In what’s becoming an annual tradition while attending the Schwab IMPACT® conference, I once again connected with John Connor, VP of Digital Advisor Solutions with Charles Schwab to tour a sampling of the vendors participating in the “Tech Alley” in The Exchange.
Join us as we engage six advisor technology vendors during our tour to learn how each of them helps advisors be more efficient when offering services to clients. Tour stops include:
(Disclosure: RIA in a Box and Orion Advisor Services have engaged Bill Winterberg for consulting and/or marketing services over the past 12 months. Full updated disclosures are always available here fppad.com/disclaimer)
Welcome to a new FPPad fintech briefing, here are the top fintech stories you need to know today brought to you by Morningstar, register today for the 2018 Morningstar Investment Conference coming June 11 in Chicago.
RIA in a Box Gets Acquired
In compliance news, RIA in a Box, a leading provider of compliance solutions to registered investment advisers, announced it has been acquired by New York private equity firm Aquiline Capital Partners for an undisclosed amount. RIA in a Box serves approximately 2,000 investment advisers in the country with compliance solutions ranging from initial business registration, online compliance calendar and reporting programs, as well as automated employee trade monitoring. According to a press release, Aquiline plans to help RIA in a Box pursue organic growth initiatives as well as an acquisition strategy in the wealth management software and compliance industry.
Alexa is NOT Spying on You
Is your Alexa spying on you? A Seattle news channel reported that a Portland, Oregon couple’s Echo device surreptitiously recorded a private conversation and sent it to a random person listed in their contacts. While the story quickly stoked backlash among the see-I-told-you-so crowd online, Amazon was quick to reply that the couple unintentionally activated their Echo’s wake up word followed by the phrase “send message,” which activated the Echo’s built in messaging feature. It’s the smart speaker equivalent of a butt dial. Nevertheless, however unlikely the string of events may be, Amazon said that the company will continue to evaluate options to make cases such as this one less likely.
Orion Advisor Services May 2018 Release Details
And finally, Orion Advisor Services released its May 2018 Software Update that includes updates to fee billing for one-time financial planning engagements, new integrations, and additional compliance automation. Here’s Orion’s Director of Technology Support, Joe Leyboldt with more details:
Today we announced the details of our May 2018 Tech Release. The most impactful updates are new billing functionality enabling advisers to generate bills for financial planning and advice, the addition of a tool called Supervise to Compass, our compliance app. We’ve also strengthened Compass’ AML screening capabilities. Finally, we’ve launched an integration with BlackRock’s iRetire and updated our Salesforce integration to run on the new Salesforce Lightning user interface.
To see all the detail of the Orion Software update, 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.
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 is in the news once again, as the company announced the launch of a new compliance application for advisers called Compass. The new app includes an Audit Tool that retrieves portfolio and trading information from Orion and formats it in a way that meets common regulatory requests from auditors during an SEC examination, and also a Verify Tool that facilitates anti-money laundering screening with an integrations with LexisNexis® Risk Solutions. These new compliance apps can help advisers recover days of lost productivity when preparing for a compliance exam, according to the company’s press release.
In behavioral finance news, DataPoints recently announced the launch of its behavioral assessment tool called Investor Profile. According to a company press release, the Investor Profile assessment gives advisors a scientific way to assess psychological risk tolerance of investors and use a consistent framework to guide clients towards recognizing and correcting for their unique investing behaviors. The Investor Profile measures five unique characteristics, including confidence in investment decision-making, behavior during times of wild market swings, willingness to try new strategies or take new chances, and more.
Conga Acquires Orchestrate
And in industry acquisition news, Conga, a provider of document automation solutions for Salesforce users, announced it has acquired Orchestrate, a workflow automation provider with a focus on financial professionals that use Salesforce in their business. The acquisition will add Orchestrate’s expertise with RIAs and wealth management firms to Conga’s suite of enterprise-grade Intelligent Document Automation solutions. With more on that, here’s Orchestrate President and Co-CTO, Joshua Van Heukelom.
