Tag Archives: Oranj

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15

Posted on January 15, 2016 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Jemstep gets acquired by Invesco, rumors fly about a Snapchat robo advisor, FutureAdvisor links up with its first bank, and more.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now!

(WatchFPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Invesco acquires Jemstep, a market-leading provider of advisor-focused digital solutions from PRNewswire

[This week’s top story comes from Jemstep, as the B2B online investment platform was acquired by Invesco, the $800 billion dollar asset manager based a stone’s throw away from my studio right here in Atlanta.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, Jemstep’s leadership will stay onboard to run the Invesco subsidiary, and for now, the company says there won’t be any changes to existing partnerships, custodians, or asset availability in model portfolios.

Ignoring B2C acquisitions of FutureAdvisor and LearnVest, the last twelve months have seen John Hancock acquire Guide Financial and Envestnet acquire Upside.

So who are the independent B2B providers left? I see Autopilot, Trizic, Oranj, Vanare, Betterment Institutional, Motif Investing, and to some extent, the roll-your-own open source platform from Wealthbot.] Invesco Ltd. has acquired Jemstep, a market-leading provider of advisor-focused digital solutions.

Social media firms make ETF push from Reuters

[But hold on! Sending shockwaves in the retail robo space is Snapchat, as rumors were flying this week that the ephemeral chat app might introduce it’s own investment service to its 100 million active daily users.

Uh, let me explain my thoughts in a brief demonstration… Get it, jump the shark?] Snapchat is understood to be at the front of a queue of tech firms developing Robo-Advisory technology – which uses algorithms to help users develop and implement customized investment strategies for retirement planning.

BBVA Compass Teams Up With Robo FutureAdvisor from Forbes

[But wait, there’s more! In its first move after being acquired by BlackRock, FutureAdvisor announced it is partnering with BBVA Compass to roll out the automated investment tools to the bank’s nearly 700 branches in the US.

Bank customers will get access to FutureAdvisors’ digital investment management for the standard fee of 50 basis points, and you can probably bet that new accounts opened up with be held with BBVA’s broker-dealer affiliate, which is how the bank capitalizes on the partnership.] BBVA Compass, the Sunbelt subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant, has announced it will partner with FutureAdvisor to offer its customers digital investment management, popularly known as Robo Advisors. It is the first major bank to sign on with FutureAdvisor since the advisory firm combined forces with BlackRock, the giant asset management company, last year.

Robo Adviser Wealthfront Begins to Offer Free Portfolio Reviews from WSJ.com

[And if you’re not sick of robos by now, let me add news from Wealthfront who this week released a free Portfolio Review service to show investors how bad their current portfolios are and urge them to save a boat load of money by switching to Wealthfront. Whoops, did I say that out loud?

This concept is nothing new, as Personal Capital has offered a similar portfolio analyzer since 2011, and FeeX has been doing it since 2012, but here’s the deal. These VC-backed companies are spending tons of money to target your clients and prospects to get them to try out this tool, and of course, they’re going to tell clients they have suboptimal allocations and are paying high fees to their advisor.

So, expect clients to bring up fees, allocations, and performance in your next meeting, and you need to have a strong answer in the form of your value proposition, which is all the added advice, guidance, and behavior management you deliver that the automated services are incapable of providing.] In a bid to attract more assets, Wealthfront Inc. is joining other robo advisers in providing free advice to investors about their accounts at other financial institutions.

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

New Laserfiche Release Aims to Improve ECM from CMSWire

Laserfiche just released version 10 of its enterprise content management system (ECM). Speaking at the Laserfiche Empower 2016 Conference in Long Beach, Calif., Laserfiche President Karl Chan said the new version is designed to supercharge content-driven business processes, enabling enterprises to redesign the flow of information throughout the enterprise.

LastPass Revamps Its Interface, Adds Emergency Access and Better Sharing from Lifehacker

LastPass is one of the best password managers around. Today it gets a bit better with an improved interface and a handful of new features.

