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.
Robinhood, the popular for commission-free stock trading app, could be raising another $350 million in venture funding, according to a Wall Street Journal article, valuing the company at $5.6 billion, more than four times its valuation barely one year ago in April 2017. The Journal reported that the funding is likely provided by DST Global, which also led Robinhood’s previous funding round of $110 million. Robinhood reportedly has over 4 million accounts enabled for free stock trading and has begun rolling out Robinhood Crypto to some users, allowing transactions in cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum.
Salesforce Launches Salesforce Essentials
Salesforce announced the launch of a simpler version of its CRM software called Salesforce Essentials, targeted to small business owners who have complained that the company’s main CRM solution is too complex and expensive for their needs. Starting at $25 per user per month, Salesforce Essentials includes Einstein Activity Capture that automatically tracks emails, calls, and meeting activity with contacts and, functionality can be expanded by apps built specifically for Salesforce Essentials on the AppExchange, but many financial advisers may find that existing tools they use, like portfolio management software, are not yet compatible with Salesforce Essentials, and require the more robust, and expensive, Salesforce CRM.
Vote for the 2018 IA25
And finally, who do you think is a key influencer in the financial services industry? It’s time to make your voice heard, as voting is now open for the 2018 IA25 list of most influential people in the industry to be published in the May edition of Investment Advisor magazine. Votes can be cast among six segments which includes Investment Advisers, Independent broker-dealers, Political and Regulatory figures, and Financial Technology, which would be perfect to recognize someone using Amazon Alexa to, oh, I don’t know, provide financial technology updates to investors and financial advisers!
To cast your vote, 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.
On today’s broadcast, Vanare announces two integrations that should raise a few eyebrows, and relationship intelligence gains momentum in the apps you might be using in your business.
Here are the codes you can use to save money on your event registration (Important! These are coupon codes, NOT affiliate links. I do not get any affiliate revenue if you register for the events):
[Now on to this week’s top story that comes from Vanare, taking advantage of the slow summer to announce a new integration with Redtail Technology. Phase one of the integration is available today, which allows Vanare users to automatically create a new client record in Redtail CRM anytime a client completes the on boarding process in Vanare.
Subsequent phases, being rolled out later this Fall, promise to support two-way data sharing between the applications to better synchronize data on client activity and status reports.
But wait! You don’t have to be a Vanare customer to automatically populate new client records in Redtail. If you remember back in episode 185, Redtail announced its integration with Zapier, allowing you to use triggers in any application supported by Zapier to fire off an action in Redtail. Then in episode 186, I mentioned Wealthbox CRM’s Zapier integration.
And if you subscribe to Zapier’s premium plan, you get support to automate actions in Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. So maybe it’s time to check the application you use for Zapier compatibility, and if they’re not supported, maybe you need to ask for it.
Now, back to Vanare, I want to also point out an announcement from a few weeks ago about Vanare’s support for Apex Clearing. This is first time I’ve heard of while-labeled robo advisor solution for advisors that supports Apex, which is the same clearing firm used by many of the larger direct-to-consumer investment services like Betterment, Wealthfront, and Robinhood.
Why is this important? Because other turnkey robo services for advisors use custody services from Folio Institutional, TD Ameritrade Institutional, and other, and when you look at their all-in custodial fees, I don’t think they are as competitive as Apex.
Now you could elect to work with Apex directly on your own proprietary investment solution, but that takes time, expertise, development, and other resources that you probably don’t have, so that’s why Vanare’s offering that sits on top of Apex is worth taking notice.] Vanare, an innovative wealth management technology platform, and Redtail Technology, a leading provider of client relationship management (CRM) solutions for financial services firms, have launched an integration that will allow Vanare users to sync client contact information directly from their Redtail CRM.
[Next up, I want to talk a little more about CRMs by talking about Salesforce, as this week the company announced an update to the Salesforce Inbox app. After last year’s acquisition of the calendar app called Tempo, Salesforce Inbox now has an enhanced calendar with one-click conference dialing, Sales Cloud data synchronization, and CRM record integration.
Still absent, though, is the contextually relevant info about clients and prospects invited to a meeting that Tempo used to provide, which could include Facebook updates or changes to the LinkedIn profile of meeting participants.
