Tag Archives: Orion Advisor Services

TD Ameritrade’s open technology helps push Orion Advisor Services over the $100 billion in platform assets mark

Posted on February 4, 2013 by in Technology, Video Spotlight

Orion Advisor Services is the beneficiary of a one-two combination of innovative technology

While attending the TD Ameritrade Institutional 2013 National Conference last week, I connected with Jon Reiners, director of institutional business development for Orion Advisor Services.

In our conversation, Reiners announced that the leading portfolio service bureau recently surpassed $100 billion in total assets administered under its platform.

“Of that $100 billion in assets we have,” said Reiners, “$35 billion is collectively here with TD Ameritrade.”

Also, Reiners detailed one new feature to be released in the next few weeks called Orion Mail, where statements suitable for email are automatically generated using custom Orion report data.

For more information about Orion, visit them online at http://www.orionadvisor.com/

(click to watch on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for January 4

Posted on January 4, 2013 by in Bits & Bytes

Don’t forget, FPPad On Air returns today at 4:15pm Eastern with more live broadcasts of technology and practice management discussions. Visit my Twitter profile or Google+ page for the link to watch beginning at 4:00pm Eastern.

It’s the first Bits & Bytes update for 2013! Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Competing in a Saturated Market from AdvisorOne.com

[Mark Tibergien lays it out pretty clearly: if all financial advisers use the same words to describe what they do, how can they ever expect to stand out from the rest? So here’s a thought. Stand out because of your technology. Be as paperless as possible. Accept electronic signatures. Present from your iPad. Publish a public version of your calendar your clients can use to book meetings. Create your own screencasts. There are just a few ways you can use technology to do something that your competition isn’t.] The point is the lack of clarity in financial services business models and the profusion of practitioners plying their trade using virtually the same branding has created a saturated market.

Orion Forges New Technology Partnership With Orchestrate from PR Newswire

[You’re likely very familiar with what Orion does, but Orchestrate and their main product, ProcessComposer, is probably a mystery. However, one of the Schwab IMPACT award winners two months ago was the Foster Group, from where Orchestrate was born. If you’re a Salesforce CRM shop and need some way to enhance it with workflows, ProcessComposer is one option. Now I have to admit, I have a podcast waiting to be edited on both the Foster Group and Orchestrate, but it’ll be another week before I can edit that for publishing! So stay tuned.] In their quest to deliver their technologies to additional advisory firms, Orion and Orchestrate have embedded their technologies inside Salesforce’s AppExchange, and have now entered into agreements to leverage each other’s respective technologies.

Salesforce, powered by Orion Connect, gets phone system integration and smarter email reports

Posted on November 8, 2012 by in Portfolio Management Software, Video Spotlight

I’m still not convinced that Salesforce, out of the box, is an attractive CRM for financial advisers.

Most firms need to customize much of what comes with the standard Salesforce package; some succeed after making substantial investments, while others give up, frustrated by the seemingly endless list of things to change (see: Salesforce for financial advisers solicits bipolar reactions; AppCrown attempts to resolve disjointed CRM).

Instead of customizing Salesforce in house, many advisers are leveraging third-party utilities found in the AppExchange. One of those utilities comes from Orion Advisor Services, called Orion Connect.

For details on Orion Connect and several new functions it offers, I spoke with Orion Advisor Services president and CEO Eric Clarke in the video spotlight below.

(click to watch on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for October 12

Posted on October 12, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Whew, I’ve been on the road almost the entire week. I still have two videos to edit from FPA Experience, plus a number of blog posts that are unfinished, but I’m still making time to cultivate the best news in financial planning technology from around the web.

