.

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Client Insight for Wealth Management from IBM, and

IBM Watson-infused robo wants to help advisers, not beat them from Financial Planning

Envestnet Advisor Now demo from Finovate Europe 2016

[This week’s top story covers the Finovate Spring 2016 event held earlier this week in San Jose, California. With over 70 demos spread across two days, here are my picks for the most promising solutions for financial advisors.

First is IBM, as the company demoed its Client Insight for Wealth Management solution, designed to deliver better insights about your clients powered by, you guessed it, IBM Analytics. The Client Insight dashboard segments your clients by their behavioral profiles, predicts the likelihood of clients experiencing a significant life event, and automatically generates a list of top actions clients should take to make progress on their financial goals.

The analytics-powered insight is great, but it’s not yet clear to me if the solution is something you can buy today or if it requires an integration with the technology providers that you use, particularly with your CRM software. One third-party example I can think of is the automated investment service from Marstone, which to me, still seems to be evolving and appears to be rolling out at a very measured pace. So, if you want to start seeing some of these cognitive-powered insights in the tools you use, I think you need to prepare to spend a little bit more on your technology to make these benefits a reality.

The second demo of note came from Envestnet, as the company highlighted Advisor Now, which is now being positioned as an online financial planning tool that can be white-labeled by financial institutions or you, the independent financial advisor.

Advisor Now’s capabilities are quite a bit different than this time last year when the solution was first announced, as Envestnet is further leveraging its technology acquisitions of Upside, Yodlee, and Finance Logix.

Next week I’m headed to the Envestnet Advisor Summit in Chicago where I plan to get more details on Advisor New, but in the meantime you can watch a recent Advisor Now demo from Finovate Europe] IBM offers you a whole new level of insight to serve your customers with the most relevant offerings that helps you drive new revenue. It enables you to segment your customers quickly and analyze their behavior to deliver cross sell/ up sell offers which helps increase loyalty, retention and customer satisfaction.

Salesforce outage persists across US, CEO wades in from ZDNet, and

The Burning Irony of Salesforce’s #NA14 Social Media Nightmare from Medium

[Next up is news on Salesforce, as the company unfortunately suffered a failure in one of its critical databases this week affecting several thousand of its customers in North America. The outage of the NA14 database lasted for about a day and a half, causing many users to publicly vent their frustrations on Twitter.

Closer to home, I didn’t hear from any advisors who were affected by the downtime, which is good, but there are still two lessons I want you to take away from this incident.

First, when you use any cloud-based system, especially a CRM, be absolutely certain that you have an offline backup of the critical information you need to take care of clients. Make it part of your process now to export data like names, phone numbers, and email addresses so you can stay in touch with clients if and when your online systems have extended downtime.

And second, make plans now for what you’re going to do when your firm experiences a crisis. How will you contact clients? Will you post information on your website, or provide updates on Twitter? Whatever you do, identify your process in your disaster recovery and business continuity plan, and if it’s been a while since you tested your communication in a crisis, well, you might want to do something about that.] A Salesforce database failure has left some clients unable to access their services across the United States, prompting the firm’s chief executive to step in.

2016 SSG Conference Technology Panel from YouTube

[And finally, wrapping up this week’s broadcast is news from Shareholders Service Group, as I attended their annual conference in San Diego a few weeks ago. One of the general sessions I attended was a panel discussion on technology opportunities that lie ahead for independent financial advisors, so I caught up with each of the panelists,

Greg Friedman of Private Ocean, Dave Welling of SS&C Advisory Market Group, Tim Welsh of Nexus Strategy, and Joel Bruckenstein of Technology Tools for Today, to get their main takeaways from the session and hear best advice for advisors from a technology perspective.

The full video from the event is embedded over on website along with a few additional stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast.]

Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

Docupace Closes on Management Buyback Transaction from BusinessWire

Docupace Technologies LLC, a premier digital compliance and cyber security company in the financial services industry, completed its planned repurchase of the majority interest in the company previously held by RCS Capital Corporation.