Dashlane 4 Makes Changing Passwords on Hacked Sites Easier, Adds a New Interface, and More from Lifehacker

Dashlane is one of our favorite password managers, and today the service updated with a new, consistent interface across all devices, an updated “password changer” that lets you change passwords on a site without even visiting it, new languages, and more.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15, 2016

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 15, 2016

Between Sessions with Oranj at T3 Enterprise 2015

Posted on December 29, 2015 by in Between Sessions, Conferences

I met with David Lyon, CEO at Oranj, between sessions at T3 Enterprise 2015 to dive into the details of what he discussed during his general session presentation at the conference.

Known for their vibrant orange shoes, Oranj is designed by advisors, for advisors (and they’re not afraid to say it!), to be the advisor’s digital practice manager that offers a client portal with secure messaging and a collaborative document vault built in.

Lyon said that Oranj was built to be an “Advisor+” solution, and while Oranj has robo-advisor-like features, the platform is not intended to completely replace the advisor. Rather, Lyon added, Oranj takes the existing activities of an advisor and adds systematization and scalability to those activities.

Laser App doubles down on technology training at its first Advisor Con event in Las Vegas

Posted on October 15, 2015 by in Conferences

In its first Advisor Con event, Laser App gathered advisors in Las Vegas and doubled down on providing technology training resources.

As technology adoption continues to be a challenge for many financial advisors, Laser App met the issue head on with a new event dedicated to technology training.

In this three video series from the first-ever Laser App Advisor Con event, you’ll see how the company kicked off its inaugural conference by putting technology vendors front and center to highlight the value they bring to advisory firms.

Advisor Con Day One Kickoff

What you’ll learn in this video: My top three takeaways from the morning sessions, including MoneyGuidePro, Riskalzye, and Silanis.

Advisor Con Day One Provider Presentations

What you’ll learn in this video: Hear the tips technology providers want Advisor Con attendees to take back to their office.

Advisor Con Day Two Training

What you’ll learn in this video: Find out why Laser App dedicated an entire day of the Advisor Con agenda to technology training sessions.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12

Posted on June 12, 2015 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Pershing partners with a new company for your digital advice delivery needs, Wealth Access continues its growth in the PFM space, and find out how open source code called Wealthbot could pose a serious challenge to automated investment services.

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:

Pershing Implements Multi-faceted Digital Enablement Strategy to Help Advisors Embrace the Digital Revolution from Pershing, and

Pershing Introduces Managed360™ to Help Advisors Efficiently Grow Their Managed Accounts Business from Pershing

Marstone Digital Wealth on the web

[Let’s jump right in to this week’s top story with a recap of the Pershing INSITE conference held in Orlando last week, as one of the top institutional custodians for advisors made several technology-related announcements. First up is news of a partnership to allow advisors to offer their own white-labeled online investment service which will be powered by a company called Marstone.

Now if the name Marstone doesn’t ring a bell, don’t worry, because it’s only the second time I’ve even heard of them after a chance encounter I had with company executives at the IBM World of Watson event last month. In fact, the company is so new that their latest Form ADV disclosure shows assets of just $15,500 held in two clients accounts. That’s right, two accounts.

Now the few screenshots available from the Marstone website show a reasonably attractive interface, but with a retail investor offering that’s still in beta and an advisor solution that has yet to roll out, it’s just too early for me to say whether or not Marstone is going to gain wide adoption among advisors, especially when there are more seasoned competitors out there like Jemstep, Betterment Institutional, Oranj and more.

But, Marstone will be the first of several anticipated solutions that will integrate with Pershing’s NetX360 platform for advisors as well as the NetXInvestor solution for end clients.

Pershing also announced a new managed account solution called Managed360 that will leverage investment strategies and managed portfolio offerings from Lockwood Advisors, which also happens to be an affiliate of Pershing. Also coming in the future is a Pershing API store which is a catalog of APIs along the lines of the TD Ameritrade Institutional Veo Open Access platform, allowing third-party providers to more easily integrate with the Pershing ecosystem.] At its INSITE™ 2015 conference, Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company, today announced a multi-faceted digital enablement strategy designed to revolutionize how advisors and investors work together in 2015 and beyond.

