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Company: CAIS
Category: Hedge Funds/Private Equity
Initiative: Increased access to Private Equity and Hedge Funds through Fidelity and Mercer
As the hedge fund and private equity investment space grows, so does demand from wealth management firms for cost-effective access to these investment solutions. In response, financial products platform provider CIAS strengthened relationships with strategic partners Fidelity Institutional and Mercer to expand its menu of alternative investment options and resources for financial advisors.
Fidelity Institutional recently expanded its CIAS alternative investment portal, which offers research, educational materials and third-party due diligence related to alternative investment products. That expansion enabled CAIS to offer a growing selection of PE funds and related resources.
CAIS also expanded its partnership with investment consulting firm Mercer to add institutional private equity funds to the CAIS platform. Wealth management firms that custody with Fidelity Institutional can now use CAIS to access 500 managers representing 1,200 strategies, as well as Mercer’s Private Equity Fund of Funds.
Company: Summit Brokerage
Category: Broker/Dealers (Fewer than 1000 Advisors)—Transition Support
Initiative: eLaunch
Advisors transitioning to a new firm face stacks of paperwork for licensing, registration and insurance requirements. Summit Brokerage streamlined this process by creating eLaunch, an electronic system for onboarding advisors.
With eLaunch, new Summit advisors can complete their licensing and registration packets and fulfill insurance and compliance requirements in one sitting. They can also enter tax information and enroll in direct deposit for their weekly commissions. Once advisors are registered, the system helps them efficiently transfer their client account information electronically.
The program has shortened the time needed to license and register new advisors and dramatically reduced their paperwork load. The number of signatures required of new advisors dropped from 31 to 5, while compliance disclosure documents needing to be signed decreased from 12 to 1.
Company: Millennium Trust Company
Category: Custodians (Emerging — Less Than $25 Billion) — Technology
Initiative: MAIN
Investing in alternatives has historically been a cumbersome, paper-centric process. To tackle the inefficiencies of that process, Millennium Trust Company in 2016 introduced a technology-based solution called Millennium Alternative Investment Network, or MAIN.
MTC developed MAIN to provide an efficient, end-to-end solution for advisors and individuals looking to hold alternatives in their IRAs or taxable custody accounts. The tool offers investors access to a growing mix of alternative assets, from private equity and hedge fund investments to crowdfunding and multi-strategy investments.
Meanwhile, MAIN offers investors as a centralized location with educational information about those investments, and modernizes the investment process by allowing investors to open and fund accounts entirely online. MAIN also provides timely and transparent reporting, and simple collection of management fees, helping to make the investment process more simple and efficient for advisors and clients alike.
Company: Betterment for Business
Category:: 401(k) Retirement Plan Support Services
Initiative: Betterment for Business
Providers typically offer advice for 401(k) plan participants as an add-on service on top of the 401(k) platform and the plan itself. Betterment for Business recently launched its newest business line, Betterment for Business (B4B). This platform handles the 401(k) process from start to finish, placing personalized advice at the center of the experience.
More than 100 plan sponsors have adopted the platform in the three months since launch, with adopters ranging from small businesses to companies with hundreds of employees. Handling the 401(k) process from start to finish makes B4B efficient, enabling the company to charge the smallest plans only 60 basis points.
Company: Fidelity Investments
Category: Family Offices – Thought Leadership
Initiative: Family Office Executive Compensation Research
Reliable compensation data for family office executives is hard to come by. Even when data is available, doubts about the depth, quality, and comparability often leave family offices wary of acting on it. Providing compensation that is appropriate for the level of responsibility, and competitive from both an industry and geography perspective, is key to recruiting and retaining family office executives. In November 2015, Fidelity announced the results of the first ever Fidelity Single Family Office Executive Compensation Survey as well as a white paper on the topic “Insights on Family Office Compensation." The survey was designed specifically to address the questions family offices have about compensation and the white paper was created to help family offices across a range of sizes assess their compensation practices against a well-defined peer group. This is the only research on single family offices focused solely on executive compensation.
Category: Custodians ($25 Billion or More) – Thought Leadership
Initiative: Fidelity Helps Build an Army of eAdvisors
Advisors who embrace technology are excelling in quantifiable ways, according to new research by Fidelity. In its 2015 white paper eAdvisors Take the Lead, Fidelity found that frequent tech users, whom it dubbed “eAdvisors,” hold an estimated 40 percent more AUM than their less-tech-savvy colleagues – but they remain a minority in the industry.
To help “tech indifferent” advisors take advantage of this opportunity, Fidelity executives shared the research on a variety of stages. The Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions technology consulting team engaged nearly 550 advisors in 2015, with materials outlining “What eAdvisors Do Right.” Many advisors who adopted the eAdvisor techniques have reported subsequent business growth.
Others in the industry have taken notice, with sources as diverse as Financial Planning and the annual T3 conference adopting the term “eAdvisor.”
Company: Salesforce
Category: Technology Providers - CRM
Initiative: Transforming the Client-Advisor Relationship for the Digital Age with Salesforce Financial Services Cloud
Salesforce created the Salesforce Financial Services Cloud to meet investors’ demands to collaborate digitally with their financial advisors. The service offers the Wealth Homepage, a dashboard that displays a snapshot of an advisor’s entire book of business. This feature enables advisors to automate administrative tasks and to quickly scan their agendas, prioritize tasks and track opportunities. Financial Services Cloud also uses push notifications to deliver actionable insights, pulling from workflows and third-party sources.
The mobile and social capabilities built into the Salesforce platform enable advisors to access the Financial Services Cloud on any device and collaborate with advisory teams anywhere in real time. Features such as Client Profiles and Client Households give advisors a full picture of the customer’s household and extended network. Client Life Goals allow advisors to create collaborative financial plans for the client based on personal goals, such as budgeting for college or buying a vacation home.
More than 20 partners have joined Salesforce’s growing ecosystem, applying Financial Services Cloud to portfolio management, prospecting, data management and more.
