Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.
BlackRock Announces Strategic Relationship with Envestnet
First up is news from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, as the company announced a strategic relationship with Envestnet, a provider of research, analytics, portfolio management, and reporting tools for financial professionals, and also announced that the company purchased a 4.9% equity stake in Envestnet for roughly $123 million dollars.
According to a press release, the new partnership will accelerate work to integrate BlackRock Digital Wealth’s technologies into Envestnet’s platform, which includes solutions such as iRetire, FutureAdvisor, and Aladdin Risk for Wealth Management. The partnership also provides Envestnet with additional growth capital, which some analysts expect Envestnet will use for strategic acquisitions in 2019.
LPL Financial Acquires AdvisoryWorld
And speaking of acquisitions, earlier this week, LPL Financial, the nation’s largest broker-dealer announced the $28 million dollar acquisition of Advisory World, an investment analytics technology provider to financial advisers.
The AdvisoryWorld acquisition will bring over 30 years of analytics and technology expertise to LPL, as the company’s tools like proposal generation, hypothetical illustrations, and digital on-boarding workflow have been widely adopted by over 30,000 financial advisors and institutions in the U.S.
I caught up with AdvisoryWorld COO Mike Wilson for his thoughts on the acquisition announcement:
This is just a great opportunity for us to continue to serve our existing clients in new ways and to deliver our capabilities to more people. Leveraging LPL’s resources will allow us to evolve our offerings, we’re going to be able to try new things and to learn from a broader base of customers which will help us deliver the most sophisticated service we can to all of our clients, both existing and new. Something completely that I must underline is LPL has this broad base of experience and knowledge that we can use to widen our offering to different types of products and to a more diverse audience.
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.
In a follow up to our first stop on FPPad Tech Tour, we reconnected with LPL CIO Victor Fetter to tour the finished Carolinas campus complex in Fort Mill, SC.
Fetter gives us an overview of the spaces created to encourage collaboration and innovation, all in support of the tens of thousands of financial advisors who work with LPL Financial.
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.
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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.
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.
Today’s episode is brought to you by IMPLEMENT NOW, the independent advisor’s Practice Management Virtual Summit hosted by Kristin Harad broadcasting online March 14th to the 18th. When you register, you’ll get access to the interviews and bonus material from 25 industry thought leaders who share how-to advice you can use right away to improve your practice. And, when you register by March 13th, your participation will count toward scholarships for the Child Mind Institute’s Brave Buddies program for anxious children.
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This week’s top story covers cybersecurity, as Dan Skiles, president of Shareholders Service Group, urges advisers to rethink their approach to keeping the firm safe from attacks. Skiles’ column is timely for two reasons: First, new ransomware called Locky is making the rounds, as True North Networks shared that they are helping one company restore critical data after getting infected by Locky ransomware.
And second, I don’t know if you heard, but this week the Pentagon, probably one of the most well-defended organizations on Earth, announced their own “Hack the Pentagon” program to pay hackers a bounty for finding vulnerabilities! If the Pentagon needs cybersecurity help, I think think it’s safe to say you probably need it, too.
So, where do you begin? I asked one expert to find out:
[Michelle Jacko] Advisors should begin with conducting a risk assessment, doing an inventory of what their technology uses are. Take a look at vulnerabilities by hiring an IT security specialist. Look at internal controls, develop those policies and procedures, and finally, really concentrate on user awareness training, which often is the beginning of where problems start.
If you want cybersecurity help from an outside partner, I connected with Itegria and External IT to find out what’s new:
[Robert Madi] Bill, we’re really excited to announce AdvisorGuard which is a cybersecurity specific solution designed exclusively for RIAs. As an expert in the RIA space, ITEGRIA understands how important cybersecurity is for advisors and how top of mind it is. We’re really excited about it and looking forward to making a huge impact in the RIA space.
[Sam Attias] We’ve released new features, a lot of them have to do with auditing, monitoring of what people are doing within our system with all their applications. We can monitor devices, we can also… a new secure sign on that we’ve come out with that has a lot of exciting features, one of them being for all your web-based applications like a Tamarac or an Orion, Salesforce, you can set the logins and passwords for everybody in your firm and they wouldn’t know what they are.
I think it’s safe to say that it’s time to stop kicking the cybersecurity can down the road and engage a provider that can help you protect your firm from attacks. For more information, be sure to head over to fppad.com/181 for the links to this week’s top stories.] Cybersecurity should be on every advisor’s mind. The unfortunate byproduct of advances in technology is that cybercriminals have new opportunities to commit their crimes.
