Tag Archives: Surface

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 30

Posted on May 30, 2014 by in Bits & Bytes

On today’s broadcast, Microsoft introduces the Surface Pro 3 line of tablets. Will the third time be the charm to win adoption from advisors? Cybersecurity remains a hot topic in financial services. Read what one compliance attorney says are the worst security practices he’s ever seen. And, advisor matchmaking websites are popping up everywhere. Will any of them reach critical mass to successfully match prospects with the right advisor?

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:

Fly Or Die: Microsoft Surface Pro 3 from TechCrunch

[This week’s top story comes from Microsoft, as the company recently introduced its third generation of Surface Pro tablets due out by mid to late June. The entry level Surface Pro 3 comes with the Core i3 processor and 64GB of storage, starting at $799, but a fully loaded Core i7 version with 512 GB of storage will set you back almost $2,000 and it doesn’t include the detachable Type Cover, which runs an additional $129.

Microsoft is using its Surface Pro 3 to take aim at the Apple MacBook Air line of popular ultra-thin laptops. While the Surface Pro 3 is lighter than the 13” MacBook air, offers a touch display, and has a removable keyboard, the fully-loaded version runs nearly $300 more than the top of the line MacBook Air.

Still, the latest Surface runs Windows 8 natively, supports Microsoft Office, and poses fewer compatibility issues with proprietary broker-dealer or custodial software that often requires Internet Explorer.

But at 18% taller and 22% wider than the iPad Air, to me the Surface really isn’t a tablet as much as it is a touchscreen laptop with a detachable keyboard. It remains to be seen whether the Surface Pro 3 will gain adoption from advisors, or languish when compared with the more traditional Windows laptops from manufacturers like Dell, Lenovo, and others.] Forget everything you thought you knew about the Microsoft Surface tablet, as the latest generation of the Windows-powered Surface Pro is a clear step up from the Microsoft slates of yore.

surface pro 3 thumbnail

Microsoft Surface Pro 3 review: A legitimate work PC in tablet clothing from PCWorld

Through every iteration, Microsoft’s Surface Pro tablet has edged closer to becoming a true laptop replacement. Microsoft’s latest Surface Pro 3 takes several small steps in that direction—along with one giant, game-changing leap.

Experts: Financial Advisers Lax on Cybersecurity from WSJ.com

[Next up is a timely article on poor cybersecurity practices among financial advisors. In a Wall Street Journal column, Brian Hamburger, compliance attorney and chief executive of MarketCounsel, identified several dangerous issues he’s seen when visiting advisory firms.

The innocent, but dangerous, practices include things like writing down passwords on sticky notes, failing to reset passwords when an employee leaves the firm, and not encrypting laptop hard drives.

Couple that with the dramatic increase in client spoofing, where hackers break in to client email accounts to request fraudulent money transfers, and you have a recipe for some substantial financial losses as well as the loss of client trust.

Regarding passwords, my advice is to treat them like a pair of boxer shorts. Yes, boxer shorts: Keep them a mystery, don’t share them, don’t leave them lying around, and please, change them often!] When consultant Brian Hamburger visits financial advisory firms he often sees a practice as innocent as it is dangerous: Passwords posted on computers to help advisers remember them.

‘Match.com’ for advisers and clients expands to San Francisco from InvestmentNews

[And finally, there are a number of new websites that have recently launched to match consumers seeking financial advice with financial advisors. You may already be familiar with services like Paladin Registry or WiserAdvisor.com, and to a lesser extent, the advisor search features from the FPA and NAPFA.

But recently, InvestmentNews highlighted the latest entrant into the field called GuideVine. The service follows a similar theme to existing advisor matchmaking websites, but GuideVine offers embedded video introductions along with standard written biographies to help consumers get a feel of each advisor’s unique characteristics.

Now I support any and all websites that have the objective of connecting clients with advisors that are right for them, but I think advisors would be wise to invest time and energy building their own online resources, which include a blog, active social media profiles, and even a YouTube channel.

I feel it’s key to be visible in the places where your potential clients are active every day, and to me, the advisor matchmaking sites just don’t have the large audiences that are found on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube and more.] GuideVine, a technology startup that wants to connect advisers with consumers seeking financial advice, started operations on Thursday in San Francisco after a successful New York launch in March.