The 2016 WealthManagement.com Industry Awards recognize outstanding achievement, innovation and support among vendors and suppliers serving the financial advisor industry. In its second year, the awards were distributed to 51 firms in the wealth management and asset management space, out of 300 companies that applied and 400 nominations. Among the winners were Envestnet, which won four awards, and Pershing, which won three. Fidelity, eMoney Advisor, First Rate and TD Ameritrade were also multiple award winners, with two apiece. The winners, detailed in the slideshow that follows, were announced at a black-tie gala event on September 29, 2016 at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in New York City.
Company: Vestmark
Category: Technology Providers – Innovation
Initiative: Vestmark Manager Marketplace
Advisors who use third-party managers need an efficient way to establish and monitor those relationships. The new Vestmark Manager Marketplace (VMM) streamlines communication between advisors and third-party managers in charge of model portfolios or separately managed accounts.
VMM is a custodian-agnostic service that accelerates the distribution of model portfolios, investment strategies and separate account management. Advisors sign a single contract and obtain access to an array of asset managers and investment strategists. VMM handles operational due diligence, manager negotiation and contracting, as well as fee calculation and payment.
VMM currently serves multiple advisors with a rapidly growing roster of more than 40 asset managers and investment strategists.
Company: Cole Capital
Category: Asset Managers – Real Estate (Including REITs)
Initiative: Advisor Educational Resources: FINRA 15-02
With FINRA Regulatory Notice 15-02 having gone into full effect in April, advisors need to understand how this rule change marks a shift for their clients who invest in non-listed REITs and direct participation programs.
As part of its commitment to supporting the educational needs of the financial advisor community, Cole Capital launched a suite of reference materials that shed light on this new regulation. Housed for easy reference on a single web page, the materials include a high-level reference guide, a video with insights from Cole Capital executive, and a detailed presentation on how the rule affects customer account statements. The web page also offers links to external resources from the IPA and FINRA, including a hypothetical customer account statement and a downloadable document of the full regulatory notice. In addition, Cole Capital employees received comprehensive training on the regulatory changes so they can ably assist financial advisors.
With this effort, Cole Capital has positioned itself as a go-to resource for financial professionals on this change in the industry.
Company: NEXT Financial Group
Category: Broker/Dealers (Fewer Than 1,000 Advisors) – Service
Initiative: Advisor Training and Coaching Program – ELITE (Essential Lessons for Investment Training Excellence)
Startup costs and other barriers to entry are high for new independent advisors. That’s why NEXT Financial Group created its ELITE (Essential Lessons for Investment Training Excellence) online training and coaching program two years ago. In 2016, NEXT enhanced ELITE by adding more resources and training, as well as an interactive networking initiative.
ELITE’s digital training program includes online videos, worksheets and exercises that help participants develop marketing and business plans, acquire clients and set goals. New features include metrics to help measure growth and identify strengths and weaknesses.
To supplement these digital tools, ELITE recently introduced a networking system that allows participants and sponsoring advisors to engage with others in the program on business-building practices. ELITE also provides one-on-one guidance through quarterly coaching calls between participants and an experienced advisor.
Company: Charles Schwab Investment Management
Category: Asset Managers - Corporate Social Responsibility/Diversity
Initiative: CSIM's Women's Advancement Initiatives
Charles Schwab Investment Management (CSIM) is working to shape the community, tools and conversation around women’s advancement. The firm’s initiatives are intended to ensure that women enter the financial field in greater numbers and advance to senior leadership positions at the same rate as men. Under the leadership of CEO Marie Chandoha, CSIM is one of a few firms with a female CEO and a workforce of nearly 50% women.
The company implemented a multifaceted program that targets women within CSIM and teaches them skills to advance their careers. In 2014 CSIM established the Women’s Network, which helps female employees demonstrate leadership capabilities. In the past year the Women’s Network has put on a number of events to advance progress toward this goal, including a panel of female ETF industry leaders for addressing 150 attendees about how to avoid a mid-career plateau; workshops with Ayana Ledford of Carnegie Mellon’s PROGRESS; and a series of sessions with Lori Mackenzie of Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research.
Company: J.P. Morgan Funds
Category: Asset Manager - Social Media Leadership
Initiative: Dare to Compare
JPMF partnered with LinkedIN to develop a new social media strategy. The strategy was designed to capture the attention of financial advisors, and to provide an informative new lens by which they can examine their businesses.
At the center of the strategy is a web-based tool powered by a custom application program interface. The tool shows FAs how their practices compare to those of their peers, and provides them with personalized insights. The compelling nature of the tool led advisors to spend twice as long on the site as they do in a typical user session.
This integrated effort ensured increased engagement and reached 49% of all U.S.-based FAs. The number of advisors in JPMF’s target audience who follow the company’s new showcase page grew ten-fold.
Company: Transamerica
Category: Insurance Service
Initiative: Financial Planning in the Shadow of Dementia
Statistics show that dementia cases are on the rise. Because declining financial skills are among the first symptoms of those afflicted, Transamerica created a program to improve advisors’ understanding of dementia and provide guidance on using insurance products to help clients affected by the disease.
Titled Financial Planning in the Shadow of Dementia, the program included a symposium and training sessions developed in partnership with Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT AgeLab. Guide books written for the program have since been distributed to more than 50,000 advisors.
The program received attention outside the financial services industry, sparking collaborations with the Alzheimer’s Association and earning the company an invitation to the White House Conference on Aging, as well as meetings with the staff of several U.S. Senators to discuss caregiving and dementia. The program also earned Transamerica roughly $30 million in new business.
Company: Hearsay Social
Category: Technology Providers – Social Media
Initiative: Hearsay Social: Empowering Advisors in the Digital Age
Hearsay Social offers advisors a specialized suite of tools to take the guesswork out of advisors’ social media efforts.
The firm’s tools combines predictive analytics with traditional social media networking tools to help advisors deliver targeted content to customers and prospects through a range of channels. Hearsay Social’s suite of tools also help manage the challenging compliance issues that so many advisors encounter when using social media. Advisors also can manage a range of social media activities—from posts to direct messages—through Hearsay Social’s proprietary dashboard.