[Next is an update from LPL Financial, as this week Bill Morrisey, the company’s head of business development, told ThinkAdvisor that their automated investment service for use by advisors is expected to roll out later this year.
Ok, so let’s rewind to episode 169 for a brief refresher:
No details on pricing or even a name for the solution were provided, but LPL president Dan Arnold did say that a pilot program with about 20 advisors will be begin in the next few months.
Morrisey didn’t comment on the pilot phase, and there still are no details on a fee schedule, minimum requirements, or even a name for the solution, but Morrisey did say that all investors would qualify for the service, so I expect there to be really low or no account minimum when the solution is officially released.] Seven months ago, at its annual conference, LPL announced its intention to launch a robo-advisory service, starting with a pilot program. Now the firm’s head of business development tells ThinkAdvisor that LPL expects to add the service this year.
[And wrapping up this week’s broadcast is news from Morningstar, as the investment research company released sustainability ratings for over 20,000 mutual funds. If you use Morningstar Direct or Morningstar Office in your business, you can now view the sustainability ratings from within your application, and the company anticipates the ratings will be introduced into Morningstar Advisor Workstation as well as the Morningtar.com websites in the coming weeks.
More and more emerging investors not only want to save for their future, they also want their investments allocated to companies with high environmental, social, and governance factors, or ESG.
So I spy a differentiation opportunity, because the consumer-facing automated investing services don’t give customers the option of allocating their money based on ESG factors. You, on the other hand, can now offer that option.] Investors will now be able to evaluate funds based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors with Morningstar’s new sustainability rating for funds.
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Personal Capital, the leading digital advice firm, today announced it has achieved $2 billion in assets under management (AUM), with one-third coming from clients with over $1 million in assets at Personal Capital. The average AUM per client is now $300,000.
Orchestrate LLC, a West Des Moines applications, services and support firm serving financial services companies on Salesforce.com, has agreed to acquire Sagacious Inc., also a West Des Moines firm.
Junxure, an industry-leading CRM solutions and technology firm for financial advisors, today announced its partnership with the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA), which represents the interests of insurance professionals and financial advisors through legislative and regulatory advocacy and ongoing education.
Note: Treat this video as you would treat a TV show. FPPad Tech Tour is committed to telling the stories of people who are working hard to support financial advisors. These stories can’t be told in a two-minute video. So fire up your Apple TV, Chromecast, or your smart TV, kick off your shoes, and enjoy this up-close-and-personal video series.
Our first stop on FPPad Tech Tour is in Charlotte, North Carolina, where we met up with Victor Fetter, CIO of LPL Financial to learn about what attracted him to manage LPL’s technology solutions for the nation’s largest independent broker dealer.
CHAPTER MARKERS:
0:16 FPPad Tech Tour Intro
1:10 How did your career bring you to LPL Financial LLC?
2:55 How do you accommodate and respond to the needs of a diverse group of financial advisors?
4:55 Victor speaks about candid conversations with financial advisors
6:29 What’s your typical day like? How much do you interact with financial advisors?
7:53 Victor talks about connections with LPL Financial advisors beyond the business setting
8:43 One secret not many people know about you
11:14 How do you feel about automated investment services, aka robo advisors?
12:38 What are you telling advisors to do about automated investment services?
13:09 Where do you get your best information on where the industry is headed?
14:40 We take a drive to Fort Mill, South Carolina to view the construction site of the new LPL Financial facility
15:45 What investments are you and LPL Financial making for the future of financial advisors?
On today’s broadcast, LPL financial reveals its robo intentions, Wealthbox raises the CRM stakes with an integration with Slack, and Smarsh steps up its archiving of your Microsoft Office 365 content.
Today’s episode is brought to you by ExternalIT, a leading provider of cloud solutions to the wealth management industry, With the recent integration of Microsoft Office 365, you can enhance the familiar tools of Word, Outlook and Excel with an extensive range of apps including VoIP communication, on-line meetings, collaboration, business intelligence, and more.
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[Today’s top story comes from LPL Financial, as the nation’s largest broker-dealer, oh, thank you disclosure, held its annual LPL Focus conference in Boston last week. On the technology side, LPL announced it will soon introduce its own an automated investment service, cough robo-advisor, consisting of low-cost ETF portfolios powered by LPL’s research. No details on pricing or even a name for the solution were provided, but LPL president Dan Arnold did say that a pilot program with about 20 advisors will be begin in the next few months.