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Be sure to catch this month’s Morningstar Advisor column, Outsourcing Alternative Asset Aggregation and More

Total Rebalance Expert Integrates with Orion Advisor Services from PRNewswire.com

[Orion clients already had a portfolio reblanacer tool built in to the software, but it’s not nearly robust as a product like Total Rebalance Expert (TRX). TRX has a number of features that self-described “compulsive perfectionist CPA” Sheryl Rowling says can help a firm manage complex strategies and situations when it comes to rebalancing portfolios (see: Total Rebalance Expert CEO Sheryl Rowling on how rebalancing software saves advisers $325,000 per year).] Total Rebalance Expert (TRX) and Orion Advisor Services, LLC, announced today the availability of data integration between the two leading technology platforms for financial advisors. The new integration will enable advisors to automatically bring over Orion portfolio data into TRX to streamline and simplify the rebalancing process.

Informa Investment Solutions acquires Zephyr Associates from PRNewswire.com

[Zephyr has an interesting product portfolio including StyleADVISOR, a historical backtesting a risk analytics tool, and AllocationADVISOR, a forward-looking portfolio simulator. Joel Bruckenstien reviewed StyleADVISOR in August for Financial Planning (see: Software Helps Money Managers Detect Patterns)] Informa Investment Solutions (IIS), a division of Informa plc and a leading supplier of software and solutions for the investment industry, today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Zephyr Associates, Inc. (Zephyr). Zephyr will continue to operate as a business unit within IIS.

From the 2012 Gemini Orion Advisor Forum: Marty Kurtz of The Planning Center

Posted on September 26, 2012 by in Conferences, Portfolio Management Software

Last week I attended the 2012 Gemini Orion Advisor Forum to get the latest scoop on developments to the Orion Advisor Services platfom. See tweets with the #goaf12 hashtag for some of the insight.

While at the event, I sat down with several Orion clients to get their feedback on how the portfolio service bureau has helped grow their business.

Here is Marty Kurtz, founder and president of The Planning Center, speaking with me about his firm’s success with Orion.

(click to watch on YouTube)

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 27

Posted on April 27, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

Here are this week’s stories of interest:

Sometimes one is better than two from InvestmentNews.com

[I shared Orion Advisor Services’ new Orion Connect app in the Salesforce appexchange last week. Here’s an update from Davis Janowski with an interview of one adviser already taking advantage of the Salesforce-Orion integration.] Essentially, what Orion Advisor Services LLC has done is meld Salesforce’s customer relationship management application and Orion’s popular portfolio management/reporting application, using Salesforce’s programming interface.

The Top 10 Technology Trends for Financial Advisors, Pt. 2: Increasing Technological Capability from AdvisorOne.com

[In his first technology trend report, ActiFi’s Spenser Segal singles out opportunities to harness business intelligence due to the negligible cost of storing terabytes of data, access to processing power measured in petaFLOPS,  and inexpensive broadband Internet service available today. While captivating in theory, I think financial advisers should first focus their efforts on ditching Microsoft Outlook as their default CRM.] The first trend, Increasing Technological Capability, underpins all the other trends that we’ll discuss in future posts.  The concept of increasing technological capability covers a lot of territory and includes cheaper/faster storage, increasing processing power and increasing bandwidth/wireless speeds.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 20

Posted on April 20, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

My first item of note this week is an Operations and Technology Survey currently being hosted by ByAllAccounts. In return for providing your email address and survey responses, you’ll receive an executive summary of the survey results. I think it’s a worthwhile tradeoff.

Click here to take the 5-minute survey.

Now on to this week’s stories of interest:

10 Apps to Keep Your Business Organized from Mashable.com

[He’s a general interest article from tech website Mashable.com with 10 great app suggestions. Kudos to Mobile Assistant for being recommended in tip #9!] We asked a panel of successful young entrepreneurs for the mobile apps that keep them on track in their work and on the go. Here are their favorite suggestions.

Advisors Assistant® Now Offers Integration with Orion Services from i-newswire.com

[Advisors Assistant is a top-five CRM program, according to the 2011 Financial Planning Tech Survey, and is very popular with small firms with revenue under $1 million. With a new integration with Orion, Advisors Assistant users can save clicks when wishing to view portfolio information associated with a client record.] Client Marketing Systems, Inc., parent company of Advisors Assistant®, is pleased to announce a new integration with Orion Advisor Services, LLC, an online service bureau and portfolio management system.