New Marketing Materials from Hidden Levers

HiddenLevers now provides pre-made marketing materials that can be used with clients. These include printable brochures, embeddable videos, website and signature plugins.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 13, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 1, 2016

Posted on April 1, 2016 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Betterment raises $100 million in fresh capital, Fidelity tests FidelityGo, Schwab pulls the plug on OpenView Integrated Office, and more.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

First, a heads up, Steve and I will be on the road later this month covering the massive NAB 2016 event, scouring the exhibit halls for technology you can use to make great videos and podcasts, followed by the 2016 Shareholders Service Group conference in San Diego. Visit fppad.com/subscribe and sign up today so you don’t miss any of our coverage from the events.

Betterment Raises $100 Million from Betterment.com

[Now on to this week’s top story which comes from Betterment, as the automated investment service raised another $100 million dollars in venture capital, bringing the total amount they’ve raised to $205 million. Betterment is pulling away from a crowded field of robo competitors, now servicing over 150,000 customers, managing $3.9 billion in assets, and valued at a reported $700 million.

Betterment says they will use the funding to grow the Betterment for Business 401(k) platform and the Betterment Institutional offering for you, the financial advisor.

But despite all the money raised and what they say about being their customer’s central financial relationship, Betterment’s questionnaire still doesn’t tell customers that they should pay off high interest credit card debt or build up an emergency fund first before investing. Oh, that’s right, customers can find that advice somewhere on the blog.

So I’ll reiterate what I posted on Twitter this week: Betterment, I hope you use the money to make unbiased fiduciary advice accessible & affordable to everyone.

If you want to read more about the latest round of Betterment’s funding, head over to fppad.com/183 for the links to this week’s top stories.] Today marks an important milestone for Betterment and our more than 150,000 customers who have invested over $3.9 billion with us. We’re excited to announce that Betterment has closed a $100 million investment, led by a new partner, Kinnevik.

Fidelity Starts Testing Robo-Adviser Service on Existing Clients from Bloomberg.com

[Next up is news from Fidelity, as the company announced plans to begin testing Fidelity Go, its own automated investing service for retail investors, with roughly 500 customers this week, with an official rollout sometime in the second half of this year.

If you remember back to November of 2015, Fidelity broke off its relationship to promote Betterment Institutional to advisors, and then coincidentally announced the Fidelity Go retail product that competes more or less with Betterment. Fidelity Go will feature investment portfolios managed by Geode Capital Management, all in fees at 39 basis points or lower, automatic rebalancing, but no tax loss harvesting.

With Fidelity Go as a retail offering, you should know that Fidelity told me that a B2B version is under development, and while they couldn’t give me a solid release date, they did say the offering will be customized to your needs as an advisor.

Nevertheless, Fidelity joins Charles Schwab as an institutional custodian with an automated investment solution in the retail space, but at no platform fee in exchange for a little extra cash allocation, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios, in my opinion, is going to be tough to beat.] Fidelity Investments, the second-largest U.S. mutual fund company, will test an automated-investment service starting Wednesday on a small group of existing customers. Fidelity plans to offer the service to the public in the second half of this year.

Schwab Unplugs Its Customized Version of Salesforce from WealthManagement.com

[And speaking of Schwab, this week’s final story is news that Schwab Advisor Services is discontinuing the Schwab OpenView Integrated Office solution effective July 31. Roughly 150 firms are using the solution, so they’re going to have to find some other technology to replace Integrated Office, specifically the custom version of Salesforce that came with it.

The link to the story at fppad.com/183 has the details on options for affected advisors, including using Salesforce with Schwab OpenView Gateway or migrating to a completely new CRM, but here’s the angle I want to focus address.

This is absolutely an example of what can happen when you choose a custodian’s proprietary solution for a part of your technology. How committed is that custodian going to be to offer that technology over the lung run? In this case, Schwab, for whatever reason, is shutting down Integrated Office, leaving 150 advisors with just three months to figure out what to do.

So I don’t blame you one bit for getting a little uneasy when custodians offer proprietary technology solutions to you that they own and control. But with more custodian acquisitions of technology on the horizon, I’m afraid this is a risk you’re going to have to assume more frequently as time moves on.