More than 130,000 advisors use the Hearsay Social suite of tools, and clients have reported strong results: The firm says a Fortune 500 financial services organization attributes a 22% rise in sales to its use of Hearsay Social.
Company: Wedbush Securities
Category: Broker/Dealers less than 1,000—Social Media Leadership
Initiative: Wedbush Social Media Engagement Campaign
Social media offers an opportunity for financial advisors to expand their reach and build brand recognition. But in a highly regulated industry, advisors often don’t have to produce compliant, brand-consistent content while working with clients and running their practices.
Wedbush Securities partnered with a social media consultant on a solution: A firm-wide social media initiative that provides a stream of unique, curated and compliant content to share with their social networks. Items to share include insights about the financial world for clients, as well as information about the Wedbush brand.
One-third of Wedbush’s advisors are currently using the program, and those users have seen a rise in social media engagement. For example, LinkedIn posts have achieved engagement rates between 0.65% and 0.75%—significantly higher than the industry standard of 0.05%.
Company: Wealth Access
Category: Wealth Reporting/Personal Financial Managers
Initiative: PFM For Advisors
The Wealth Access personal financial manager tool, PFM for Advisors, enables clients to quickly and easily view their entire financial life, from tracking household cash flow to monitoring account balances.
By delivering a comprehensive picture of a client’s finances, the Wealth Access PFM tool allows advisors to more effectively scale their operations by putting key financial information at clients’ fingertips. What’s more, that data can spur increased dialog between clients and advisors, helping to push the planning process forward.
In the last year, Wealth Access’ PFM for Advisors tool has experienced a 200% jump in end-user logins, and has expanded its reach to more than 20,000 different financial institutions through multi-tiered data sources.
Company: Riskalyze
Category: Technology Providers - Risk Tolerance/Client Profiling
Initiative: Riskalyze
Riskalyze’s tools let advisors harness clients’ natural risk aversion to help keep them from making some of the most common behavioral investing mistakes.
The firm’s Risk Alignment Platform, which helps advisors show clients whether their investments are appropriate for their risk tolerance. The platform is driven by Riskalyze’s Risk Number, which helps quantify how much risk a client can tolerate, how much risk they need to take to reach their goals and how much risk they already have in their portfolio.
In the past year, assets managed on the Riskalyze platform have grown from $55 billion to more than $139 billion.
Company: 361 Capital
Category: Asset Managers - Alternatives
Initiative: The New Core Allocation: Long/Short Equity
The market uncertainty in late 2015 and early 2016 reminded advisors and their clients of the need for risk management tools and diversifiers that could help their portfolios weather volatile periods in the financial markets. 361 Capital developed a white paper, “The New Core Allocation: Long/Short Equity,” to address this need by helping guide advisors in the implementation of alternatives.
The paper recommends that long/short equity be considered as a core allocation, not a satellite allocation. It also addresses how to evaluate long/short equity managers, which is vital given the wide performance dispersion in the category. Additionally, the paper reminds advisors of the important contribution compounding provides to portfolios over a prolonged period of low real returns.
361 Capital also developed the “Enhanced Core Portfolio with Long/Short Equity” infographic. The infographic visually conveys a recommendation to take from both bonds and stocks when allocating to long/short equity.
Company: SS&C | Advent
Category: Technology Providers- Account Aggregation
Initiative: Black Diamond True Client-Ready Aggregation
SS&C Advent invested in the Black Diamond platform, including technology, partnerships and services staff, to create the highest quality aggregated and reconciled data in the industry. True Client-Ready aggregation from the advisor side, institutional side (through Advent Custodial Data, direct custodial integrations, ByAllAccounts, Quovo, alternative assets and others) in an easy-to-understand format for advisors and their clients. New net worth recording, including liabilities, help advisors become the most trusted source of their client’s complete wealth picture. Data is reconciled down to the asset level, and data-mining functionality lets advisors slice and dice rich data sets to review, export or save for presentations and audits.
Company: Envestnet
Category: 401(k) Services
Initiative: Envestnet Retirement Services (ERS)
ERS, majority-owned subsidiary of Envestnet, launched the ERS Fund Strategist Network in July 2015. A roster of institutional-grade and boutique strategic and dynamic fund strategists, the platform provides retirement plan advisors with access to high-quality unitized fund strategist portfolios which are monitored by ERS and enables ERS to provide independent, unbiased fiduciary oversight and support to retirement plan sponsors, broker-dealers and advisors. In addition, ERS serves as the 3(38) investment manager on behalf of 401(k) plan sponsors for fund strategist portfolios available through the Network.
Category: Asset Managers - Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) / Impact Investing
Initiative: Envestnet's Impact Investing Platform
Socially responsible investing (SRI) in the United States has grown by a factor of 10 since 1995, and as of 2014 totaled more than $6 trillion in assets. Envestnet created the Impact Investing platform to provide SRI solutions through portfolios that are comprehensive, diversified and designed for investors with environmental, social, and governance priorities and preferences.
The platform consists of seven risk-based portfolios constructed by impact managers who consistently beat their benchmarks on a risk-adjusted basis, while fulfilling environmental, social, and governance objectives. The portfolios spread risk over multiple, diverse types and classes of managers, including mutual funds, ETFs, index-based mutual funds, and separate account solutions.
Category: TAMPs
Initiative: Envestnet’s Platform
As access to holistic data and mission-critical applications becomes increasingly important to serving clients, Envestnet’s cloud based wealth management platform has emerged as a standout technology provider for advisors.
Envestnet is the largest turnkey asset management platform and the fastest-growing TAMP over the past three years, according to Cerulli Associates. It provides access to 16,000 investment products and strategies that can help advisors achieve better investment outcomes for clients. The platform enables advisors to focus on serving clients, while spending less time on the non-core aspects of their practice.
