Integration is one of the buzziest words in the fintech space, with custodians and technology firms alike announcing their support for third-party vendors. But TD Ameritrade has been doing it since 2010 with its Veo Open Access platform, which today integrates with 119 technology companies.
TD may have been proven right with its open-architecture approach, but the technology team, led by managing director Jon Patullo, isn’t interested in boasting. Being right means increased competition, and that means continuing to evolve what TD can offer advisors.
Patullo said the end goal is to make it “easier to work with TD, then advisors can work anywhere else. [Make] it a no-brainer where that next new account gets opened.”
In that spirit, TD is hosting a summit of technology vendors this week in San Diego to update them on TD’s technology as well as generate new ideas for Open Access, back-end application programming interfaces (APIs), and the Veo One technology dashboard.
“The initial version of Veo One we launched last year represents a giant leap forward for independent RIAs, but we’re not done yet,” Patullo said. “Now, and for years to come, we’ll be adding new Veo functionality, expanding the number of integrated technologies and exploring new ways to make Veo One work harder and smarter for all our clients.”
New this year is an “account wizard” to aid advisors in digital account opening, and, inspired the Domino's pizza tracker, a new online account status tracker where advisors can get real-time updates on forms it sends to TD. The company has also continued to build out the back-end application programming interfaces (APIs) to make sure third-party vendors can build in this functionality as well. TD is also focused on building out its advanced alert functionality to help automate a greater number of advisor workflows.
Not exactly a splashy new feature set, but director of technology solutions Chris Valleley said this past year has been fine-tuning Veo One with “a lot of tweaking and enhancements” in preparation for a major adoption push in 2018. About 1,200 advisors across 500 firms are already on Veo One, but TD has so far focused on early adopters and firms already using multiple tech vendors. Now it’s focused on improving the transition process for other advisors.
“[We] don’t want to make it too crazy for advisors, or make them uncomfortable with what we are doing,” Vallely said.
To do this, Valleley said his team has worked to improve the customization abilities in Veo One. TD is also tracking usage to pre-build user profiles that teams can push without having to build from scratch for each team member.
Veo One now supports 15 third-party vendors, and a focus of the San Diego summit is a new effort to facilitate more companies looking to integrate with TD’s all-in-one advisor dashboard.
The company recognized AdvisorEngine with an Innovation Award for its deep integration with Veo technology, including iRebal and advanced alerts. TD also awarded RightCapital’s financial-planning technology for receiving the highest satisfaction score among advisors who custody assets on the Veo platform.