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

Voices: Katie Stokes, on Getting Rid of the Quarterly Report from WSJ.com (free preview)

With real-time market and investment available online to every client, the quarterly report is an obsolete mode of data delivery.

Riskalyze and United Planners Launch Partnership from Yahoo Finance

United Planners Financial Services (UP), a national RIA and independent broker-dealer partnership with more than 350 advisors nationwide, and Riskalyze, the creator of the Risk Number™, today announced a partnership to equip every UP advisor with industry-leading Client Risk Profile technology to pinpoint client risk tolerance.

 

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 30, 2014

Watch FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 30, 2014

 

FPPad Bits and Bytes for September 27

Posted on September 27, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

On this week’s broadcast, one of the top portfolio management software providers tip-toes its way into the cloud, creating investment policy statements just got a whole lot easier, how a new app can create a real-time dossier about your clients, and more. So get ready, Bits and Bytes begins now.

(Watch on YouTube)

This week’s episode of Bits and Bytes is brought to you by Mimic Technologies, providers of complete outsourced technology support, security, infrastructure and IT solutions exclusively for RIAs.

Mimic Technologies

To learn how you can keep your data safe from attackers, download a free copy of their white paper on Data Privacy and Protection by visiting fppad.com/mimic.

Advent unveils Advent Direct™ — An Innovative Cloud Platform — At AdventConnect from Advent Software

[Leading off is an update from Advent Software, which recently celebrated its 30th year in business last week at the company’s AdventConnect conference in San Francisco. The highlight of Advent Connect is the expansion of Advent Direct™, a cloud-based platform which Mike Golaszewski, Black Diamond’s head of product development, says is an abstraction layer on top of the company’s core product offerings.

While Advent Axys will remain a desktop-based solution for the foreseeable future, it will not be completely isolated from the cloud due to the online and mobile access available through Advent Direct.

And while the news of Advent Direct seems hot off the presses, it’s not entirely new, as Advent has offered an app to iPad users since April of this year for mobile access to client portfolio information.

Advent also unveiled the Advent Direct™ Community, a private online forum that’s part customer service portal and part discussion board, no doubt inspired by collaboration options found on other social networks. Yes, the Advent Users Group on LinkedIn, I’m talking about you!

But the one big unknown regarding Advent Direct is pricing. It remains to be seen how much Advent users will need to pay to route their Axys data into Black Diamond to benefit from enhanced reports.] Advent Software, Inc., a leading provider of software and services for the global investment management industry, today commenced its annual AdventConnect conference taking place September 18 – 20, 2013 at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis.

A One-Click Roadmap for Your Clients from Riskalyze

[Next up is an update from a startup that deserves to be added to your technology radar. The company is called Riskalyze, based in Sacramento, California, which offers patented Risk Number technology in an attempt to quantify client risk tolerance and align it with suitable investment portfolios. This week, Riskalyze expanded its feature set by offering a single-click option to create an Investment Policy Statement.

Whether you believe in the validity of Investment Policy Statements or not (and Stark and Stark’s Tom Giachetti comes to mind), it still doesn’t get any easier than using a single click to generate an IPS document.

So if simplifying your client risk assessment process is important to you, you should learn more about Riskalyze’s offering.] Today, we’re excited to announce that Riskalyze now makes it possible to create this roadmap for your clients with a single click.

Surface Pro 2: hands-on with Microsoft’s new tablet powerhouse and Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX: Power, With A Helping Hand, both from The Verge

[Now I bet you’ve noticed changes in the air, meaning Fall has arrived, complete with shorter days, football on the weekends, and a deluge of new product announcements. So on the heels of Apple’s new iPhone 5S and 5C announcement two weeks ago, Microsoft announced updates to its floundering line of Surface tablets to compete with the market-dominating iPad. Not to be left out, Amazon also announced a refresh of it’s low-cost Kindle tablets, with a new HDX line of Android-powered tablets starting at just $229.

But the unexpected surprise from all the hardware announcements actually came in the form of a new feature on the Kindle HDX called Mayday. Mayday is an icon on the Kindle users can touch to get free technical support anytime they need it, complete with video conferencing and screen sharing.

