Tag Archives: Eric Clarke

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

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

Here are the links to today’s top stories.

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

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

NorthStar Financial Agrees to Acquire FTJ FundChoice from Businesswire.com

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

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

Marcus by Goldman Sachs® Acquires Clarity Money

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

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

United Capital Financial Advisors Introduces FinLife CX

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

Orion Advisor Services Parent Company Acquires FTJ FundChoice

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

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

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

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

 

Orion Advisor Services announces Project ASTRO: Flash briefing for January 31, 2018

Posted on January 31, 2018 by in Flash Briefing, Technology

Here are the links to the top stories:

Three-Quarters of Americans Are in the Dark When it Comes to 401(k) Fees

Your Path to Home Ownership from Wealthfront

Orion Leads the Next Investment Management Revolution with Powerful Direct-Indexing Service

(In the past 12 months, I have been hired by Orion Advisor Services for technology consulting services. See my full disclosures)

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

TD Ameritrade Teams Up with FeeX for 401(k) Fee Analysis

Do you really know how much you pay in fees in your 401(k) account? According to a new survey by TD Ameritrade, 37 percent of investors mistakenly believe they don’t pay any fess. So that’s why TD Ameritrade just announced it’s teamed up with fintech startup FeeX to help investors quickly analyze the fees in their 401(k) accounts. 401(k) fee analyzer tools are nothing new, as other companies like Personal Capital, America’s Best 401(k), and even FeeX have offered these tools to everyday investors, but TD Ameritrade claims its one of the first online discount brokerage firms to offer free 401(k) fee analyzer tools to their customers.

Wealthfront Introduces Home Buying Illustrations to Path

In financial planning news, Wealthfront announced an update to its Path software which now includes a new planning feature for a future home purchase. Path allows Wealthfront customers to see whether their goals of buying a home are comfortable, manageable or a stretch. Customers can see average home prices across multiple zip codes and see how their monthly savings requirements change and what kinds of accounts to use to save based on a number of factors.

Orion Advisor Services Announces Project ASTRO for Direct Indexing

And making headlines in advisor portfolio management, Orion Advisor Services announced the launch of Project ASTRO, short for Advisor Strategy and Tax Return Optimization, scheduled to go live in March of this year. One of the most significant features Project ASTRO supports is the ability to conduct direct indexing, where individual securities that make up a stock index are purchased directly in client accounts as opposed to purchasing Exchange Traded Funds that a designed to track a particular index. Here’s Orion Advisor Services CEO Eric Clarke with more details.

At Orion, we’re super excited about the launch of our ASTRO offering, allowing our advisors to create customized separately managed account portfolios for their clients faster and with less expense than ever before. Our advisors can build tax-efficient non-qualified accounts, replicate indexes with customized tilts, incorporate legacy stock positions into model portfolios with ease, and accommodate environmental, social, and governance requests, and receive notification when an account is out of tolerance, all with built-in automated tax-loss harvesting.

Astro is scheduled to go live in March with a fixed annual fee of $50 per account.

To get links to all the details on today’s stories, visit fppad.com/flashbriefing

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.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for February 15

Posted on February 15, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

Before I kick off this week’s top stories, here’s a quick and easy resource to use to see how strong your password is against a brute-force attack. Click the image to visit http://howsecureismypassword.net/

Note: You should probably avoid typing your real password into this program. Instead, use a close approximation!

Rate your password's strength at howsecureismypassword.net

Rate your password’s strength at howsecureismypassword.net

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Social Media Minute Podcast by RegEd: LinkedIn Skill Endorsements from RegEd.com

[In this seven-minute podcast, RegEd’s Blane Warrene addresses issues with LinkedIn Recommendations and Endorsements. It’s a good overview for those dipping a toe in LinkedIn and a good refresher for social media pros.] A rapidly trending topic continues to be LinkedIn Skills Endorsements. They are a much more gray area than Recommendations as it pertains to being classified as testimonials under SEC guidelines for the financial services industry.