If this automated dossier concept sounds familiar, that’s because it’s similar to an app called Refresh that I told you about back in episode 159, which was subsequently acquired by LinkedIn, which is now part of Microsoft. Also, Salesforce acquired RelateIQ a while ago which powers the SalesforceIQ product with its trademarked Relationship Intelligence™ technology.
So here’s my important takeaway: There are just some things you can’t remember or keep up to date with about each and every client you have. Solutions powered by Microsoft and Salesforce and others, which arguably resemble CRM software, do a lot of the heavy lifting in the background, so you can focus on relationship development and not mundane data gathering.
Again, if you see how your business can be better with automated tools like these, you might want to mention it to your provider and be sure it’s on their road map.] Salesforce’s efforts to turn its Inbox app into a central resource for salespeople has a new trick: An integrated calendar built from its acquisition of Tempo that pulls in contact data from your Salesforce database, giving you a way to quickly find out more about the people you’re meeting with.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Hearsay Social says it is rolling out a client engagement platform that helps advisors reach clients and prospects more easily and more quickly via social media, their websites, email and text messages.
On today’s broadcast, learn about top advisor technology from the Finovate Spring 2016, two lessons you should learn from a Salesforce database outage, hear top technology tips from industry experts, and more.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Riskalyze, the company that invented the Risk Number™ and twice named as one of the world’s 10 most innovative companies in finance by Fast Company Magazine.
Advisors use Riskalyze to show prospects they’re invested wrong and prove to clients they’re invested right. See how Riskalyze creates fearless investors by visiting riskalyze.com/fppad to book a guided tour.
[This week’s top story covers the Finovate Spring 2016 event held earlier this week in San Jose, California. With over 70 demos spread across two days, here are my picks for the most promising solutions for financial advisors.
First is IBM, as the company demoed its Client Insight for Wealth Management solution, designed to deliver better insights about your clients powered by, you guessed it, IBM Analytics. The Client Insight dashboard segments your clients by their behavioral profiles, predicts the likelihood of clients experiencing a significant life event, and automatically generates a list of top actions clients should take to make progress on their financial goals.
The analytics-powered insight is great, but it’s not yet clear to me if the solution is something you can buy today or if it requires an integration with the technology providers that you use, particularly with your CRM software. One third-party example I can think of is the automated investment service from Marstone, which to me, still seems to be evolving and appears to be rolling out at a very measured pace. So, if you want to start seeing some of these cognitive-powered insights in the tools you use, I think you need to prepare to spend a little bit more on your technology to make these benefits a reality.
The second demo of note came from Envestnet, as the company highlighted Advisor Now, which is now being positioned as an online financial planning tool that can be white-labeled by financial institutions or you, the independent financial advisor.
Advisor Now’s capabilities are quite a bit different than this time last year when the solution was first announced, as Envestnet is further leveraging its technology acquisitions of Upside, Yodlee, and Finance Logix.
Next week I’m headed to the Envestnet Advisor Summit in Chicago where I plan to get more details on Advisor New, but in the meantime you can watch a recent Advisor Now demo from Finovate Europe] IBM offers you a whole new level of insight to serve your customers with the most relevant offerings that helps you drive new revenue. It enables you to segment your customers quickly and analyze their behavior to deliver cross sell/ up sell offers which helps increase loyalty, retention and customer satisfaction.
[Next up is news on Salesforce, as the company unfortunately suffered a failure in one of its critical databases this week affecting several thousand of its customers in North America. The outage of the NA14 database lasted for about a day and a half, causing many users to publicly vent their frustrations on Twitter.
Closer to home, I didn’t hear from any advisors who were affected by the downtime, which is good, but there are still two lessons I want you to take away from this incident.
First, when you use any cloud-based system, especially a CRM, be absolutely certain that you have an offline backup of the critical information you need to take care of clients. Make it part of your process now to export data like names, phone numbers, and email addresses so you can stay in touch with clients if and when your online systems have extended downtime.
And second, make plans now for what you’re going to do when your firm experiences a crisis. How will you contact clients? Will you post information on your website, or provide updates on Twitter? Whatever you do, identify your process in your disaster recovery and business continuity plan, and if it’s been a while since you tested your communication in a crisis, well, you might want to do something about that.] A Salesforce database failure has left some clients unable to access their services across the United States, prompting the firm’s chief executive to step in.