LPL also announced the launch of its Vendor Affinity Program, calling it “a centralized repository” of vendors that offer discounted pricing to LPL advisors for their products and services. LPL is launching the Vendor Affinity Program with over 50 vendors from the get-go, with discounts ranging anywhere from 10 percent to 80 percent off retail pricing.
Now if you’re not affiliated with LPL Financial, don’t get too discouraged. Vendors don’t get to be included in the affinity program simply by offering a discount; vendors must also meet certain security and compliance requirements imposed by LPL, so this is the takeaway for you. If you’re not really sure a technology vendor will meet the standards for your own business, you can be more confident in those vendors who have passed muster with LPL by meeting some pretty high standards.
As far as who is in the affinity program? I couldn’t reach anyone at LPL in time before filming this episode to get that list, but some detective work on Google should yield a list of usual suspects who’ve issued press releases regarding their inclusion into the program.] LPL Financial LLC, the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer, a custodian for registered investment advisors (RIAs), and a wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial Holdings Inc., today announced the launch of its Vendor Affinity Program, a new initiative designed to help advisors reduce the complexity and costs of running their businesses.
[Next up is news from CRM provider Wealthbox, as the company announced a new integration with Slack, a wildly-popular online collaboration tool. “What is Slack?” you ask.
I’d rather not make a comparison to email, but, Slack is like email on steroids. But instead of collaborating via back-and-forth email threads, Slack lets you use real-time chat, aka messaging, to work with your team using Channels centered around certain topics, connect privately with colleagues using direct messages , or set up private groups with just a few team members to work on top secret tasks.
With the new Slack integration, Wealthbox users can select from 22 different notification types to automatically push into Slack, helping everyone in the firm stay informed on day-to-day activities. And with the Slack feed on your favorite mobile device, you should be able to stay in the loop on all sorts of tasks in your office no matter where you are.
And one last thing: since Slack can be used to chat about clients, and potentially WITH clients, you’ll need the Slack Plus plan that’s around $15 per month per user that includes compliance exports of all your message so you keep your compliance officer happy.] Wealthbox CRM, an activity stream-based client relationship management app for wealth management firms, has announced an integration with Slack, the messaging app for business teams.
[And finally, this week’s episode wraps up with news from Smarsh, the archiving solution provider, as the company introduced enhanced archiving support for Microsoft Office 365 environments. As more of you move away from local servers to the cloud, you still need to fulfill your compliance and record-keeping obligations required by FINRA and the SEC.
By all accounts, Microsoft is moving full-steam ahead on cloud services, so it’s pretty much inevitable that as long as you want to keep using Word, Excel, Outlook and more, you’ll need to incorporate a compliance solution for the resources you manage in the cloud. In addition to archiving Office 365 email, the Smarsh solution can also capture content on Yammer as well as Skype for Business Online, formerly called Lync, which is Microsoft’s attempt to compete with Slack that I mention, oh, about a minute ago.] Smarsh®, the leading provider of cloud-based comprehensive archiving solutions for compliance and e-discovery, today announced enhanced archiving support for electronic communications within Microsoft Office 365 environments.
On today’s broadcast, Upside Advisor teams up with a high-profile RIA. Will this partnership do anything to slow the growth of the $(!#-advisers? Redtail CRM previews the new version of its popular CRM. Will the design and feature changes be enough to attract advisors that are using aging systems? And, broker-dealers aren’t turning a blind eye to technology. Find out which firms are investing heavily to boost the efficiency of their representatives.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Wealthbox CRM. Version 1.6 is now available featuring automated workflows, templates for routine processes, and progress updates all on one screen!
[First up this week is an announcement from Ritholtz Wealth Management, the New York RIA headed by The Big Picture blogger Barry Ritholtz and Josh Brown, aka The Reformed Broker, who released a new web-based offering to emerging clients called Liftoff. Liftoff is a white-labeled version of the $(!#-adviser solution, uh, ok, online investment solution from Upside Advisor, which I introduced to you back in episode 136.
For around 40 basis points, Liftoff provides automated asset allocation recommendations to clients who want to get started with investing, but don’t yet have enough assets to qualify for a one-on-one relationship with Ritholtz’s advisors. Upside Advisor is just the latest $(!#-adviser, oh, right, online investment provider to join this space, as they’re going up against competing solutions like Wealthfront, Personal Capital, Betterment, Learnvest, Guide Financial, JemStep, Orion Discover; I can’t keep them all straight!