As of December 31, 2015, Envestnet’s platform serviced more than 47,000 advisors managing nearly 3.4 million accounts and $851 billion in assets. Envestnet’s advisor base is now nearly as large as all wirehouse firms combined.
Company: First Rate, Inc.
Category: Technology Providers - Compliance
Initiative: ExecView - Managing Oversight of Client Outcomes Firm-Wide
A large independent broker dealer approached First Rate. It needed to know whether a representative who managed portfolios with investment objectives similar to firm-wide investment objectives had produced outcomes similar to those of centrally managed portfolios and to portfolios managed by other reps.
First Rate created ExecView for these kinds of situations. It helps wealth management firms identify client portfolios throughout the firm that are outliers from a performance, risk or asset/classification concentration perspective, and it can group the results by composite, rep, strategy, objective or other attributes. Unlike other solutions, which focus on current holdings, ExecView identifies outliers based on client outcomes as actually experienced.
ExecView was rolled out in late 2015 and has been adopted by six firms, with more than a dozen looking to adopt it by the end of 2016. Compliance and investment strategy team feedback shows that the product cuts to seconds the time-consuming process of collecting data from various systems in spreadsheets or other databases.
Category: Technology Providers - Corporate Social Responsibility-Diversity
Initiative: First Rate Living - Making an Impact with Corporate Values
First Rate began in 1991 with a vision for a new model of success that included an emphasis on serving the community. The firm has since developed its core corporate values into a lifestyle called First Rate Living, which includes programs on community impact, family, spiritual growth and healthy living.
Programs include:
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First Rate Living Weekend, to promote the importance of family and relationships with fellow employees outside of the office
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the development of offices in India and Afghanistan to expand the business and its values in other parts of the world
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YWAM/Homes of Hope, building homes for impoverished communities in Mexico, Dominican Republic and Costa Rica
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The First Rate Living Luncheon, which recognizes partnerships with local community-serving organizations.
Additionally, 10 percent of gross revenue is given away each year in the form of company, employee and client contributions.
Company: John Hancock Investments
Category: Asset Managers - ETFs
Initiative: ETF Research and Education Portal
John Hancock Investments harnesses a wide range of insight and analysis from its network of asset managers and investment partners. On the ETF research portal, advisors can explore the latest thinking on issues most relevant to their clients and prospects, including white papers, videos and data. Topics include how to blend passive and active strategies, incorporating ETFs into portfolios and understanding strategic beta and multi-factor investing, all in a clean, mobile-responsive user interface.
Company: State Street Global Advisors
Category: Asset Manager—Thought Leadership Education
Initiative: Addressing the Value Equation
The widespread availability of free or low-cost digital sources of financial information is leading some investors to question the fees charged by financial advisors. To help advisors clearly communicate the value of their services, State Street Global Advisors created its Price of Financial Advice Program
SSGA’s research into how advisors and investors feel about fees and services revealed potential communication gaps. For example, while 53% of advisors believed their clients completely understood their fees and commissions, only 33% of investors agreed. Based on analysis of this data, SSGA crated blog posts, presentations and workshops to deliver best practices and recommendations for having effective conversations about fees with clients.
These thought-leadership blog posts and other pieces of content have had nearly 15,000 views, and two direct marketing campaigns for the program achieved above-average engagement rates.
Company: Orion Advisor Services
Category: Technology Providers – Portfolio Management, Accounting and Performance Reports
Initiative: Orion Business Intelligence Trends Application
Advisors trying to assess the health of their practices need to know where they stand relative to others in the field. Orion’s Business Intelligence Trends application (Trends) provides the benchmarking data and analytic tools to conduct this analysis.
With Trends, advisors can compare themselves in absolute and relative terms against other Orion advisors based on assets under management, new accounts, total number of clients, demographics, performance, fees and other factors. Firms can see if they are in the top 25%, middle 50% or bottom 25% of advisors using Orion.
Since its launch in March 2016, Trends has logged more than 1,400 users, who have analyzed $200 billion in managed accounts.
Company: Pershing
Category: Asset Managers – Separate Accounts
Initiative: Lockwood - Managed360
With the advent of trends such as technology-driven automation and fiduciary and fee-only arrangements between advisors and clients, mass affluent investors are increasingly interested in managed account offerings. Pershing, LLC and Lockwood Advisors. have responded to this shift by launching Managed360, a scalable managed account solution.
The platform offers an intuitive, seamless managed accounts experience for firms seeking a turnkey solution for advisors and clients. Advisors can offer solutions they believe are best suited to investors’ needs, generating product proposals in minutes. Managed360 offers an abundance of resources, including separately managed accounts with more than 500 different strategies, flexible mutual fund/ETF wraps and a stable of model portfolios from select third-party providers.
With this new offering, advisors can perform core functions and access key information without having to toggle between technology platforms, thereby streamlining their operations and gaining a unique competitive advantage.
Category: Custodians ($25 Billion or More) – Technology
Initiative: Pershing’s Retirement Plan Network
The growing retirement market demonstrates the need for an integrated, comprehensive retirement plan technology solution for broker-dealers, RIAs and advisors. With the Retirement Plan Network, Pershing has developed a platform to streamline the sales, servicing and custody of retirement plan business.
The Retirement Plan Network is integrated with NetX360, a mobile-friendly technology that provides a single access point for both individual and retirement plan business. This technology includes investment consulting tools, with access to more than 23,000 mutual funds and 1,600 ETFs; access to Retirement Model Manager, which offers proprietary and third-party-managed investment models; provider search and benchmarking materials; and participant education and fiduciary support resources.
In its first year, more than 2,300 retirement-focused advisors have accessed the Retirement Plan Network.
Category: Custodians ($25 Billion or More) -- Transition Support
Initiative: Integrating Three Custody Platforms for a Unified Experience
When a custodian exited the marketplace, HighTower needed a solution for brokerage and bank custody assets. Through its existing advisory custodian relationship with the wealth management firm, Pershing was able to create a specialized delivery model for HighTower.