At Orchestrate, our mission is to enable best-of-breed efficiency for firms that are on the Salesforce platform. So we were born out of an RIA, so we know the language, we know the industry, we know what people need. We’ve been in wealth management for a number of years, and so our tools really help solve problems we know these people have.
To watch my full interview with Orchestrate, head over to fppad.com/flashbriefing to get 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.
Welcome to the FPPad fintech briefing, Here are the top fintech stories you need to know today.
Fidelity® Announces Advisor Technology Initiatives for 2018
Fidelity, one of the top institutional custodians for financial advisers, recently announced the planned introduction of several new technology solutions for financial advisers. In a recent press release, Fidelity said it will introduce a new account aggregation tool called Consolidated Data, a business analytics tool called Insights + Analytics, new Advanced Modeling & Rebalancing capabilities for its Wealthscape software platform, and the launch of a digital app store called the Wealthscape Integration Xchange.
Pilots of several of these new tools are scheduled to begin in the third quarter of 2018, and no guidance on pricing was provided for any of the new tools announced, so expect quite a bit more concrete information over the coming months as these tools get closer to production.
Orion Advisor Services Launches Alternative Investment Platform
From Orion Advisor Services, the company announced the release of its Alternative Investment Platform tool, allowing financial advisers to offer better reporting to their clients around alternative investments like private equity, venture capital, non-traded real estate, and more.
The company press release also highlighted an update anticipated for May that adds automated data gathering for alternative assets from DTCC and other alternative data vendors.
Captain401 Rebrands as Human Interest, Raises $11 Million Series A
And Captain401 has a new name and new funding, as the company said it’s changing its name to Human Interest on the heels of raising an additional $11 million dollars in a Series A round last week.
Founded in 2015, Human Interest says it helps over 10,000 employees save for their retirement with a focus on the small business retirement plan marketplace, where it will find competition from other providers like Betterment for Business, America’s Best 401(k), as well as large incumbents like Vanguard and Financial Engines.
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.
On today’s broadcast, Schwab announces its Schwab Intelligent Advisory services, Finicity raises $42 million for account aggregation, Envestnet|Tamarac rolls out Yodlee, and more.
Today’s episode is brought to you by eMoney Advisor, featuring a new Client Onboarding process as a part of their leading client experience. Onboarding replaces printed fact-finding documents with an automated, digital workflow, allowing clients to populate their own personal financial information online from anywhere — adding an extra layer of convenience and efficiency to your service.
[Now the big story this week is news from Charles Schwab, as the largest custodian for RIAs announced plans to introduce Schwab Intelligent Advisory™ in the first half of 2017. In the press release, Schwab’s Neesha Hathi said that Schwab Intelligent Advisory is designed for emerging or mass affluent investors who don’t have complex financial situations, features access to CFP® professionals who are available by phone and videoconference, and charges fees of just 28 basis points (disclaimer!) with a maximum of $3,600 a year.
Now this isn’t as much of a technology story as it is a marketing story, because the technology for Schwab Intelligent Advisory portfolio management is that same that powers Schwab Intelligent Portfolios for retail investors and Institutional Intelligent Portfolios™ that you can use in your own RIA if you custody assets with Schwab.
But, how does that make you feel knowing you’re using the same technology that your custodian will use to offer its own human-assisted advisory services to mass affluent clients?
So I was asked if I thought RIAs should be concerned about this announcement, and I said yes, RIAs should absolutely be concerned. Look, when it comes to getting a prospect to buy what you do, most of the time it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear, and I’ve gotta admit, prospects are hearing comprehensive plans by CFP® professionals with 24/7 access, all for 28 basis points (disclaimer!)? Unless your prospects hear something far more different and compelling from you, I just can’t believe they’ll be willing to pay more than three times the price of Schwab Intelligent Advisory for your services.
And I’m not ignoring Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services, which also employs hundreds of CFP® professionals and charges 30 basis points (thank you!), with more than $40 billion on the platform and growing. A few of you have told me that you’ve lost clients to Vanguard’s service, which is also likely going to happen with Schwab Intelligent Advisory, but the difference with Vanguard is that they’re not also soliciting your custody business while simultaneously soliciting mass affluent clients.
