CircleBlack, an online account aggregator and wealth management platform, expanded its mobile offering Tuesday with a new app for Android devices.
CircleBlack pulls together all of a client’s accounts and investments to display a complete view of their assets in one location. The app provides performance reporting on both assets under management and assets held away, and market share information to help advisors manage relationships with clients.
The new Android offering means advisors and clients using the most popular smartphone platform (at 53.1 percent market share, according to comSCORE) in the U.S. can access this information on the go. Advisors can also use the app to push notifications to clients with updates on their portfolio to increase engagement.
A new study from Hartford Funds found that consumers who work with a financial advisor are looking for more personalized engagement. Twice as many investors said they valued the relationship with their advisor as being most important as those who valued an advisor’s performance.
“We live in a time when information is at consumers’ fingertips and it is the job of the advisor to quiet the noise,” said John Diehl, the senior vice president of strategic markets at Hartford Funds. “Advisors should not only be expected to deliver on quantitative performance, but also take a human-centric approach to advice by offering holistic financial counsel based on clients’ individual goals and needs.”
John Michel, the CEO of CircleBlack, said this product is exactly what advisors need to stay above the day-to-day market noise. The recent update to Google's search algorithm, which penalizes websites for not being optimized for mobile, also reinforced the importance of businesses providing access across all devices.
“It’s more important than ever for clients and their advisors to remain connected through mobile enabled technology,” Michel said. “We believe that today’s financial advisors and their firms need to take advantage of the latest technology available to them to remain relevant and competitive, and, we’re helping them do just that.”
The product is currently available for advisors and their clients, and CircleBlack is working on a direct-to-consumer version as well.