Pershing’s model unifies three traditionally independent platforms: advisory, brokerage and bank custody. Now, one technology service allows assets to be moved among platforms, streamlining the experience for advisors and investors, who can access information from three seemingly different worlds.
Rather than relying on multiple custodians, Pershing’s solution aims to be a more efficient approach for investors and a cost-savings strategy for advisors. So far, approximately 4,000 investor accounts are linked to the solution.
Company: T. Rowe Price
Category: Asset Manager – Thought Leadership – Product
Initiative: MarketScene App for Financial Advisors
Financial advisors are inundated daily with investment information and market commentary, and it can be challenging to distill all that content into actionable investment decisions. To help advisors cut through the noise, T. Rowe Price launched its MarketScene® app for U.S.-based financial advisors.
MarketScene® aggregates widely available information and data into one powerful resource, helping advisors strengthen their research, inform their decisions and enhance client discussions. The app’s user-friendly design provides high-level summaries and bulleted content for quick consumption of market data. At the same time, users have the option to dive deeper into research and product information as desired.
Advisors and industry thought leaders responded positively to the app. In just nine months, it attracted nearly 13,650 downloads, with more than 205,000 articles read.
Company: Live Oak Bank
Category: Investment Banks/Lenders/Succession Planning Consultants
Initiative: Advisor to Owner: Enabling internal succession
Many advisors want to sell their business to internal successors, but find that junior partners lack the funds necessary to buy into the business. Advisor to Owner, Live Oak Bank’s new staged succession program, makes an internal succession plan more feasible.
The program combines financing with succession planning coaching. Junior partners can receive a series of conventional bank loans to finance the purchase of successive tranches of the business, combined with an SBA-backed buyout loan that rolls up the smaller loans at a better rate. In addition, senior partners can receive guidance on selling their business through Live Oak’s succession planning workshops.
This financing option can help advisors develop a succession plan they believe is best for their clients, their business and their staff—without undue financial risk to themselves.
Company: Morningstar
Category: Technology - Thought Leadership
Initiative: Financial Services Observer, Oct. 2015 – The U.S. Dept. of Labor ‘s Fiduciary Rule for Advisors Could Reshape the Financial Sector
Based on Morningstar analysts’ proprietary estimates, this 53-page research report argues the Dept. of Labor’s conflict-of-interest rule will affect around $3 trillion of client assets and $19 billion of revenue at full-service wealth management firms. Morningstar estimates the low-end of prohibited transaction revenue is $2.4 billion, using Morningstar Direct data. The report puts dollar figures behind illustrations of how discount brokerages, passive investments and robo-advisors will benefit from the rule, while some asset managers and insurance companies will be challenged.
Company: The Investment Center
Category: Broker/Dealers (Fewer Than 1,000 Advisors) – Practice Management
Initiative: Advisor Marketing Coaching Program
Some financial advisors lack the skills or time to effectively market their practice. In response, the Investment Center developed its Advisor Marketing Program (AMP), a coaching system that helps advisors develop customized marketing programs designed to expand existing client relationships and cultivate a center-of-influence referral network.
The program starts with planning sessions that examine the advisor’s business model, client base and current marketing activities. Coaches use this information to design a customized strategy, complete with marketing calendar and budget. They then conduct coaching calls to ensure the plan’s timely execution. Advisors also receive support with social media and event planning.
Since AMP’s implementation, the 10 advisors who have used the program have seen a $20 million increase in assets under management and more than $36 million in referrals.
Company: Eaton Vance
Category: Asset Managers – Fixed Income
Initiative: Laddered Investing Interest Rate Scenario Tool
While laddering a fixed income portfolio can reduce or even eliminate the price impact of rising interest rates, advisers have faced the reality that many clients are unfamiliar with how this investing method works.
To help advisors address this challenge, which has become particularly relevant since the Federal Reserve increased short-term interest rates in December 2015, Eaton Vance developed a unique Laddered Investing Interest Rate Scenario Tool. The online tool demonstrates in detail the benefits of municipal bond and corporate bond laddering, enabling investors to create sample laddered bond portfolios based on their goals and risk tolerance. Once clients grasp the usefulness of this strategy, advisors can use additional tools from Eaton Vance to help them transition assets away from investment vehicles with disproportional levels of interest rate risk.
In four months’ time, the laddered municipal bond portion of the tool generated 7,971 engagements, and the laddered corporate bond portion generated 3,770.
Company: Envestnet | Tamarac
Category: Technology Providers - Rebalancing
Initiative: Advisor Rebalancing
Envestnet | Tamarac’s Advisor Rebalancing application delivers a range of useful features to advisors, including advanced model portfolio management, monitoring, rebalancing, trading and real-time pricing.
New features of the Advisor Rebalancing application include a new dashboard and home screen that quickly gathers and filters key information for advisors such as saved search results a tally of accounts and groups and their AUMs. The application also offers a suite of services that go beyond simple portfolio rebalancing. Users can automate model portfolio construction and management, monitor accounts for trading triggers and execute trades directly with a broker.
Advisor Rebalancing has gained traction, with more than 600 independent RIA firms using the application to manage in excess of $330 billion in assets for more than a million clients.
Company: SEI Custodians
Category: ($25 Billion or More) – Social Media Leadership
Initiative: Practically Speaking – SEI Social Media Program
Social media is nothing new for SEI. Five years ago, it entered the space with the Practically Speaking Blog, which continues to broaden its coverage and win praise from the industry. Building on that experience, SEI has expanded to other social media platforms.
The twice-weekly Practically Speaking Blog provides tips and insights to help advisors grow their business, on topics ranging from practice management to serving millennial clients. While the blog is SEI’s social media foundation, the company has implemented additional social media strategies, including a presence on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and use of PeopleLinx technology to generate leads for SEI sales representatives and help them establish consistent, effective LinkedIn profiles.
SEI estimates its total reach, through all of its social media channels, at 500,000. The Practically Speaking Blog has 1,100 e-mail subscribers and some 57,000 unique visitors each quarter.