Microsoft Eyes “Advisor in a Box” Solution for Windows 8 from Financial-Planning.com

[Why am I such a skeptic when it comes to Microsoft products these days? Who knows more about meeting the specific needs and demands of today’s financial planning and wealth management client? You, or Redmond’s Mister Softee? However, I’m more optimistic of a partnership like the ones identified with Envestnet|Tamarac, because they do know a thing or two about what advisers need.] Thomas E. Feher, the financial services industry director for Microsoft’s U.S. Dynamics Industry Team, said Microsoft has already partnered with several “industry partners,” including Envestnet|Tamarac and Salientia to provide CRM solutions to advisors through the Windows 8 platform. But, he said, the next step is a preloaded package of tools and services specifically tailored for each advisor on the Windows 8 platform.

Orion Mail is Live from OrionAdvisor.com

[You heard about Orion Mail from both Eric Clarke (see: Salesforce, powered by Orion Connect, gets phone system integration and smarter email reports) and Jon Reiners (see: TD Ameritrade’s open technology helps push Orion Advisor Services over the $100 billion in platform assets mark). Now the feature is live for Orion’s 300 clients and was being demoed on the floor of T3 this past week. Orion’s blog has a 90-second sneak peek video of the new feature.] Orion Mail enables advisors to create custom email templates that communicate account information to clients quickly and easily.

Bill Winterberg’s Technology Planning Tips for Financial Advisors from AdvisorWebsites.com

[Advisor Websites contacted me a few weeks ago to capture some of my best technology ideas for new gadgets, video content, and software integration.] Recently we were lucky enough to sit down with Bill Winterberg and pick his brain about the changing industry and what he expects will be key, vital factors when it comes to technology for financial professionals in 2013.

How Blueleaf sees itself taming the RIA’s two betes noire — and how it is being challenged on that from RIABiz.com

[You’ve known about Blueleaf since mid-2011, right (see: FPPad and Blueleaf Partner to Deliver Adviser Technology Content)? And plus, I interviewed Blueleaf founder John Prendergast in February 2012 (see: Video Spotlight: John Prendergast of Blueleaf discusses experimentation and challenging assumptions). Here, RIABiz covers the “dead simple” portfolio reporting provider (important distinction: it’s NOT portfolio management!) in a well-balanced article.] Blueleaf founder, John Prendergast, comes by this start-up honestly in the sense that it arose out of a need he heard expressed by friends. He exudes a teflon confidence that is a much a part of this article as anything else.

Salesforce, powered by Orion Connect, gets phone system integration and smarter email reports

Posted on November 8, 2012 by in Portfolio Management Software, Video Spotlight

I’m still not convinced that Salesforce, out of the box, is an attractive CRM for financial advisers.

Most firms need to customize much of what comes with the standard Salesforce package; some succeed after making substantial investments, while others give up, frustrated by the seemingly endless list of things to change (see: Salesforce for financial advisers solicits bipolar reactions; AppCrown attempts to resolve disjointed CRM).

Instead of customizing Salesforce in house, many advisers are leveraging third-party utilities found in the AppExchange. One of those utilities comes from Orion Advisor Services, called Orion Connect.

For details on Orion Connect and several new functions it offers, I spoke with Orion Advisor Services president and CEO Eric Clarke in the video spotlight below.

(click to watch on YouTube)

Video Spotlight: Eric Clarke, President of Orion Advisor Services, on additional integrations and mobile apps

Posted on March 20, 2012 by in Portfolio Management Software, Video Spotlight

I last spoke with Eric Clarke, President and CEO of Orion Advisor Services, at the TD Ameritrade Institutional 2012 Conference on his company’s integration with Veo® Open Access.

In my latest conversation with Clarke at the T3 Conference, he provides an overview how Orion delivers value-add services beyond performance reporting, including e-signautre support, rebalancing and trading engines, account billing, web portals, branded mobile apps for iOS and Android.

(click to view on YouTube)