[And finally, wrapping up this week’s broadcast is news from Shareholders Service Group, as I attended their annual conference in San Diego a few weeks ago. One of the general sessions I attended was a panel discussion on technology opportunities that lie ahead for independent financial advisors, so I caught up with each of the panelists,
Greg Friedman of Private Ocean, Dave Welling of SS&C Advisory Market Group, Tim Welsh of Nexus Strategy, and Joel Bruckenstein of Technology Tools for Today, to get their main takeaways from the session and hear best advice for advisors from a technology perspective.
The full video from the event is embedded over on website along with a few additional stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast.]
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Docupace Technologies LLC, a premier digital compliance and cyber security company in the financial services industry, completed its planned repurchase of the majority interest in the company previously held by RCS Capital Corporation.
HiddenLevers now provides pre-made marketing materials that can be used with clients. These include printable brochures, embeddable videos, website and signature plugins.
Today’s episode is brought to you by RightCapital, innovative financial planning software that creates real plans for real people. RightCapital offers both cash flow and goals-based planning along with easy to use tools for retirement planning, budgeting, stress testing, Social Security optimization, Roth conversion strategies, and even pro forma tax forms, all built right in.
Subscriptions start at just $50 a month, so sign up for a free trial of RightCapital today by visiting fppad.com/RightCapital.
[Alright, my coin flip came up heads, so this week’s top story comes from Salesforce, as the world’s largest provider of CRM software officially released Salesforce Financial Services Cloud. Earlier this week, the company hosted a live broadcast with United Capital CEO Joe Duran to demo the new platform.
I used Periscope to broadcast myself watching the Salesforce broadcast and gave my real-time reactions to what I saw, so if you’re a subscriber, look for the link to that video in my email newsletter. If you’re not a subscriber, well?
So let me cut to the chase. The CRM is built on the all new Lightning product, which for you means the Lightning Experience delivers the same look and feel of a fresh, modern interface across any device you use. Lightning also simplifies the creation of new apps, because third party developers build those apps around the Lightning Design System that enforces consistency across the platform. That’s good.
But, did I see any new features in the demo that Salesforce doesn’t already have today? No. What I saw is more data, in really tiny font size, consolidated into customizable dashboards.
Look, Financial Services Cloud is the framework, the foundation, for new features, but there’s nothing that I saw out of the box that screams “oh my gosh I must have this right now!”
And on top of that, Duran said that United Capital will be releasing a their own version of Salesforce that advisors can white label. What?
So if I understand that correctly, you subscribe to Financial Services Cloud for $150 per user per month, but then you’ll need to get a white labeled version to take advantage of features United Capital built for RIAs? How much will that cost?
And then you have a number of other third party providers announcing their own extended capabilities for Financial Services Cloud, which includes Orion Advisor Services, Advisor Software, LiquidHub, Smarsh, and many more.
I have got to be missing something here because it’s just not adding up for me. Will any of this news be enough to attract conversions from advisor-focused providers like Redtail, Junxure, Wealthbox CRM?
I don’t know, you can read all about Financial Services Cloud and the third party extensions over on the website at fppad.com/182, then send me a tweet, I’m @billwinterberg, and tell me what you think.] Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world’s #1 CRM company, announced today the general availability of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud.
[Moving on, my next story comes from Betterment, as the automated investment service announced this week that it is rolling out account aggregation capabilities to users of both the retail and institutional platforms.
This means that Betterment customers can now connect their held-away investment accounts like 401(k)s and 403(b)s as well as their bank, credit card, mortgage, and personal loan accounts to the automated service and see everything in one place, all for no additional fee.
The aggregation is powered by Plaid and Quovo, which, if you follow me on Twitter, the latter is a partnership I tipped my hand about back in November. Is this the part where I brag about my predictions? That’s right, that’s not my style.
Anyway, this doesn’t outright replace other PFM services like Mint.com, YNAB, Personal Capital, or LearnVest because those services aggregate individual transactions, where Betterment aggregates only balance and holding information. Well, at least for now.