But the executives at Schwab surely know what they’re doing, and I think they know their target RIA client pretty well, which I suspect largely enforces client account minimums of a million dollars or more, so Schwab Intelligent Advisory really isn’t a competitive threat, because it’s not intended for the high-net worth clientele targeted by the largest RIAs that generally choose to custody with Schwab.] Charles Schwab today announced plans to expand its suite of wealth management and advisory services with the launch of Schwab Intelligent Advisory, a hybrid advisory service that combines live credentialed professionals and algorithm driven technology to make financial and investment planning more accessible to consumers.
[Now one of the things not mentioned about Schwab Intelligent Advisory is account aggregation, which is the focus of my next two stories, starting with Finicity, as the company announced it secured $42 million in a new funding round led by Experian.
This is the first time I’ve mentioned Finicity in my broadcast, but I have a popular post on FPPad from March of this year when Intuit announced it was shutting down their Financial Data API and selected Finicity to offer façade APIs to developers who needed to transition off of Intuit’s aggregation.
In the wake of that change, Guide Financial, which was acquired by John Hancock in the summer of 2015, shut down back in October, but other than that I haven’t heard of other significant disruptions among other tech providers.
What remains to be seen is whether or not Finicity makes an attempt to offer aggregation services to advisers, either directly or by partnering with existing technology providers, so if you have some intel you can share with me, I’d appreciate the heads up, otherwise advisers can continue to engage aggregation providers such as Morningstar ByAllAccounts, Aqumulate, eMoney, Quovo Wealth Access, and Envestnet|Yodlee.] Finicity, a leading provider of real-time financial data aggregation and insights, has secured $42 million in new funding. Experian, a global innovator in consumer and business credit reporting, led Finicity’s Series B round, along with a venture debt facility provided by Bridge Bank and participation from existing investors.
[And speaking of Envestnet|Yodlee, my last story highlights the rollout of Envestnet|Yodlee to the Envestnet|Tamarac platform. While at the Schwab IMPACT conference in October, I had a chance to connect with Brandon Rembe to get a quick update on what this new feature means for advisors.
I’ve linked the full interview over here and in the description below, but let me just finish by saying that technology like account aggregation is still a bit of a differentiator for you, since it helps you know as much as you can about your client’s total financial picture, and not just what clients have at one custodian, such as, ohhh, Charles Schwab, which is a complete coincidence.] Envestnet | Tamarac now enables advisors to add assets and liabilities to households in Advisor View™, helping them expand their focus and deliver more holistic advice to clients.
A few parting words:
Before I sign off, you need to know that I have some big plans in the works for FPPad content in 2017. I’m not going to go into the details right now, but what you will notice is that this broadcast, the almost-weekly videos, will be taking a bit of a hiatus for a few months.
But don’t worry, I’ll still be providing my independent insight on financial technology that thousands of you count on as you navigate what I feel is an exciting, unprecedented opportunity in the business of financial advice.
Scottrade® Advisor Services now has agreements with two leading industry solutions providers to help RIAs run their day-to-day routines. Scottrade signed agreements with Morningstar, Inc. and Orion Advisor Services, LLC to offer their services at a discount.
Yahoo, already reeling from its September disclosure that 500 million user accounts had been hacked in 2014, disclosed Wednesday that a different attack in 2013 compromised more than 1 billion accounts.
We recently announced an update to Evernote’s privacy policy that we communicated poorly, and it resulted in some understandable confusion. We’ve heard your concerns, and we apologize for any angst we may have caused.
Advisors have been asking for better ways to visualize portfolio allocations, and we’re excited to announce today that we’re rolling out Asset Class coverage for all portfolios in Riskalyze!
Personal Capital, the leading digital and professional advisor based wealth management firm, today announced that IGM Financial Inc. has completed the firm’s Series E round. Additionally, Silicon Valley Bank has extended $25 million in credit to the firm.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
Despite end-to-end encryption, Qumram enables financial services firms to meet client demand for social media interaction, via WhatsApp, without compromising compliance.
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.
On today’s broadcast, Wealthbox CRM releases 5 new integrations, Orion sends portfolio information to clients via text message, Morningstar ByAllAccounts introduces a new client portal, and more.