While its definitely a cool feature for Kindle users, Mayday actually creates a slippery slope for you as an advisor, as I think it won’t be too long before your clients start to expect a similar easy, on-demand way to access you as their trusted financial advisor.

So if you’re not yet up to speed on using video chat services like Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and more, now is the time to add these tools to your technology portfolio.]

Refresh – The Instant Dossier from Refresh

[Finally, updates to FPPad have been few and far between this month because of the amount of time I’ve been spending on phone calls and meetings. I’ve been speaking with dozens of people, and it’s unrealistic for me to think that I can keep all the details about each relationship straight in my head.

That’s why I’ve turned to a new app called Refresh, (full disclosure, they gave me a free T-shirt), but the app truly helps me keep all the details about my contacts organized in one place.

Refresh connects my contacts, calendar, and social media accounts to create a real-time dossier about the people I’m going to meet. Refresh automatically connect the dots of what my contacts are doing and sharing online so I don’t have to waste time gathering this intelligence on my own.

A beta version of the app is available for iPhone, but Android users will need to sign up to be notified when the app is released to the Google Play store.]

Watch Bits and Bytes for September 27, 2013

Watch Bits and Bytes for September 27, 2013

FPPad Bits and Bytes for May 3

Posted on May 3, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

I’m in San Diego presenting at the Shareholders Service Group 2013 conference, then headed out to Palm Springs tomorrow for FPA Retreat 2013. Grab me and introduce yourself if you’re attending either event!

Here are this weeks stories of interest:

How to secure mobile devices against “WiFi honeypots” from FPPad

[This is important, so I’m sharing it in the first spot this week. WiFi honeypots are hardware devices that fool your laptop and/or mobile device into thinking its connected to a trusted WiFi network. But its not, and unknowingly connecting to a WiFi honeypot exposes you to a man-in-the-middle attack. Read this article now to learn how you can increase your defenses against WiFi honeypots.] Most of the time, you’re likely not at risk of having data you send over WiFi intercepted by someone else. But a number of software programs and hardware devices for sale on the Internet allow users to do just that; sit on public WiFi and eavesdrop on unencrypted data being passed back and forth.

Pershing Broadens the Accessibility of NetX360 to run on Microsoft’s Surface Pro Tablet from PRNewswire

[Ok, the race to support Windows 8 is on. Pershing starts off the PR campaign by announcing its NetX360 custodial platform is now supported on Windows 8. By definition, that means NetX360 also runs on Surface Pro tablets, which run Windows 8. BUT, what I haven’t seen yet is the user interface, and I doubt there have been any major changes to the interface that correspond with the tiles UI (formerly Metro) featured so prominently in Windows 8. I’d reach out to Pershing for comment, but I’m 35,000 feet in the air as I write this.] Pershing LLC, a BNY Mellon company, today announced that the company’s industry-leading technology platform for advisors, NetX360®, now runs on Microsoft’s new Surface™ Pro tablet. The availability and compatibility of NetX360 on the Surface Pro will help advisors manage their business more effectively and efficiently while working in the office or on the road.

Building a Smarter Portfolio from Financial-Planning.com

[Joel Bruckenstein reviews Riskalyze, a web-based tool that uses questionnaires to determine a quantifiable number for a client’s risk tolerance. With the “magic” number in hand, advisers can design portfolios around the client’s appetite (or lack thereof) for risk. Sound familiar? As Bruckenstein mentioned, providers like MoneyGuidePro and FinaMetrica have similar features in their respective programs. But the fresh graphics and appealing user interface give Riskalyze a leg up on the usability factor, so this is one worth watching as they mature.] I recently tried a new cloud-based product called Riskalyze Pro that provides advisors with both risk-assessment and portfolio-construction tools. The tool was developed by Riskalyze Advisors, a new company whose proprietary platform provides risk assessment, portfolio construction, analytics and investment discovery.

eMoney And Zumbox Announce Strategic Partnership To Offer Digital Postal Mail To Clients from PRNewswire

