Tag Archives: Guide

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 5

Posted on June 5, 2015 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Guide Financial gets scooped up by an insurance company, Fox Financial Planning Network wants to help you with your online investment service adoption, and WealthMinder raises fresh capital to give you an edge over robo advisors.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

This week’s episode of Bits and Bytes is brought to you by Total Rebalance Expert, the industry’s largest, privately owned portfolio rebalancing software provider.

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TRX now offers TRX Edge, a completely rewritten rebalancing platform optimized for the web as well as mobile devices. Sign up for a demo of TRX Edge by visiting http://fppad.com/trx

 

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

John Hancock Acquires Software Provider Guide Financial, Inc. As Part of Companywide Long-Term Innovation Plan from John Hancock

[This week’s top story comes from Guide Financial, because while I was enjoying clam chowder in a Boudin sourdough bowl in San Francisco, the company announced it was acquired by John Hancock, the life insurance, mutual fund, and retirement solution provider. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Now if you’re a regular viewer of FPPad Bits and Bytes, you should remember I highlighted Guide Financial in episode 124 when the company announced an agreement to white-label its solution for members of the Garrett Planning Network.

That was more than a year ago, and I’m told that the adoption of the white-labeled solution was below expectations. So fast forward to today on the heels of fintech acquisitions of eMoney Advisor, Upside, NestEgg Wealth, and LearnVest and you’ll quickly realize that industry behemoths like John Hancock are eager to cater to tech-savvy customers with slick, user friendly online experiences. Guide Financial is just one of the many online startups in this space building such a platform.

In the press release, John Hancock said that Guide Financial will operate as an independent group, so I can only speculate whether or not Guide Financial will remain independent or if some financial product upselling and/or cross marketing will weave its way into the solution. So stay tuned.] John Hancock announced today that it has acquired Guide Financial, Inc., a San Francisco-based software provider for financial advisors. Guide Financial builds software that enables investors to make better financial decisions and build wealth, utilizing artificial intelligence, behavioral finance, and seamless advisor integration. Terms were not disclosed.

Fox Financial Planning Network Launches AdvisorTouch Symphony from PRNewswire

[Next up is more news regarding online investment services, as the Fox Financial Planning Network recently announced a new program called AdvisorTouch Symphony. If you missed the news because you were out riding a cable car, AdvisorTouch Symphony is essentially a turnkey roadmap you can implement to add an online investment service to your business.

Under the program, you’ll receive step-by-step guidance on how to adopt these new tools, with Jemstep Advisor Pro being the first automated investment service of choice, and you can expect several other online services to be featured in the near future.

Pricing for firms with one to three advisors is a one-time fee of $5,500, and larger firms will be charged based on their size and need for customization.

This gets you the practice management resources, but this fee doesn’t include additional compliance guidance and resources available from National Regulatory Services, or the optional cybersecurity consulting from True North Networks which were both named in an alliance with AdvisorTouch Symphony. Whew! Got that?

So if you want someone else to show you how to add an online investment service to your business, this is one resource to be sure is on your radar.] Fox Financial Planning Network (FFPN) announced today the launch of AdvisorTouch Symphony, the only program of its kind to help financial advisory firms harness the power of combining robo-technology with practice management. FFPN created this program to demystify robo-technology for advisory firms and provide a detailed road map through every aspect of the implementation process to help firms maximize the benefits of its use.

This Reston startup raised $1.45M to bring financial advisers to the masses from BizJournals.com, and

Beyond the Robo-Advisor from Financial Advisor Magazine

[And finally, this week’s broadcast wraps up with news on WealthMinder, because while I was pillaging and plundering with pirates of the “you can’t say that on YouTube,” the company announced a new round of fundraising to the swashbuckling tune of $1.45 million.

WealthMinder is, surprise surprise, yet another while-labeled advisor solution for online service, only this one goes beyond basic asset allocation recommendations by incorporating goal planning. To get a deeper look at WealthMinder, coincidentally, Joel Bruckenstein reviewed WealthMinder in his column for Financial Advisor Magazine this month.

To cut to the chase, clients and prospects log in to WealthMinder and choose goals they’re planning for, they aggregate their investment accounts using an integration from Yodlee, and WealthMinder ultimately generates an initial financial plan based on some basic assumptions, and yes, the plan can include investment recommendations, too.

For you, the advisor, you can log in to your dashboard and view all the plans that clients have created, which includes their recommended actions, and then you can proactively offer your services to help clients implement the next steps. There are a reported 26 firms using the platform today, and the pricing to advisors comes in at $10 per month per client, but you can offset the cost by collecting a monthly subscription fee from clients who want to use the WealthMinder platform.] WealthMinder, a Reston-based financial marketplace that looks to connect financial advisers with people who aren’t considered wealthy, has secured $1.45 million in seed funding led by two West Coast venture capital firms — Green Visor Capital and Signatures Capital.