[This week’s top story comes from Wealthbox CRM, as the company took advantage of a Cinco de Mayo theme to announce five new integrations on 5/5. The new integrations include TD Ameritrade Institutional’s Veo Open Access, Riskalyze, Orion Advisor Services, Microsoft Office 365, and Zapier. If Zapier sounds familiar, that’s because you heard about it in last week’s episode, unless you missed it, which means you should take a few minutes to watch it and get caught up.
This is great news from Wealthbox CRM, as many advisors I know were discouraged from using it in the past because it lacked integrations with many core technology solutions. With that objection out of the way, you should update your due diligence matrix to see which CRM is the best fit for your business objectives over the next few years.] Today we’re happy to announce five new Wealthbox CRM integrations with leading technology partners.
[Next up is news from Orion Advisor Services, as this week the portfolio accounting service provider announced a new app called Notifications. Once clients register their mobile number using the Orion client portal, Notifications uses text messages to provide updates like your clients’ portfolio balance, performance information, or even RMDs. Oh, and for you compliance officers watching, all of the messaging are automated, meaning there is no personal communication between the client and the advisor.
Ever since I saw the Penny App at last year’s FinCon event, I’ve been waiting for an advisor fintech provider to roll out text messaging for updates to clients, and correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure Orion is the first provider to do it.
Now one drawback I see is that clients need to learn special keywords like BAL, PERF, ADV to get information, so my challenge Brad and his team, you remember Brad, the potato chip guy from one of my vlogs, is to add in support for natural language processing so I can just ask the app, “What is my portfolio balance?” Sorry Brad!] Orion Advisor Services, LLC (“Orion”), a premier portfolio accounting service provider for financial advisors, is announcing the launch of the Notifications app, which allows advisors to communicate with clients more directly by sending portfolio updates and scheduling meetings all via a text alert platform.
[And finally, news from Morningstar wraps up this week’s broadcast as the company’s aggregation service, ByAllAccounts, released a personal financial management portal for advisors and clients.
The new portal is available as a complete solution with customized branding for your firm, or if you already use a portal or online dashboard from other providers, you can choose from a number of the ByAllAccounts portal elements to use as stand-alone tools. For this reason, pricing is going to depend based on your needs for a solution, but whatever you pay, account aggregation from ByAllAccounts is included for an unlimited number of clients and accounts.
But there are some caveats you should know: First, the aggregation data is not intended for data reconciliation, so it’s not suitable for detailed portfolio performance information. Reconciliation-ready data is part of the the traditional ByAllAccounts aggregation service.
Second, a minimum number of licenses are required to use the portal, so today, this solution targeted for the mid- to large RIAs and broker-dealers, yet I’m optimistic that over time ByAllAccounts can offer pricing and functionality that is attractive to advisors of all sizes.] Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research, today launched a new personal financial management portal in the firm’s account aggregation service, Morningstar® ByAllAccounts.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Demonstrating the intensifying race to dominate adviser technology, Pershing broadened the scope of its B2B digital advice offerings, announcing on Wednesday it was bringing startups SigFig, Vanare and Invesco’s Jemstep Advisor Pro onto its platform that also includes the still-developing robo Marstone.
Peter, Nick, and I are excited to announce that Cloak is now part of StackPath, a still-stealthy startup based in Dallas, Texas that has bold plans for online security.
Laserfiche today announced the availability of Laserfiche 10.1. The latest enterprise content management (ECM) offering builds on the features and resources of Laserfiche 10, released in January 2016, further enhancing teamwork and collaboration, refining case management capabilities and extending business analytics.
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.
Easily manage your brand while automatically archiving your website changes for compliance. Sign up for a 45 day free trial today by visiting twentyoverten.com/fppad. Oh, and be sure to watch the YouTube channel for videos from next week’s NAB Show, which are also brought to you by Twenty Over Ten.
[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.
On today’s broadcast, Shareholders Service Group is attracting the attention of independent advisors, and for good reason, Orion Advisor Services announces a new partnership in the robo-advisor arena, and, find out how you can stay one step ahead of the latest cyber attacks that have the potential to cripple your business.