[Here’s an interesting combination. Zumbox is an alternative to paper mail you get every day. Instead, Zumbox scans all your paper mail and delivers it to you through a secure portal. That worked well five years ago when everything came in the mail. I don’t know about you, but today, I get virtually everything electronically, including bank statements, credit card statements, brokerage account trade confirms. Even my tax return this year was 100% electronic. So why eMoney chooses to partner with Zumbox for electronic document delivery over more prevalent providers (say, ShareFile, Box, etc.)? I’m going to connect with eMoney soon, so I’ll report back what I learn.] eMoney Advisor (“eMoney”), the only wealth-planning system for financial advisors that offers transparency, security, mobile access and superior organization for everything that impacts their clients’ financial lives, has announced a strategic partnership with Zumbox to offer Digital Postal Mail to clients whose advisors use the eMoney platform.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for December 14

Posted on December 14, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Matt Abar, CEO of FinFolio

Watch today’s FPPad On Air broadcast at 4:15pm ET, as my guest will be Matt Abar, CEO of FinFolio.

Visit my Twitter profile page around 4:00pm ET for the broadcast link.

 

Now on to this week’s stories of interest:

Greg Friedman is set to finally bring Junxure to the cloud and beat back the Salesforce-ification of the industry from RIABiz.com

[Over 10+ years, Junxure desktop has attracted 10,000 users across 1,500 firms. It’s a great accomplishment for a niche CRM provider, but the momentum and innovation in cloud services, including cloud CRM, is challenging Junxure’s raison d’être. Will they be able to successfully pull off a transition of some or all of their users to the cloud?] As Greg Friedman takes Junxure to the cloud, he’s taking the gloves off with Salesforce — bolstered by new technology and a sense that the CRM giant is leaving much on the table in functionality and quality of service.

Surface to Air: Is Surface Going to be a Player in Financial Services? from WealthManagement.com

[Microsoft’s surface has a huge gap to close if it wants to be a contending tablet. Apple’s iPad has sold over 100 million units worldwide, and Microsoft chooses not to disclose early numbers of its Surface RT. Will the introduction of the $900 Surface Pro change anything? I doubt it.] Along with Windows 8 tablets for sale this year is Surface, a Windows 8 tablet that is meant to bully the iPad into submission. The likelihood of that in the near future? Slim, says financial services experts.

Total Rebalance Expert Integrates With Morningstar Office(SM) from MarketWatch

[Isn’t Morningstar Office supposed to be rebuilding their internal rebalancer? I’ll need to check with them once again, but for now, advisers using TRX’s rebalancer (see: Total Rebalance Expert CEO Sheryl Rowling on how rebalancing software saves advisers $325,000 per year) don’t have to wait for Morningstar anymore in the wake of this latest integration.] Total Rebalance Expert (TRX) today announced a data integration agreement with Morningstar, Inc., a leading provider of independent investment research. Now, advisors can automatically import their portfolio data from Morningstar Office(SM), a global practice and portfolio management platform for independent financial advisors, into TRX’s software platform to streamline and simplify the rebalancing process.

Half-financed by RIAs, AssetBook rolls out ‘Radar’ to put big RIAs in its range from RIABiz.com

 [You’re likely aware you have alternatives in portfolio management software to the heavyweight products from Advent, Schwab, and Albridge. AssetBook, born from descendants of dbCAMS, is a very good and low-cost solution with many of the same features offered by those mentioned earlier. It’s also a service bureau, meaning you don’t need to spend each morning reconciling transactions and new positions that come in your overnight data feeds. So for less than $30/account/year, AssetBook is one to consider for advisers looking to move to the cloud and to benefit from the experience and service of a portfolio services bureau.] AssetBook Inc. has long been a niche choice for smaller RIAs looking for an affordable platform. But, with a new portfolio-reporting platform full of bells and whistles expected to roll out in the first quarter of 2013, the McHenry, Md.-based software company is luring larger firms away from more established competitors.

TD Ameritrade Institutional Earns Top Marks for Advisor Satisfaction in Financial Planning Magazine’s 2012 Tech Survey from MarketWatch

[Let’s cut to the chase: TDAI’s Veo® Open Access now has over 60 vendor integrations, received the most “very satisfied” ratings in this year’s Financial Planning Tech Survey, and services thousands of TDAI’s 4,500 RIAs. If you had to start over today and choose a new custodian, who would you choose?] TD Ameritrade Institutional’s Veo(R) open access initiative, an industry wide-effort to deliver quality technology integrations to advisors, has helped the custodian secure top scores for advisor satisfaction in this year’s Financial Planning Tech Survey.