Company: eMoney Advisor
Category: Technology Providers -- Client Portals
Initiative: Client portal
Technology has become central to the advisory business, with tools like client portals to enhance client experience and advisor dashboards and planning tools to better serve those clients. Recently, eMoney has improved its suite of emX products to make those tools easier to use and available to more advisors.
The emX suite integrates an advisor dashboard, a client portal and interactive financial planning tools. Improvements include a more personalized, goal-centric client portal to help investors visualize the value their advisor adds. The new, entry-level emX Select Platform provides a competitively priced option for advisors to access the core functionality of those tools.
A survey of eMoney clients found that 70% of selected eMoney’s client website as the tool most useful to their businesses. Of those respondents, 90% said they increased client satisfaction and retention by implementing eMoney’s client website.
Category: Technology Providers – TechProviders Innovation Platform
Initiative: Innovation
Financial advisors face intense pressure from a shifting regulatory environment, technology disruption and increasing competition. In response, eMoney has been improving its client portal to address these challenges.
EMoney has prioritized new initiatives to enhance key elements of the client portal, including self-registration and intuitive onboarding to improve the client experience, along with more seamless brokerage integration for better end-to-end financial planning. Improved management analytics tools will allow practices to examine firm-wide or office level metrics, while a new prospecting tool will help reach potential clients through social media and advisory websites. On the compliance side, a new enterprise offering will include reporting, plan oversight, process automation, data archiving, and analytics capabilities.
This commitment to continued innovation within a successful product can help advisors maintain a client-centric approach, even as the industry continues to evolve.
Company: Charles Schwab Corp.
Category: Brokers/Dealers (1,000 Advisors or More) - Thought Leadership
Initiative: The Schwab ETF OneSource 2016 ETF Industry Outlook
Today, ETF investors hold 21% of their portfolios in ETFs, and that number is expected to reach 25% by 2020, according to Charles Schwab’s 2015 ETF Investors Study. Responding to growing interest in this product, Schwab collaborated with 13 ETF providers to create the ETF OneSource 2016 ETF Industry Outlook—a detailed and interactive resource for ETF investors and advisors, featuring data, market perspectives and actionable insights.
The online resource covers 14 topics, including sector ETFs, finding income without bonds, managing volatility, strategic beta and active ETFs. The site offers data-driven coverage of 2015 trends, outlooks for 2016 and implications for investors.
As part of the launch, Schwab hosted “ETF Week,” a series of five media conference calls discussing perspectives on important trends for advisors and investors in the year ahead. Using the hashtag #ETFOneSource, the site generated conversation on social media among journalists, fund sponsors and participants in the advisory industry.
Company: Schwab Advisor Services
Category: Custodians ($25 Billion or More)- Practice Management
Initiative: Insight to Action Program – Creating a Referral Culture (CRC)
Client referrals are a key growth strategy for advisory firms, according to Charles Schwab research. That’s why Schwab launched the Creating a Referral Culture (CRC) program in 2015 as an addition to its Insight to Action consulting offerings for RIA clients.
The CRC program aims to help advisors take a more strategic and comprehensive approach to growing through referrals. During an eight- to 12-week consulting engagement, firms work closely with their relationship manager to design a referral strategy and a custom plan for firm-wide implementation. Schwab provides one-on-one coaching and leverages proprietary data and industry analysis to help participants lay a foundation for long-term success.
Since the program launched, 225 individuals representing 139 firms have successfully completed the CRC program/workshop.
Company: Artivest
Category: Disruptors – Technology
Initiative: Artivest Platform Enables Financial Advisors to Better Serve HNW Clients with Private Alts
High net worth clients want access to coveted alternative investment managers; advisors want their affluent clients to have access to these investments and managers. Enter Artivest’s technology-driven investment platform, which offers advisors more access to private equity and hedge fund investments while streamlining communication between advisors and clients.
The Artivest platform lets clients use a single login to access a range of research materials, from pitchbooks to private placement memorandums, as well as digital subscription docum digital subscription documents that can be signed electronically. The online process can help advisors communicate clearly with clients, especially when investing in complex products like private alternatives.
Artivest’s technologyis used by 150 advisory firms representing more than $500 billion in assets under management It’s white-labeled platform is integrated with broker dealers, advisory firms and multi-asset managers.
The Artivest platform elevates the investing experience for investors, advisors, and funds.
Company: United Capital Financial Advisors
Category: Disruptors – Industry
Initiative: FinLife Partners
Advisor demand for United Capital’s investment tools and client resources prompted the company to launch a digital platform, FinLife Partners, in April 2016. Targeting a range of RIAs, from those managing $250 million to $750 million to national-scale firms with more than $1 billion in assets under management, FinLife Partners combines proprietary client experience tools, technology workflows and advisor coaching.
The platform incorporates United Capital’s “financial life management” approach to advising clients. Among the platform’s features is a personalized FinLife Initiation Plan (FLIP), which provides staffing assessments, workflow modification recommendations and revenue projections, all of which can be measured and tracked through Salesforce. Through use of this platform, advisors may find additional sales opportunities and outside assets, potentially enhancing the both clients’ financial plans and advisor revenues.
United Capital has received positive feedback on the platform, which is being beta tested by two user groups. It was previously tested by United Capital’s 120 advisors, and over $15 billion in client assets.
Company: PIEtech, Inc.
Category: Technology Providers—Financial Planning
Initiative: myMoneyGuide Planning Experience
Truly personalized financial plans require detailed conversations between advisors and clients. PIEtech Inc. recently revamped its myMoneyGuide financial planning software to enable these deeper conversations and help advisors develop a greater understanding of clients’ needs.
New features include a series of guided conversations to uncover where clients are in the planning process, along with detailed questions about retirement lifestyle expectations and concerns. Goal-setting is now done through an interactive, image based system helps clients visualize financial goals such as vacations and new cars. Improved Monte Carlo analysis and a potential loss simulator help advisors convey the potential risks of a financial plan, to help ensure clients are comfortable with it.