One more thing: if you want a firm with Salesforce experience in financial services, get your pencils out, because you should consider contacting LiquidHub, Concenter Services, Navatar, Salentica, or AppCrown.] One hundred fifty Charles Schwab advisors must find a new client relationship manager (CRM) by July 31.

Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

Envestnet | Tamarac Rolls Out New Household Structure and Service Team Functionality in Advisor View™ Client Portal from PRNewswire.com

Envestnet | Tamarac has launched four major software updates designed to strengthen RIAs’ online engagement with clients. The roll-out is part of the firm’s March 2016 technology release.

Advyzon Integrates Laser App Software to Enhance Client Advisor Relationship from LaserApp.com

Laser App Software, the premier provider of forms automation and management software for the securities and insurance industries, has announced that Advyzon, an all in one cloud-based platform combining portfolio management, performance reporting, CRM, client portal and planning, integrated with Laser App Software to enhance its client dashboard.

Marketware International is pleased to announce that it has become a new member of the IBM Watson Ecosystem Partner Program.

Our team has been hard at work creating the AdvisorQA mobile product experience for Financial Services. It provides a new mobile Content Management and Social Collaboration tool that utilizes the cognitive computing and research capabilities of IBM Watson.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 1, 2016

TRX Unplugged: What happens when a tech provider eschews formality and unplugs for the day

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Bill Winterberg in Conferences

Total Rebalance Expert, or TRX, is widely known for its impeccable portfolio rebalancing and tax management features. After all, TRX was born from Sheryl Rowling’s own need for an extremely precise tool to manage the demands of her RIA and CPA businesses.

But what escapes many advisers is the company’s culture born from the land of eternal summer, aka San Diego.

TRX lacks the institutional swagger of its larger counterparts, including iRebal from TD Ameritrade Institutional and Tamarac Advisor Rebalancing from Envestnet, but focuses on delivering value with its product line, where attention to detail and accuracy down to the penny and fractional share is vital.

So what happens when TRX decides to let its collective hair down and focus on education and value for its customers? You get TRX Unplugged.

Watch the coverage of TRX Unplugged above to gain a sense for how the company supports its advisor relationships and courts prospective firms with its deliberate relaxed attitude and atmosphere.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 8

Posted on May 8, 2015 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, IBM flexes its cognitive computing muscles at a World of Watson event, Finance Logix gets acquired by Envestnet, and Vanguard deploys Personal Advisor Services to the masses.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by Croesus, the affordable all-in-one portfolio management & CRM software for RIAs. Over 9,500 investment professionals use the Croesus application to manage more than $700 billion in assets, and Croesus is offering a 50% discount on set-up fees for Advent Axys users until June 30th.

To learn more about Croesus or to sign up for a free trial, visit fppad.com/croesus.

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

IBM World of Watson and what the future holds for financial advisers from FPPad.com

Visit Quid, Pick1, and SparkCognition online.

[This week’s top story comes from IBM, as the company held a two-day conclave in New York to introduce the IBM Watson Developer Cloud. I attended the event to look for ways cognitive computing from IBM Watson can enhance the financial services industry, so here’s what I found.

First, a company called Quid, which is using Watson to ingest millions of documents to index them based on information around stocks and portfolios. Something like this can significantly streamline your portfolio research workflow. And another company is Pick1, which uses IBM Watson to segment and analyze your clients based on their personality derived from what they write in emails and post on social media.

And on the cybersecurity side, a company called SparkCognition is leveraging IBM Watson to detect, assess, and research external threats that businesses encounter every day from hackers. Tools like these are poised to help you protect the critical information in your business, as well as the assets of your clients, which has become a huge focus for regulators this year.

I filmed a video blog while at World of Watson to give you a sense of the size and scale of the event, offer some of my candid thoughts from presentations, and keep you aware of what your business will need to stay competitive in the future.]

Envestnet Acquires Finance Logix from BusinessWire, and

Envestnet Acquires FinanceLogix As The Integrated Financial Planning And PFM Buying Frenzy Continues from Kitces.com

[Next up is news from Envestnet, as the company announced it is acquiring Finance Logix, a financial planning software provider, for around $32.5M of cash and stock as calculated by Nerd’s Eye View blogger Michael Kitces. I was on my flight back from World of Watson when the news broke, so thankfully Michael Kitces cranked out a comprehensive post on the deal. Here are the important takeaways.