So today you’re faced with a choice: will you sit on the sidelines to see how these low-cost automated solutions play out, or will you partner with a low-cost provider to offer an investment solution for your emerging clients?] Upside, a technology company providing a digital advisor platform to investment advisors, today announced a new partnership with Ritholtz Wealth Management (RWM).
[Next up is a review of Redtail CRM and its third major product update to its software called Project Tailwag. In his October column for Financial Planning magazine, Joel Bruckenstein gives a very favorable review of the redesign and feature enhancements to the industry’s most widely used CRM.
Users will soon have access to a clean, flat design that’s easier to use, and it’s also responsive, as it adjusts to screens of any size from desktops to smartphones. Contact records feature a timeline of client interactions, and important details like contact information and activities and workflows are just a single click away.
Whether you use Redtail CRM or an alternative solution such as Junxure, Salesforce, Wealthbox, and others, these are the types of features and functionality you’re going to need if you expect to cultivate meaningful relationships with clients and differentiate yourself from the $(!#-advisers, uh, I mean, online investment providers.] Redtail Technology just released a major upgrade to its popular CRM application. Dubbed Project Tailwag, this version of Redtail — only the third upgrade in the company’s 12-year history — offers a host of new enhancements.
[And finally, Joel Bruckenstien once again wraps up this week’s top stories with a technology update from the nation’s leading broker-dealers firms. In his column for Financial Advisor magazine, Bruckenstein highlights LPL Financial’s announcement of ClientWorks, the successor to the existing BranchNet platform that I covered in episode 137, an updated portfolio reporting solution and Client Center dashboard from Raymond James, updates to Commonwealth Financial Network’s Client Household 360 Dashboard and Practice360 business dashboard, and the AIG Advisor Group’s pending release of a mobile version of Salesforce and with integrated Salesforce work flows.
Clearly these broker-dealer firms are investing heavily in technology to boost the capabilities of their representatives, especially as they face increasing competition from all of the $(!#-adviser, ugh, online solutions out there.] The pace of technological innovation has never been greater. Independent broker-dealer firms continue to invest to keep up with the competition, offering advisors and end clients a better experience.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Smarsh®, the leading provider of hosted archiving solutions for compliance and e-discovery, today announced the Smarsh Archiving Platform now offers enhanced support for Instagram.
For those of you with property, Personal Capital has come out with a great new feature that will help you keep track of your real estate investments with Zillow.
On today’s broadcast, LPL Financial unveils new back-office technology for its representatives. Will the tools set a new bar for advisor productivity? Laser App continues to expand its library of fillable forms. Can you guess how many paper forms have avoided the shredder? And, did you know you can now build a “robo shield” for your business? Find out what steps you should be taking right now to differentiate yourself from the online advisor competition.
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.
Now available as a part of the Orion Advisor Services platform, TRX features tax-efficient rebalancing, an easy to use interface, and more, all at an affordable price. Learn how you can gain a half a million dollar return on your technology investment by downloading their latest white paper at fppad.com/trx
[This week’s top story comes from LPL Financial, the nation’s largest broker-dealer with over 13,000 representatives, who held it’s annual Focus conference in San Diego last week. On the technology front, LPL unveiled ClientWorks(SM), a completely new technology solution that should offer expanded functionality and more seamless integrations.
Victor Fetter, chief information officer at LPL Financial, told attendees that ClientWorks is designed to work on any device, including phones and tablets, will feature streamlined workflows for account opening and trading, and will offer business analytics to increase advisor productivity. The first phase of ClientWorks, including a Resource Center library, will release later this fall, with the full ClientWorks suite anticipated sometime in the Spring of 2015.
Also making news at the Focus event was the announcement of new relationship between LPL Financial and Redtail, the leading web-based CRM for financial advisors. Beginning in October, LPL representatives will be able to subscribe to Redtail for $50 per month for each 15-user database, and the CRM will likely feature a tighter integration with LPL data once ClientWorks rolls out next year.] LPL Financial LLC, the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer*, an RIA custodian, and a wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. LPLA, +0.80% today unveiled ClientWorksSM, a next-generation technology solution for advisors and institutions that will seamlessly integrate and expand its offerings.
[Another event held in San Diego last week was the Laser App 2014 Conference. If you haven’t seen them already, I filmed five videos on site providing highlights of the educational sessions as well as the networking events, which included some pretty epic surfing attempts by attendees, including yours truly.