Wealth Access Hires 7 Veterans to Continue Growth from PRWeb

[Next up is news from Wealth Access, the Nashville-based provider of a personal financial dashboard for high net worth clients, as this week the company announced the growth of its business with seven new hires in the last few months, as well as a 350% year-over-year increase in total assets aggregated in the platform, a figure that now exceeds $20 billion.

You know that merger and acquisition activity in the personal financial management space this year has been on a tear, with Fidelity acquiring eMoney, Northwestern Mutual scooping up LearnVest, and John Hancock picking up Guide Financial, so Wealth Access is pretty much one of the last independent PFM platforms out there serving advisors that has no direct custodial or insurance company connection.
So like I’ve said in previous broadcasts, you would be wise to keep an eye on this company.] Wealth Access, an innovative high net worth personal financial management platform for advisors, announced growing momentum in the adoption of the Wealth Access technology solution by advisors, with record year over year growth and the hiring of seven senior technology and financial services veterans.

Wealthbot.io from GitHub

[And finally, wrapping up the week is an interesting discovery I made on the Internet called Wealthbot. Now stick with me on this one. Wealthbot is open source code published on the GitHub repository that can be used to create your own wealth management platform.

Not satisfied with the commercial wealth management solutions available today? That’s right, you can now build your own robo advisor, I mean, automated investment service. Now developers should get excited about the possibilities here, but advisors using Wealthbot directly? Well, that’s probably not going to happen without significant help from programmers.

But here’s the thing: online services like Wealthfront, Betterment, Future Advisor, even Schwab Intelligent Portfolios have attracted huge amounts of attention and venture capital for their software-based investment algorithms. So what happens to the value of those companies when code that mirrors their functionality is published on the Internet, for free?

Could Wealthbot be the next WordPress, OpenOffice, or Firefox of robo advisors? That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you’re watching FPPad Bits and Bytes.] Wealthbot.io makes it easy to launch a Wealth Management Platform. Build and customize your very own version of a robo-advisor.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12, 2015

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for June 12, 2015

The Best Financial Advisor Technology of 2014

Posted on December 19, 2014 by in Bits & Bytes

Welcome to this special edition of FPPad Bits and Bytes, the Best Tech of 2014! On today’s broadcast, this is my last show of the year, meaning it’s time to review the top technology news from the last 12 months that matters to your business. That’s right, it’s time for my Best Tech of 2014 awards.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch the Best Tech of 2014 on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by ITEGRIA, providers of complete outsourced technology support, security, infrastructure and IT solutions exclusively for RIAs.

itegria - providing a 360-degree, comprehensive approach to financial advisor IT needs

In their new book titled Red Flags, you’ll learn how to protect your firm from cyber-attacks, disasters, and IT compliance risks. Learn more about the Red Flags book by visiting fppad.com/itegria.

This week’s episode is all about my picks for the Best Technology of 2014. This is my fifth year highlighting top technology for financial advisors and wealth managers, and as always, I break down award winners into three categories: the best back office technology, the best client-facing technology, and the best overall innovation of the year.

Best Back-Office Technology

So let’s begin with the Best Back-Office Technology award winner, which is a product or service that boosts the overall efficiency and productivity of your back office and makes a direct impact to your bottom line.

The Best Back-Office Technology of 2014 award goes to (drumroll please) the Motif Advisor Platform.

Unveiled at Finovate Spring 2014 where it won Best of Show, the Motif Advisor Platform is a solution you can use to build, manage and rebalance your own motifs on behalf of clients. You can combine up to 30 stocks and ETFs into your own custom motif and trade the entire strategy for one flat fee.

Pricing for the Motif Advisor Platform starts at $20 per month per customer, so the Motif Advisor Platform takes top honors this year because it helps you be much more efficient when managing custom portfolios AND it saves your clients money in transaction fees that might normally be charged for trading individual securities and ETFs.

Honorable mention in this category goes to Riskalyze, for its enterprise Compliance Cloud risk-monitoring solution, and the TD Ameritrade Institutional Veo Open Access Dashboard, consolidating dozens of technology integrations into one highly-functional web-based screen.