With these improvements, myMoneyGuide is an even more effective way for advisors to deliver plans that are in the best interest of their clients.
Company: IMCA
Category: Industry Associations
Initiative: New IMCA Applied Behavioral Finance Certificate Program
When investors make emotional decisions about finances, they often undermine their long-term goals. IMCA created its Applied Behavioral Finance Certificate Program to help advisors understand the behavioral finance forces that can drive clients’ decision-making, so they can guide them to better outcomes.
The online program features world-class faculty—from schools such as Duke, UC Santa Clara, and MIT—who have done pioneering work in behavioral finance. That faculty is paired with real world practitioners, whose instruction helps advisors learn to apply academic theory to their work with clients.
In the four months since its launch, the Applied Behavioral Finance Certificate Program has registered more than 200 participants, and more than a quarter have completed their studies. Of those participants, 94% rate the program as “Extremely,” “Very” or “Moderately” useful to their businesses.
Company: Metlife
Category: Insurance Technology
Initiative: Interactive Income Tool
Illustrating the benefits of insurance products through “What if…” scenarios can help clients make informed decisions. Metlife’s new interactive income planner enables this kind of decision making by creating customized income case studies in minutes.
The tool allows clients and financial advisors to create a visual representation of how a variable annuity with a living benefit rider could fit into an overall retirement portfolio. Available on both desktop and tablet devices, the Interactive Income Tool allows users to toggle back and forth between different market scenarios and withdrawal options, seeing real-time changes based on those adjustments.
The tool has received excellent feedback from the field. Advisors note that it’s helpful as both a point-of-sale tool, and as a way to engage prospective clients in detailed product illustrations that might otherwise take too much time to conduct.
Company: MarketCounsel
Category: Compliance/Law Firms
Initiative: MarketCounsel and the Hamburger Law Firm + MarketCounsel Summit
Law firms guiding independent advisors in the need an absolute mastery of regulatory compliance and securities laws. The MarketCounsel and Hamburger Law Firm’s team of attorneys are up to the task, studying existing business requirements and analyzing new developments for roughly 1,500 advisers across all 50 states.
The firms work together with independent investment advisors and leading financial institutions, acting as either their outsourced compliance department or in support of its in-house counsel. Its team counsels startup investment advisors and manages the employment transition for a broad array of clients as they navigate complex issues faced by growing companies in a highly regulated space.
The MarketCounsel Summit focuses the team’s expertise in one annual event: The firm’s attorneys take center stage to deliver their insights and analysis to an open forum.
Company: Edward Jones
Category: Broker/Dealers (1,000 Advisors or More) – Technology
Initiative: Two-way Texting with Clients
Texting provides a quick and easy way for advisors to communicate with clients, but industry regulations have made it difficult for advisory firms to use the channel. Two-way texting from Edward Jones solves this problem by archiving and monitoring all messages for compliance purposes. It is the first initiative from a large financial services firm to successfully introduce texting with clients.
Clients who sign up for two-way texting can receive appointment reminders, security alerts and relationship-building texts from branch teams. Branch teams send these messages to clients’ phones using browser-based messaging tools on their desktop computers, tablets and smartphones. Branch teams also receive alerts when clients text back.
Introduced in December 2015, client adoption of two-way texting increased 250% in the first three months of 2016. By early April, 27% of Edward Jones advisors were texting their clients.
Company: Janney Montgomery Scott
Category: Broker/Dealers (Fewer Than 1,000 Advisors) – Technology
Initiative: Financial Aggregation
Traditionally, advisors and their clients have had to visit multiple sites to access personal financial information. But Janney Montgomery Scott’s new online financial aggregation system, called My Net Worth, puts clients’ entire financial picture in one place.
My Net Worth connects to Janney’s FA Dashboard, a tool that helps advisors manage their practices. My Net Worth aggregates client accounts and transaction data—including mortgages, bank accounts, credit cards, investments and spending—to help advisors provide investment advice based on clients' overall finances. It also gives clients a comprehensive view of all their financial information through Janney’s client portal.
This technology is helping advisors spend less time tracking down financial information, so they can spend more time developing appropriate strategies for clients.
Company: FolioDynamix
Category: Digital Advisors (Robo)
Initiative: FolioDynamix/VisX Solutions
FolioDynamix is working closely with several popular “robo” options to offer the only solution with a truly integrated robo option to meet the needs of advisors who are looking for both sophisticated and entry level solutions. Clients choose from several popular providers—putting their own “skin” on the entry-point solution—and then work through our multi-custodial, multi-program platform. This structure provides an integrated option for firms or advisors to give clients an easy entry point, with efficient account opening and funding. Firms then have the capability of viewing all client accounts through the secure, cloud-based FolioDynamix wealth management solution and can take advantage of rebalancing, portfolio accounting, and trading capability through a single solution with an easy advisor dashboard. FolioDynamix also offers the option of a turnkey wealth management solution, our VisX suite of options—with varying account solutions allowing the advisor to choose the level of account management that suits them and their client’s needs best.
Company: Commonwealth Financial Network
Category: Broker/Dealers (1,000 Advisors or More) – Corporate Social Responsibility/Diversity
Initiative: Birthday Wishes
For more than five years, Commonwealth Financial Network has partnered with the nonprofit organization Birthday Wishes to bring the joy of a birthday party to children experiencing homelessness. More than 100 Commonwealth employees have participated in 50 birthday parties at four different homeless shelters in the Greater Boston Area.
In 2015, Commonwealth expanded its support to a fifth shelter in Waltham, Mass., providing parties with balloons, music and games for 244 children. Also in 2015, 50 employees at an annual Commonwealth conference volunteered to assemble “Birthday-in-a-Box” packages of party supplies and gifts, which were delivered to homeless children in domestic violence shelters, motels and other locations that can’t accommodate Birthday Wishes volunteers.
Commonwealth employees who volunteer with Birthday Wishes feel grateful to be a part of these parties, which provide homeless children with a positive experience that can have lasting developmental benefits.