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

Morningstar to Add Portfolio Rebalancing Capability for Independent Financial Advisors, Powered by Total Rebalance Expert from Morningstar

Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, is working with Total Rebalance Expert (TRX) to add rebalancing functionality to Morningstar Office, the company’s practice and portfolio management system for independent financial advisors.

Vestorly Announces the Integration of Its Smart Digital Content Technology on to Pershings NetX360® Platform from Marketwired

Vestorly today announced the integration of its smart digital content technology into Pershing’s NetX360® platform.

Tech Review: New Bet on Financial Health from Financial Planning

Consumers seem to be buying into the idea that these devices can help improve their physical health, so why not create similar mobile capabilities to track financial health?

 

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 5, 2015

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 5, 2015

FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 14

Posted on March 14, 2014 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Google Drive adds new features with third party add ons. Find out which ones will help you be more efficient. A new startup emerges to help advisors compete against “robo advisors.” How their partnership with a leading network of planners could change the mass-market advice model forever. And, find out about the biggest mistakes you should avoid before you upload your first video to YouTube.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by Wealthbox CRM. Wealthbox is collaborative, social, and outrageously simple CRM for financial advisors.

Wealthbox CRM

Sign up for a free trial today by visiting fppad.com/wealthbox

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

Google launches Docs plug-ins to better compete with Office from PCWorld, and

The Best Add-Ons for Google Drive from Lifehacker

[Three weeks ago, I covered news from Microsoft as they changed the name of SkyDrive, their cloud-based file storage solution, to OneDrive, and added several useful features to the service. Not to be left out, Google announced this week that it is extending the functionality of Google Drive with third-party plugins.

The new feature, called “add-ons,” allows users to enhance the Docs and Sheets office apps similar to what you can to today with Extensions in Google Chrome or packaged apps for ChromeOS. So what are the best new add-ons you can start using today?

The first is HelloFax, which allows you to send a file from Google Docs to any fax number by simply clicking on the HelloFax add-on and typing in the destination phone number. Now you can finally get rid of your fax machine and return it to 1985. Next is an add-on called Mapping Sheets, which lets you create custom Google Maps using data in a Google Sheet file. So for example, if you wanted to quickly map the addresses of all your clients, you could create a Google Sheet with the data and use the Mapping Sheets add-on to easily make the map.

And last is an add-on called Track Changes, which is one of the features where Google Docs underperformed its Microsoft Office counterpart. The new Track Changes add-on now essentially replicates the track changes feature found in Microsoft Word, closing the gap between the two programs, at least for the time being.] Yesterday, Google introduced add-ons for Google Docs and Sheets. These add-ons allow you to add all kinds of functionality to your documents, including signing faxes, creating bibliographies, and more.

Garrett Planning Network To Make Guide Financial Available to Its Network Of 300+ Advisory Firms from PRNewswire

[Next is news from a company new to the advisor technology marketplace called Guide Financial. Guide works in a similar fashion to Mint.com, as it aggregates data from banking, credit card, and investment accounts, but Mint.com doesn’t have an advisor dashboard, which is where Guide steps in.

Recognizing the potential of Guide’s dashboard, the Garrett Planning Network announced this week that it will begin to private-label the Guide online portal to the Network’s 300 plus advisory members.

This is a clever agreement between the two companies, as the online portal form Guide will help Garrett members boost their client-facing technology, squarely taking on the competition from robo advisor services that are proving to be very attractive to Gen X and Gen Y clients.

Pricing details of the private-labaled portal weren’t disclosed in the press release, but you can sign up for your own 15-day free trial to test Guide Financial on your own and watch their presentation from Finovate Fall 2013 by visiting the links to this week’s top stories.] Guide Financial (www.guidefinancial.com), a web-based service provider targeted to financial professionals at advisory firms, banks and insurers, announced today that it has reached an agreement to make its service available to the over 300 advisory companies in the Garrett Planning Network.

Guide Financial Finovate Fall 2013 Video

 

YouTube secrets for financial advisers from FPPad

[And finally, you’re probably watching today’s broadcast on YouTube, and you might be considering uploading your own video content to get discovered on the world’s second largest search engine. But before you get started, do you know what the top mistakes advisors are making on YouTube?

Earlier this week, I joined Joe and Luke Simonds in a lively Google+ Hangout to talk about the opportunities of YouTube content, but we also highlighted the biggest mistakes some advisors are making when they post content online. These mistakes include not getting compliance to review a script prior to filming, not making your own thumbnail images, and not using video annotations and hyperlinks to their fullest potential.] Effective video thumbnails, annotations, and hyperlinks are the biggest missed opportunities on YouTube for financial advisers

And stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:

Save more with Google Drive from Google

We’ve lowered the price of our monthly storage plans to $1.99 for 100GB (previously $4.99), $9.99 for 1TB (previously $49.99), and $99.99 for 10TB, with even more storage available if you need it.

4 New Advisor Tech Trends from Financial Planning

For advisors, technological change can seem both lightning fast and very slow.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 14, 2014

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for March 14, 2014