But it does mean that more and more investors are going to expect to see all their assets and liabilities in one place. If you’re not using solutions like Morningstar ByAllAccounts, eMoney, Wealth Access, Aqumulate, Quovo, or Yodlee inside of MoneyGuide Pro, well, you’re at a competitive disadvantage.
And Betterment isn’t adding aggregation out of the kindness of their heart. It’s totally an asset gathering strategy because they’re telling customers they have too much idle cash sitting in a bank account or the mutual funds held in a brokerage account have high fees.
Oh, I can only imagine what those pop ups might look like. That reminds me, click to pop up to sign up for the FPPad newsletter!
Alright, alright, that’s enough snark for one episode, so let me wrap up by saying this. You are in a technology arms race, and I want you to keep reinvesting in your business and adding the right technology, which is why I make FPPad Bits and Bytes to keep you up to speed.] Now when your clients sync their outside accounts with Betterment Institutional, you can see details about all of their investments, including fund allocations, holdings, fees, and cash.
Here are stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
To help people identify new ways to save for retirement and change problematic spending behaviors before it’s too late, Personal Capital, the leading online financial advisory firm, has issued its inaugural Spend Report.
I met with Rohit Mahna, VP Financial Services Go To Market at Salesforce.com, between sessions at T3 Enterprise 2015 to dive into the details of what he discussed during his general session presentation at the conference.
During his keynote at the conference, Mahna offered a preview of Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, scheduled to be released for advisors in Q1 2016.
Mahna said that this completely rebuilt solution is intended to be a unified platform for all of an advisor’s data, though details of the various sources of data was not revealed.
Mahna also introduced AIG CIO Jim Clabby who provided examples of real-world applications of Salesforce.com in their producer environment of more than 6,000 representatives.
On today’s broadcast, it’s survey time. Find out about this year’s winners and losers in the annual Financial Planning Magazine technology survey.
So get ready, FPPad Bits and Bytes begins now.
Ok, this week’s coverage is all about the 2015 Financial Planning Magazine technology survey, analyzed every year by tech expert Joel Bruckenstein. This year’s survey consisted of just 600 responses, of which roughly 200 were from firms that identify themselves as independent RIAs.
Now I have to admit, this sample size is a lot lower then the peak back in 2011 when the survey collected over 3200 responses, but Financial Planning Magazine changed its survey methodology to prevent ballot stuffing, and insists that the current data is still statistically significant. So, now that we have that out of the way, you can draw your own conclusions from this year’s survey results.
Technology Spending
First up: technology spending. Survey says: Over 90% of advisors spent the same or more on technology this year. But honestly, I don’t see how spending on technology guarantees your firm will be any better in the long run, it just means you spend lots of money on technology.
I care whether you’re gaining efficiency and scalability from the technology you do purchase, which leads us to the next item. CRM software.
Top CRM Software
So what’s the top CRM in use? Survey says! None.
Seriously, none?!? Yeah. Among independent RIAs, 22.9% say they don’t use a formal CRM. Oh wait, I know what CRM they use: Cranium Relationship Management, because It’s All Right Here. Ugh.
But for those of you who DO use a CRM, top survey responses include Salesforce, Junxure, and Redtail, with Wealthbox doing a respectable job closing the gap with the top three.
Top Financial Planning Software
So what about financial planning software: Survey says! MoneyGuidePro takes the top spot, with eMoney in the runner up position for the sixth straight year. Eight other providers battle it out for the remaining solutions, with Advizr being one to watch with its quality showing after just one year in the marketplace.
Top Portfolio Management Software
And moving on, the next category is portfolio management software, with the top provider being, oh that’s right, survey says! PortfolioCenter.
Morningstar, Albridge, Envestnet and Orion round out the top five, as their numbers are fairly consistent with the tech surveys over the last few years. But, I’m fairly sure Envestnet and Orion are a lot closer to one another in marketshare than this survey shows, with Envestnet probably commanding a slight lead, so remember what I said earlier about statistical significance and sample size.
Top Online Advice Solution
Alright, we’re in the home stretch now, as the top online advice solution is: Survey says: Wealth Access? Huh.