Best Client-Facing Technology

Next up is the award for the Best Client-Facing Technology. Now the winner in this category must significantly enhance the client-facing elements of your business and facilitate your interactions with clients. Clients benefit from improved personalized service as well as an increased level of convenience when using such technology.

I think all of you will agree that the growth of online investment services has really upped the ante when it comes to the client-facing elements of your technology. So it’s no surprise that the winner in this category is part of the online investment providers, but for me, one of them just barely edged out the others in taking top honors.

This year’s Best Client-Facing Technology award goes to (wait for it) Betterment Institutional.

But like I said, Betterment Institutional just barely edged out the other solutions built for advisors like Guide Financial, Jemstep Advisor Pro, Upside Advisor, Oranj, Wealth Access and several more. Why?

Because Betterment has a solid track record on the consumer side with over 50,000 customers, plus it has the advantage of having Steve Lockshin providing direction for the company based on his experience in the independent advisor market with Fortigent and AdvicePeriod.

Now don’t get me wrong, I think the other advisor-focused solutions have an equal shot at significant growth in this space, which didn’t make the award selection process any easier. But the good news for you is that you have a number of choices in this low-cost online investment category when you’re ready to add this offering to your business model.

Honorable mention here goes to Estate Assist for its online safe deposit box that helps clients manage their growing digital assets.

Innovation of the Year

And finally, the third category in my annual Best Technology of 2014 awards is the Innovation of the Year. This award goes to a product or service that introduces a new business practice or service experience to your business. This innovative tool should transform the way you interact with clients, enhance your overall efficiency, or even enable the delivery of new services not possible or practical in the past.

The award for Innovation of the year goes to (thank you) Engage, from Orion Advisor Services.

Out of all the new products we’ve seen in 2014, Engage is one of those solutions that I feel breaks new ground.

It begins with videos you create to communicate with clients, which you really should think about doing in 2015, but what Engage allows you to do it customize the video content you send to clients in an automated fashion.

Engage integrates performance data from Orion, graphic elements from MoneyGuidePro, and calendar scheduling from Redtail CRM, and embeds the information directly in your videos. So you only need to record one video, but Engage makes it seem like you created hundreds of videos, each with graphics and information specific to your clients.

It’s pretty cool stuff, and that’s a technical term, and a little ahead of its time, as a lot of you just aren’t ready to communicate with clients using video, which is why I feel Engage from Orion deserves to be recognized for its innovation this year.

Closing out this year’s award is an honorable mention to Gladstone Associates for their new streamlined business valuation toolkit that uses technology integrations to efficiently gather data about your business.

Your Feedback

So what do you think about my choices for Best Tech of 2014? Did I make the right choices, or did I completely blow it?

You’ve got to let me know! Leave a comment below, send me a message on Twitter using @billwinterberg, or leave a comment on the FPPad YouTube channel.

Thank you so much for being a part of the FPPad community throughout 2014, and I wish you all the best in 2015!

 

Watch my broadcast on the Best Tech of 2014 for financial advisors

Watch my broadcast on the Best Tech of 2014 for financial advisors

FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 8

Posted on August 8, 2014 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, online investment advisors are coming to an RIA new you. Find out who the latest company is to enter this growing market. JemStep is another provider that’s white-labeling its technology to RIAs. Learn how one RIA is using the platform to serve its emerging clients. And Joel Bruckenstein is concerned about the future of advisor technology. Find out what issues keep this technology expert up at night.

So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes on YouTube)

Today’s episode is brought to you by ITEGRIA, providers of complete outsourced technology support, security, infrastructure and IT solutions exclusively for RIAs.

itegria - providing a 360-degree, comprehensive approach to financial advisor IT needs

To learn how you can keep your data safe from attackers, download a free copy of their latest white paper on social engineering attacks by visiting fppad.com/itegria.

