Tag Archives: Project ASTRO

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

Here are the links to the top stories:

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

Your Path to Home Ownership from Wealthfront

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

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

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

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

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

Wealthfront Introduces Home Buying Illustrations to Path

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

Orion Advisor Services Announces Project ASTRO for Direct Indexing

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

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

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

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

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