In 2012, Envestnet acquired Tamarac for their CRM, portfolio management, client portal and rebalancing software platform, then two months ago, they acquired Upside and their automated investment solution, so one of the few pieces missing in an all-in-one platform was financial planning software. Enter Finance Logix.

This deal and Fidelity’s recent acquisition of eMoney means that fewer potential acquisition targets remain, primarily MoneyGuidePro, MoneyTree, inStream, and private-equity backed Advicent Solutions. But clearly, the pace of acquisitions is accelerating, so it’s likely a question of when, not if, one of the solutions you use today gets acquired by a custodian or a large investment and technology provider.] Envestnet, Inc., announced today that it has acquired Finance Logix, a technology company that provides leading-edge financial planning and wealth management software solutions to banks, broker-dealers and RIA firms.

Vanguard unveils advice and investing program for the hoi polloi from Reuters

[And finally, Vanguard is out with news this week that its low-cost Personal Advisor Services, or PAS, is now being rolled out to all investors and the minimum account size has been lowered to just $50,000. With an annual fee of just 0.3%, Vanguard is walking a fine line of putting pressure on the fees advisors charge for investment management services, while simultaneously soliciting advisors to use Vanguard’s low-cost funds and ETFs in their portfolio allocations for clients.

Fortunately, Vanguard officials told Reuters that “Sophisticated investors will still need customized advice on taxes, estate planning and niche areas the new service will not offer,” which is a different stance than others out there who say investors don’t need to pay for expensive financial advisors.

Nevertheless, the pressure is on for you to aggressively price your fees, especially for investment management, but you also need to communicate how your firm goes well beyond offering one-size-fits-all advice.

That means you need to be more efficient and streamlined using technology available today so you have the capacity to establish meaningful relationships with clients and focus on the things that actually matter to their financial success.] Arguing that many of its customers cannot afford to pay high investment advisory fees, The Vanguard Group on Tuesday unveiled a low-cost service combining an automated investment plan with advice from a Vanguard financial planner.

Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

Envestnet Driving Digital Advice Transformation from MarketWatch

Envestnet, Inc. announced that it will be launching Advisor Now™, a digital advice portal harnessing Envestnet’s core capabilities to help independent advisors demonstrate more value to clients and improve financial outcomes for investors.

Trizic Closes $2 Million In Additional Seed Funding From Operative Capital from Yahoo.com

Trizic, the technology company powering digital wealth advisory solutions for financial institutions and Registered Investment Advisors (RIAs), today announced an additional $2 million in seed funding from Operative Capital, an early-growth stage investor in disruptive financial technology start-ups.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 8, 2015

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 3

Posted on April 3, 2015 by Bill Winterberg in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Schwab Intelligent Portfolios gathers over $500 million dollars in its first few weeks, find out why Orion Advisor Services is regarded as one of the good fintech vendors, and personal dossier app Refresh gets acquired by LinkedIn.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by Wealthbox CRM. Be the first to see the release of Wealthbox version 1.8 with a ton of new features and integrations, including one with MoneyGuidePro.

Here are the links to this week’s top stories:

Exclusive: Schwab robo-adviser crosses half-billion dollar mark from InvestmentNews.com

[For the second week in a row, this week’s top story comes from Charles Schwab, as the company told InvestmentNews that it gathered “considerably over” $500 million in assets in the new Schwab Intelligent Portfolios program.

Schwab Intelligent Portfolios was released to retail investors just three weeks ago, which you heard three episodes ago, and now they have over $500 million. And just four weeks ago, my broadcast covered Wealthfront’s news that they surpassed $2 billion dollars in assets under management.

So it took Wealthfront a little over three years to get to two billion dollars, and Schwab Intelligent Portfolios is on pace to do it in about two months. NOW who’s going to be the fastest growing and most trusted automated investment service in the world? I think that title’s up for grabs.

But hold on: there’s a deeper story here. Your business is experiencing grocery store econ 101. That’s right, it’s all about shelf space. You might have the best business in the world, but if you don’t have any shelf space, you don’t even have a chance to step up to the plate.