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.
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
[This week’s top story comes from Shareholders Service Group, as I spent the end of last week at the company’s annual conference for advisors outside San Diego. SSG is one of those institutions that flies below the radar of most advisors, but now with over 1,400 financial advisors leveraging the resources of SSG, the company is continuing to attract attention.
From a technology standpoint, Shareholders Service Group follows an open architecture approach powered by the custody services of Pershing, and SSG wants advisors to be able to choose the best of breed solutions they want to use, without being told what to do by the institution. While at the conference, I connected with CEOs from content marketing provider Vestorly as well as CRM provider Junxure to learn about the partnerships they recently formed with SSG.
I also connected with XY Planning Network co-founders Michael Kitces and Alan Moore to get their take on important trends advisors need to monitor, which, no surprise, include a number of technology takeaways.
There’s a lot more from the Shareholders Service Group conference, including conversations with CEO Peter Mangan and President Dan Skiles]
[Next up is news from Orion Advisor Services, as the company recently announced a new partnership with online investment provider Jemstep. Jemstep originally formed back in 2008 to deliver online investment solutions to retail investors, but now the company also offers Jemstep Advisor Pro as a solution you can offer to your emerging clients. Here’s a quick summary. You can embed Jemstep Advisor Pro on your website where new clients can complete a self-directed process to open an account, just like Redhawk Wealth Advisors has done.
Clients fill out a basic profile, complete a very simple risk questionnaire, and link investment accounts using account aggregation. Jemstep then generates a simple portfolio analysis using the client’s existing holdings and compares hypothetical performance to a target allocation of a portfolio allocation that you, the advisor, created and Jempstep matches to the client’s risk tolerance. If everything looks promising to the client, they proceed to the account opening stage where they complete account forms electronically.
So where does Orion fit in to the picture? New accounts created by Jemstep are custodied with TD Ameritrade Institutional, and those account details can then be fed into Orion using Veo Open Access. Once in Orion, all kinds of performance and analytics can be performed, which is what Jemstep, as of today, May 1, 2015, doesn’t currently provide. Now do you get it?
But if you’re NOT using Orion, Jemstep delivers the online investment interface, but it lacks the portfolio performance reports found in other solutions. That’s why the partnership with Orion is important, among other reasons.] Orion Advisor Services, LLC (“Orion”), the premier portfolio accounting service provider for advisors, announced that it has partnered with Jemstep, Inc., a leading provider of robo-technology solutions to advisors, to offer a new integrated technology solution for independent financial advisors.
[I need to move on to today’s final story on cybersecurity, as the SEC released new guidance this week with three important takeaways for advisors:
You need to periodically assess your cybersecurity risks, you need to identify how you will detect and respond to attacks, and you actually need implement your written policies and procedures and provide training to your staff.
So to do that, the SEC offered the following tips and resources to … oh, I’m being told they didn’t offer tips and resources, right, so I’m going to help you with the first takeaway which is cybersecurity threat assessment.
Do you want to know what threats advisors are actually facing every day? I set up a page on FPPad to collect threat information from advisors nationwide, and rank the top threats by the number of reports received. Plus, I’m going to highlight new attack techniques as they happen, so you can do your best to stay one step ahead of ever-more-sopisticated attackers. They’ve gone way beyond misspelled emails from Nigerian princes!] The Division has identified the cybersecurity of registered investment companies (“funds”) and registered investment advisers (“advisers”) as an important issue. Both funds and advisers increasingly use technology to conduct their business activities and need to protect confidential and sensitive information related to these activities from third parties, including information concerning fund investors and advisory clients.
Personal Capital revolutionized the free online financial dashboard. In one place you can now automatically track all of your investments, including retirement accounts. It shows your asset allocation and investing costs, and does so with amazing charts and graphs. All for free. Now the dashboard is available on the Apple Watch.
Addepar Inc. is angling to manage a major chunk of a $120 trillion of assets under management on Earth, including pensions, sovereign countries, private wealth and endowments, by attacking the challenge as a data management problem first and a design and analytics problem at a close second.