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

Upside Raises $1.1M To Help Investment Advisers Compete Against Wealthfront, Betterment And Co. from TechCrunch

[This week’s top story comes from Upside Advisor, the latest startup to join the class of online investment advice providers. But unlike the direct-to-consumer startups like Wealthfront and FutureAdvisor, Upside Advisor is specifically targeting financial advisors who can white label Upside Advisor’s platform to provide a low-cost managed account solution to their emerging clients.

Upside’s platform offers paperless account opening using a DocuSign integration, automated trading and rebalancing, a client portal, and more, and just raised $1.1 million in new funding to continue to enhance its features for advisors. Upside comes on the heels of the introduction of Guide Financial, a similar advisor-focused solution I highlighted back in March in episode 124, giving you one more solution to offer a low-cost, high-tech automated solution to compete with the algorithm-based competition.] Upside, which today announced that it has raised a $1.1 million funding round led by Cultivation Capital, gives financial advisers a white label solution that’s very similar to what other robo-advisers offer.

Upside Advisor video

Traditional advisory firm hammers out deal with robo-adviser from InvestmentNews

[Now another online investment provider also dipping its toe into the RIA waters is JemStep, which just recently announced a partnership with Redhawk Wealth Advisors based in Minneapolis. Under the agreement, the RIA is able to white label the JemStep platform as Redhawk Online Advisor, where investors can sign up online, connect their financial accounts, and receive investment recommendations for a fee ranging from $17 to $69 dollars a month based on the amount of assets under advisement.

It’s important note that while JemStep offers investment recommendations, it does not automatically execute trades on behalf of its users. Actually following through on JemStep’s recommendations is the responsibility of either the advisor or the end-user, which could pose an implementation challenge as the platform gains momentum with RIAs.] Redhawk Wealth Advisors, a registered investment adviser with a wealth management practice, and Jemstep Inc., also an RIA but with an algorithm-driven account aggregation and investment advice platform, have become partners, bringing online advice to help Redhawk’s retail clients manage their investments, including funds held in their 401(k) accounts.

Things That Keep Me Up At Night from Financial Advisor Magazine

[And finally, all this news about competition from online investment advice providers might give you cause for concern, and it’s also one of the topics that keeps technology consultant Joel Bruckenstein up at night, too. In his latest column for Financial Advisor Magazine, Bruckenstein expresses his anxiety over the state of affairs in financial advisor technology.

He highlights complacency, insufficient integrations, and competition from automated online advisors as significant threats to the growth and success of the independent advisory industry. Fortunately, Bruckenstein cites vendors like Envestnet|Tamarac, Orion Advisor Services, Ornaj, Advyzon, and more who can equip independent advisors with technology solutions that not only rival those of the competition, but can also live up to the increased expectations from today’s tech-savvy clients and prospects.] Over the last several months, I’ve traveled thousands of miles, met hundreds of advisors and spoken with numerous representatives of custodians, broker-dealers and software vendors. Although I’m generally rather upbeat about the future of this industry, there are some things that concern me about current affairs.

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

Advent’s Black Diamond Platform Surpasses 500-Client Milestone from Advent

Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, today announced that Black Diamond, an independent business group of Advent, has surpassed 540 clients and exceeded $245 billion in assets on its portfolio management, reporting, and rebalancing platform.

Wealth Managers Enlist Spy Tools to Map Portfolios from the New York Times

Some of the engineers who used to help the Central Intelligence Agency solve problems have moved on to another challenge: determining the value of every conceivable investment in the world.

Vestorly Partners With Advisor Websites to Enhance Client Engagement and Lead Generation from PRWeb

Vestorly, a leading client engagement and lead generation platform, and Advisor Websites, a leading provider of websites to advisors, announced today a joint venture to develop highly engaging websites that build advisors’ brands with investors, as well as generate qualified leads for marketing purposes.

Announcing our new release from Guide Financial

At Guide Financial, our core mission is to help America’s next generation achieve a secure financial future. We are excited to roll out a new release that underscores our commitment to advisors serving the next generation. The new release is now available to currently subscribed advisors and will become more broadly available in the coming weeks.

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 8, 2014

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for August 8, 2014