While the company did not make any specific new product announcements, Laser App did provide an update on how widely the solution is being used across the financial services industry. There are now over 32,000 forms in the Laser App library accessed by over 115,000 users, and the company estimates that documents in its library have been processed in some way, shape or form over 45 million times. Clearly a lot of business is being streamlined with the Laser App solution.] From its 2014 Financial Services Conference, Laser App Software is pleased to announce it has added 40 new customers so far in 2014. The forms-filling and automation management software provider sites the growing need for advisor efficiency as a key driver of broker-dealer and advisor adoption of its solutions.
[And finally, while at the Laser App conference last week, Deborah Fox of the Fox Financial Planning Network took the opportunity to introduce a new white paper to financial advisors. Titled “How to build a robo-shield™ for your financial advisory firm,” the nearly 40-page white paper offers 20 tactics you can implement right now to differentiate your business from the online software-based investment services.
Fox recommends strategies like focusing on a specific client niche or specialty, building service teams of two advisors and one admin, defining and then automating workflows in your business, and much more.] Fox Financial Planning Network (FFPN) announced today the availability of a new industry white paper that identifies ways advisors and institutions will need to enhance their business model and service offering to counteract the threat from online investment advice platforms known as ‘Robo-Advisers.’
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
With high consumer demand, it’s clear that creating personable, tailored marketing videos can offer an efficient and powerful way to attract new clients.
External IT has added the office-management software offered by Junxure to the applications it can include within the cloud-based virtual desktops it creates for advisers.
On today’s broadcast, iPhone and iPad users on high alert; what you need to do right now to fix a huge security flaw, how Schwab Advisor Services plans to give thousands of advisors a presence in the popular app stores, and what’s the next hot technology you might see coming from the industry’s largest independent broker-dealer?
[This week’s top story is for all of you who use iPhones and iPads in your business. In case you haven’t heard, Apple quietly rolled out a new update to iOS this week to patch a critical flaw in the way secure Internet connections are handled.
It’s been dubbed the “gotofail” flaw, as the operating system’s source code had an inadvertent goto command, essentially bypassing the final steps in the security authentication process.
So what you need to do right now is to turn on your device, open the Settings app, tap General, and then tap Software Update to start the download process. The same bug also affects Mac users, so be sure to perform a Software Update on your Mac to patch this security hole.] Like everything else on the iPhone, the critical crypto flaw announced in iOS 7 yesterday turns out to be a study in simplicity and elegant design: a single spurious “goto” in one part of Apple’s authentication code that accidentally bypasses the rest of it.
[Next up is another story about mobile devices, only this one comes from Schwab Advisor Services. In a press release this week, Schwab announced that it officially rolled out Schwab OpenView Mobile, a service that allows advisors to publish native mobile apps branded for their business. Schwab OpenView Mobile lets advisors perform limited customization of things like logos, contact details, and color schemes and publish the app in the iTunes App Store as well as Google Play.
But Schwab isn’t the first to offer custom branded apps for advisors, as both Orion Advisor Services and Trust Company of America have both been offering this service to their clients for several years at no additional charge. The Faulkner Media Group also publishes branded mobile apps for advisors at a reasonable price.
But for a cost of of $5,000 up front plus $2,000 in annual maintenance, Schwab OpenView Mobile might prove to be a bit too expensive relative to the other third party app solutions currently on the market. I’ll come back in a few months to report on the overall adoption of OpenView Mobile by Schwab’s advisors, so stay tuned.] Schwab OpenView Mobile officially launches, allowing RIAs to publish branded mobile apps to the iTunes App Store and Google Play
LPL Financial to deploy Microsoft Lync for enterprise messaging from Twitter
[And finally, wrapping up this week’s broadcast is a little inside information on how LPL Financial hopes to make its advisors a bit more efficient when collaborating with the home office. According to my sources, aka a tweet from Jamie Cox, LPL will soon be deploying an instant messaging and video chat service from Microsoft called Lync.
Now I know several RIAs have been experimenting with collaboration platforms like Yammer, Google Chat, and Salesforce Chatter, but this is the first I’ve heard of an independent broker’s plans to roll out an enterprise-wide messaging app. Retail pricing for Lync is $2 per user per month, but I don’t have details on what the final cost will be to LPL representatives, if any. While the apps might seem a little funky at first, it’s clear that realtime messaging and collaboration is really gaining momentum in the enterprise, so if you aren’t at least experimenting with some of these apps, you might want to put them on your technology roadmap for this year.]
@BillWinterberg@LPL will eventually r/o Lync to advisers—but no small office is likely to choose lync IMO when iMessage/gchat are free