So all of these new solutions online are taking up shelf space and they’re crowding you out of the market. Sure, investors are getting low fees, rebalancing, even tax loss harvesting, but are they getting any REAL advice that actually matters? Not from what I can tell. But what I do see is that your shelf space is slowly being eroded, so you better start doing something about that today.

You can start by sharing this broadcast to your colleagues. Go on, the button’s down there, or up in the corner. Use it.] The Charles Schwab & Co. robo-adviser has crossed a symbolic threshold in just three weeks, raising more than half a billion dollars, the San Francisco-based firm told InvestmentNews on Monday.

What Makes Orion So Special? from Financial Advisor Magazine, and

Envestnet | Tamarac™ Rings in 2015 with a Record Year of RIAs Adopting its Portfolio and Client Management Platform from PRNewswire.com

[Next up is news on Orion Advisor Services, as this week Joel Bruckenstein highlighted the portfolio accounting service bureau for a number of the company’s innovations in financial technology.

Here are the most relevant updates from Bruckenstein’s column. Orion now serves over 570 advisory firms who collectively process over $200 billion in assets, and the company expects to add another 280 firms this year.

Bruckenstein highlights many of Orion’s innovations, including its free private labeled mobile app for advisors, video client statements powered by Engage, and trading sleeve capabilities in its order management system.

Bruckenstein also writes that Orion exhibits a company culture of innovation, which you saw first hand from my Fuse 2014 hackathon coverage, which is an event the company will repeat once again this September.

To be fair, Orion’s competitor Envestnet | Tamarac has also recently achieved some significant milestones, as the company now serves over 800 advisory firms with over $500 billion dollars on the platform, and they also offer a custom branded iPad app for use by advisors and clients. So remember what I said about shelf space and competition? Both of these companies, plus many other technology providers, will put you in a position to differentiate yourself in a crowded market.] When pondering this month’s column, I thought it might be interesting to focus on a single firm whose story involved all of these trends, Orion Advisor Services, which offers “software as a service” and portfolio accounting services to RIAs.

Refresh Joins the LinkedIn Family from Refresh

[And finally, I’m wrapping up this broadcast by revisiting Refresh, an app I told you about way back in episode 107. Refresh is an app that creates a real-time dossier about people you’re going to meet, pulling information from a variety of sources to help you, well, refresh your memory about your connections.

This week, Refresh announced that it will be acquired by LinkedIn (probably because of the Bits and Bytes bump!), so the company will soon be sunsetting its standalone app and rolling in its dossier capabilities into LinkedIn. I’m pretty happy about this move, because Refresh has been one of my go-to apps for a while, and I’m glad to see how the technology can enhance the value of LinkedIn as all of us continue to develop meaningful relationships with clients and colleagues everywhere.] Today, I’m excited to announce that Refresh has been acquired by LinkedIn.

Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

External IT Upgrade Democratizes Access to User Activity, Improving Advisors’ IT Security and Workflow from ExternalIT

External IT, a cloud-based IT outsourcing firm that focuses on RIAs and Broker Dealers, today announced a new capability to be part of its best-in-class Cloud Desktop solution. The enhancement to the recently redesigned platform creates a visual and easily readable interface to view user activity that tracks login location, IP address, time and device, along with the specific applications launched.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 3, 2015

Schwab IMPACT 2014: Conference wrap up

Posted on November 9, 2014 by Bill Winterberg in Conferences

Watch the video above for a wrap up of Schwab IMPACT 2014.

For this video, I joined Technology Tools for Today co-founder Joel Bruckenstein for a discussion of the top technology highlights from Schwab IMPACT 2014. Hear why Bruckenstein says this year’s event was one of his “favorite Schwab IMPACT conferences ever.”

(Click here to watch on YouTube)

← Previous 1 2 3 Next →

FPPad

FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 14, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for September 30, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for July 29, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 20, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 13, 2016

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 1, 2016

Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

TRX Unplugged: What happens when a tech provider eschews formality and unplugs for the day

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 8

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 3

Schwab IMPACT 2014: Conference wrap up

Bill Winterberg’s Tweets

Search our Website