So now I’m confused, because Wealth Access provides portfolio reporting, monitoring and aggregation services, but not online advice. So that leaves a Schwab Institutional Intelligent Portfolios™ as the true top online advice solution, with nine other providers battling it out for at least some meaningful traction among advisors. I can tell there’s a lot more work to be done here.
Top Client Portal
And finally, I’m wrapping up with the top client portal, so, survey says! Broker-dealer or custodian provided. Ugh. That’s not a portal, that’s online account access! Anyone with an account has that! Seriously.
At least with eMoney, which claimed third place, clients can securely upload documents, see all their financial assets using account aggregation, and more. If all you offer is read-only account access to client, you are not leveraging the potential of a real client portal.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a little depressed after digesting this year’s tech survey. There is a lot of work left to be done.
But here’s the silver lining: this survey covers the technology that some advisors are using up until today, but it’s not indicative of the cutting-edge solutions that have the potential to grow your business in the near future.
For that, you’re going to have to watch next week’s episode on my picks for the Best Technology of 2015.
On today’s broadcast, BlackRock plans to acquire FutureAdvisor, Salesforce previews it’s Financial Services Cloud platform, and a new white paper from Kaleido will tell you how you’re going to overhaul your business model.
Today’s episode is brought to you by Laser App Software, host of the brand-new Laser App Advisor Con event coming this October in Las Vegas.
This event will be led by top advisors, offering their own case studies and best practices on adopting industry-leading technology. Space is limited, so secure your registration today by visiting fppad.com/laserapp2015.
[Well, if you haven’t heard by now, the big news this week comes from BlackRock, as the world’s largest asset manager with around $4.7 trillion under management, agreed to acquire FutureAdvisor, the online automated investment service based in San Francisco. Let’s run the numbers: FutureAdvisor reportedly manages $600 million dollars, at 50 basis points, they earn, at best, $3 million in gross revenue, BlackRock reportedly paid something like $150 million for FutureAdvisor, so they paid 50, that’s right, 50 times gross revenue for the company. Wow. If it’s true, that’s like, way beyond Facebook and Twitter valuation territory! For an automated investment service!
So let me cut to the chase for your business. In a Wall Street Journal interview, BlackRock COO Robert Goldstein said that as BlackRock looks to “grow the company, our focus is going to be on working with our partners.”
In other words, financial institutions. Does that include you, the RIA? I don’t know. But it could be just institutions that compete with you day after day for client assets. Great.
So if this doesn’t light a fire under you to enhance your technology, improve your client experience, and clearly identify that your services go WAY beyond automated investing, I don’t know what will.
Look. I believe in you, I believe in the value you add for your clients, and I trust that what you is so much better than a five-question risk survey followed by an asset allocation recommendation.
But if you just sit there on your hands and do nothing, I just don’t see how your business stands a chance over the next five years.] BlackRock, Inc. has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire FutureAdvisor, a leader in digital wealth management.
[Next up is news from Salesforce, another industry behemoth, that this week announced it will release the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud in February 2016.
Claiming it’s the company’s “first industry-specific product,” (I guess they want to forget about Salesforce for Wealth Management?), the platform will offer a much more modern interface, secure private messaging with clients, and even integrations like Advisor Software for portfolio rebalancing and Yodlee for account aggregation.
But after closer inspection, Salesforce Financial Services Cloud seems positioned mainly for broker-dealers and large enterprise RIAs like United Capital, one of the firms who offered design feedback. Just look at some of the terminology they use: Book of business? Tear sheet? That should give you a clue.
So as an independent advisor, I don’t quite yet see you using something like this directly from Salesforce, but rather it will likely be an option offered by an institutional custodian or one of the many Salesforce overlay providers like Concenter Services, Navatar, Salentica, and more.] Salesforce, the Customer Success Platform and world’s #1 CRM company, today introduced Salesforce Financial Services Cloud, transforming the client-advisor relationship for the digital age.
[And finally, if you’re not already depressed by today’s broadcast, the researchers over at Kaleido, led by co-founders Angie Herbers and Kristen Luke, have noticed a disturbing trend among advisory firms. That trend is the rapid decline of profit margins.
Great. Just what you wanted to hear. But, I produce this broadcast to give you solutions to grow your business, so along with Kaleido’s research, the company issued a white paper describing what it calls the X-Cell Process™.