Company: CLS Investments
Category: Asset Managers – ETF Strategists
Initiative: Outcome Based Investment Approach
CLS Investments is helping advisors move conversations away from performance and benchmarks—forces investors can’t control—and toward tangible, long-term goals, which investors can control. The firm has re-categorized its investment strategies into an outcome-based approach, and implemented the new focus on its website, investment policy statement and marketing materials.
The approach provides advisors with tools they need to focus client communications on each investor’s goals. It also allows advisors to sleeve strategies so they can meet multiple investor objectives within one account. In addition, advisors and investors can now sign up for custom email subscriptions that will help keep them informed and allow for more productive conversations.
The outcome-based method has drawn positive feedback from advisors, who appreciate the ability to better align clients’ portfolios with their long-term goals rather than focusing on short-term benchmark comparisons.
Company: Kestra Financial
Category: Broker/Dealers: Greater than 1000 Advisors - Service
Initiative: Effortless Experience
To create an “effortless experience” level of service for their advisors, in 2015 Kestra Financial (formerly NFP Advisor Services) conducted a comparative study of organizations (financial and non-financial) that were known to provide outstanding service, including site visits to customer service leaders, reviewing key resources and thought leadership on the topic, inviting Rep and Staff Councils to provide candid feedback about their experience with the firm, hiring a third-party consultant to conduct a deep dive into every aspect of the Kestra organization including hiring, training, organizational development, tools, management and motivation. The research coalesced into an ambitious plan launched in 2015 and will continue into 2016. Key initiatives to deliver an effortless experience are to start with building a great team and maintaining a culture of empowerment to serve the best interest of clients and advisors.
Company: Raymond James
Category: Broker/Dealers (1,000 Advisors or More) – Technology
Initiative: Client Reporting
Portfolio review meetings offer a chance for advisors to build stronger relationships with clients and customize portfolios according to their unique needs. Client Reporting (CR), a new application from Raymond James, helps advisors to create highly engaging, personalized client reports for all review meetings.
Advisors can chose among several client report templates, which include features such as one-page summaries of key information, links to marketing and educational materials, and the ability to include client accounts held outside of Raymond James. The system allows advisors to add personalized branding to all reports, and schedule them for delivery on a future date. Or, clients can securely access their reports through the firm’s Client Vault.
Since its launch in 2015, 97% of the Raymond James advisors who have accessed the CR application have created at least one custom report package. Advisors have generated about 650,000 report packages each month.
Company: Securities America
Category: Broker/Dealers (1,000+ Advisors) Practice Management
Initiative: Next Level with Revenue Diagnostics
Securities America’s revenue diagnostic tool includes a revenue by household report, practice performance predictors, assets by age report and two-hours of consultation with a Securities America practice management expert. The goal is to protect and increase future revenue streams for advisors by getting better data around current revenue and finding new opportunities. Data gathered for eight classes held between 2008 and 2013 found that participants gathered on average 136% more assets in the 24 months after the program than they had in the 24 months before joining the program. Advisors who completed the program on average increased their AUM by 79% over a randomly selected control group.
Company: BlackRock
Category: Asset Managers- Equities
Program: Minimum Volatility Challenge Tool
Using both index and active strategies can provide a source of incremental return or a way to manage risk. Blackrock’s Minimum Volatility Challenge tool helps advisors demonstrate the advantages of these smart beta strategies to their clients
The online tool allows users to see what a greater focus on minimum volatility can do for a hypothetical portfolio. An interactive platform lets the user add iShares Minimum Volatility to a market cap weighted asset allocation. It then calculates how that increase would affect the portfolio’s risk and return, and ultimately increase the portfolio’s Sharpe ratio. The tool also charts projected upside and downside capture, and offers a file download of all results. The intuitively designed web page has is available to the general public in addition to advisors and their clients.
Company: TD Ameritrade Institutional
Category: Trusts
Initiative: Advisors Private Wealth Trust
Providing trustee services can help RIAs meet the needs of aging Baby Boomers, who are looking to pass on assets to their heirs. TD Ameritrade Institutional gave RIAs a better way to capture this opportunity with Advisors Private Wealth Trust.
TD Ameritrade created the APWT program in partnership with National Advisors Trust Company, which operates in all 50 states. The program features a Dedicated Trust Consultant to assist advisors, and employs a directed trust model, which gives advisors fiduciary responsibility over a trust’s investments.
The program is integrated into TDAmeritrade’s back office, which manages disbursements on behalf of advisors and clients. And because the advisor’s trustee relationship is with APWT, not with TD Ameritrade, the bank can remain objective as custodian. In its first year, APWT formed relationships with more than 300 RIA firms.
Category: Custodians ($25 Billion or More) -- Corporate Social Responsibility/Diversity
Initiative: NextGen Initiative
TD Ameritrade puts its diversity money where its mouth is with its NextGen Initiative, which offers a range of scholarships, grants, internship opportunities and career exchanges to help bring younger workers into the RIA industry.
NextGen scholarships and grants include $5,000 student scholarships and $50,000 and $25,000 university grants to support financial planning education. The Next Gen Initiative’s RIA Intern Network connects students with RIAs looking for interns, and has helped connect more than 1,000 advisors and 500 young professionals. The RIA NextGen Career Exchange helps connect advisors and candidates.
TD Ameritrade’s Next Gen Initiative also enables students and faculty to attend its National Conference program free of charge; sponsors the financial planning program at Texas A&M University; and serves as lead sponsor of the new Center for Financial Planning, a collaboration to raise educational standards and increase workforce diversity.
Company: Laserfiche
Category: Document Management
Initiative: Laserfiche 10
The latest iteration of Laserfiche’s document management system incorporates an extensive business process library with configurable templates enabling financial services organizations to quickly optimize a variety of business processes, including account onboarding, contract management and accounts payable. Laserfiche Conversations, a social business tool with threaded discussions, QAs and checklists for collaborative projects, and a mobile-ready user interface and analytic tools to quickly monitor, report and analyze processes.