Unlike iCloud, Google’s Rumored Cloud Storage Could Be a Privacy Nightmare from Cult of Mac

[I like this article’s balance between opportunities of Google’s long-awaited file storage service and the potential privacy pitfalls of such a service. Advisers seeking client-friendly file sharing solutions similar to Dropbox and Box will want to take note.] Google could easily amass a good deal of data on users of its expected cloud storage service.

Never mind Tamarac, Envestnet is getting RIAs on board with its own stand-alone software from RIABiz.com

[Envestnet’s purchase of Tamarac, Inc. in February for $54 million certainly boosted the company’s technological capabilities, but they continue to win advisers with its own Vantage offering.] Envestnet took its Silicon Valley- and Trivandrum, India-based technology unit and began to offer it as a standalone service called Envestnet Vantage.

Orion Advisor Services now integrates with Salesforce through Orion Connect

Posted on April 18, 2012 by in Portfolio Management Software

Advisers using Salesforce and Orion Advisor Services portfolio software now have a new option to integrate their Orion data directly into the web-based CRM.

Orion Connect is a new app now available in the Salesforce appexchange, an online marketplace for applications built specifically for the Salesforce.com platform.

Orion Connect allows advisers to maintain portfolio data, open new accounts, view performance reporting, review billing (shown above) and more.

Advisers using either the Force.com web-based platform or SalesCloud enterprise CRM can now integrate portfolio functions from Orion. Existing users can add Orion Connect for a $15 per month per user fee.

Advisers who are not yet on either Salesforce platform have two options. They can contact Orion directly and subscribe to Force.com with Orion Connect for $25 per month per user, or purchase SalesCloud and Orion Connect from Salesforce for $140 per month per user.

In addition, Orion facilitates migrations from existing CRM systems through a partnership with Redkite, a third-party Salesforce solution provider.

Overall, Salesforce continues to struggle to gain a foothold in the financial adviser vertical (see Is Salesforce the future of adviser CRM?), yet features like the appexchange make it far easier for third party providers like Orion to create their own integrations. If the number of Salesforce integrations with adviser technology vendors continues to grow, Salesforce may soon receive a more inviting reception as a viable option for adviser CRM.

FPPad Bits and Bytes for April 6

Posted on April 6, 2012 by in Bits & Bytes

At last, good content to share with you on financial planning technology from the last week! Here are this week’s stories of interest:

TD Ameritrade makes trading on iPads for RIAs available before mobile devices from RIABiz.com

[You found out Wednesday afternoon that TD Ameritrade Institutional rolled out an update to its Veo® Mobile app for iPad that includes trading, real-time client account access, and live streaming CNBC. In Brooke Southall’s article for RIABiz, he relates some clarity from Jon Patullo on why the company decided to support trading on the popular tablet.] Following the lead of Pershing LLC and Fidelity Investments but ahead of Schwab Advisor Services, TD Ameritrade Institutional is ma king it possible for advisors to place trades for mutual funds, ETFs and equities from chairlifts and hotel lobbies using iPads.

Mobile-Management from Financial Planning

[This is a decent short overview of a few apps with which advisers are finding success with clients. Included are goalgamiPro from Advisor Software (see my intervew on goalgami with ASI’s Neal Ringquist), AdvisorView from Tamarac, and mobile apps by Orion Advisor Services.] New and powerful planning tools lets advisors such as Betty Hedrick slash the time required for both nuts-and-bolts planning, as well as the once time-consuming transactional work of managing wealth.

Also note that AdvisorOne is starting a 10-part series by Actifi’s Spenser Segal on top technology trends for advisers. The first update is just an overview of what’s to come in the future, but it’s worthwhile taking note so you don’t miss subsequent updates in the future.