In a nutshell, the four-step X-Cell Process outlined should help you overhaul your service models so you can successfully incorporate automated investment technology into your business.]
This is not a paid endorsement, I just think it’s a useful resource for you to have, and all it will cost you is your email address.] Kaleido Inc., a practice growth agency serving independent financial advisory firms, has released a white paper entitled “X-Cell: The New Frontier of Advisory Client Service,” identifying growth inhibitors and other trends affecting the independent advisory community, as well as focused, tangible solutions.
On today’s broadcast, Envestnet acquires Upside, the laptop you’re using right now could be vulnerable to attacks, and Mobile Assistant releases updates that will speed up your dictation workflow
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 just announced TRX Edge, a completely rewritten rebalancing platform optimized for the web as well as mobile devices. Sign up for a demo of TRX Edge and also download their white paper on rebalancing ROI by visiting fppad.com/trx
[First up this week is a late-breaking announcement by Envestnet that the company will acquire online investment provider Upside for an undisclosed amount. I’ve covered Upside in several broadcasts before, as their automated investment service is meant to be used by advisors, and their service powers Liftoff, launched last year by high-profile advisors Barry Ritholtz of the Big Picture and Josh Brown, The Reformed Broker. Oh, happy belated birthday, Josh!
Now this is the first online investment provider to be acquired by a larger vendor. Remember, Fidelity Institutional did not acquire Betterment Institutional, they simply announced a collaboration with the company last year (watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 17, 2014), so I expect several more acquisitions to be announced this year. You might want to keep an eye on JemStep, SigFig, and Wealth Access, but you didn’t hear that from me!
Now news of this deal broke while I was already in the studio filming this week’s broadcast, so you’ll need to visit fppad.com/154 for more details, like Envestnet’s Thursday afternoon conference call, and see how this acquisition will shake up the online automated investment landscape for advisors.] Envestnet, Inc., a leading provider of unified wealth management technology and services to financial advisors, announced today that it has acquired Upside, a technology company providing digital advice solutions to financial advisors. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
[Um, it’s accumulating, so next up is news of the SuperFish controversy affecting users of Lenovo laptop and desktop computers. For roughly four months in 2014, Lenovo shipped 16 million PCs pre-installed with a “visual search” plugin called SuperFish.
While preloaded software that serves up ads is annoying, security experts discovered a vulnerability in the way encryption certificates were handled. I’ll spare you the technical details, but this means if you’re using a Lenovo computer with SuperFish preinstalled, your web browser sessions could be vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, potentially exposing some of your confidential information.
So how do you know if you’re infected? I’ve linked to a SuperFish vulnerability test in this week’s show notes at fppad.com/154, and you will also find a link to Lenovo’s support site with instructions on how to remove SuperFish from your computer.]
Lenovo is selling computers that come preinstalled with adware that hijacks encrypted Web sessions and may make users vulnerable to HTTPS man-in-the-middle attacks that are trivial for attackers to carry out, security researchers said.
[I’m going to need a shovel soon, so let’s finish up with news from Mobile Assistant, the popular dictation service advisors use to streamline their note taking workflow. This week, Mobile Assistant released an updated iPhone app that offers an expanded notes section with search features, optional push notifications when dictation jobs are completed, and better visibility into the amount of dictation lines used in each billing cycle.
The dictation service also added Salesforce to the list of CRMs that can import completed dictations to client records, and if you’re a Redtail CRM user, you’ll now be able to sign up for a free trial of Mobile Assistant directly from Redtail without having to retype any of your personal information. So if you’re still in the habit of manually typing in notes after a client meeting, give dictation services a try and see how much your productivity can improve.] Mobile Assistant, Inc., the fastest growing mobile dictation service in the financial and insurance industries, is pleased to announce that it has launched the newest version of its iPhone App in parallel with full integration with Salesforce, the nation’s leading cloud based CRM platform.
Here are the stories that didn’t make this week’s broadcast:
Fidelity Institutional, the division of Fidelity Investments® that provides clearing, custody and investment management products to registered investment advisors (RIAs), broker-dealers, family offices, retirement recordkeepers and banks, today announced the alignment of its clearing and custody units.
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
