“We’ve worked with the folks at MoneyGuidePro for months in order to arrive at this enterprise agreement,” said Brian Davis, Scottrade’s director of advisor services, said during the recently concluded Technology Tools for Today (T3) conference. “MoneyGuidePro will be part of the Scottrade Advisor service experience. It will be tightly integrated with the Scottrade Advisor platform."

Davis said the advisors his firm custodies assets for are more heavily tilted to pure financial planning than many of his competitors. As a result, Scottrade advisors expect their custodian to provide financial planning software as part of the platform. Scottrade looked at several financial planning applications, but based on direct feedback from advisors, as well as industry surveys, they concluded that MoneyGuidePro was the appropriate choice.

“We are proud to be the first RIA custodian to sign an enterprise deal with MoneyGuidePro,” Davis said. “We assume our advisors will be very receptive to this offering.” Scottrade advisors, who currently number just short of 1,000, will have access to MoneyGuidePro at a substantial discount to the retail price. Advisors who use the retail version will be able to shift to the Scottrade version to take advantage of the discount pricing, according to Scottrade.

“The people at Scottrade are committed to building out a quality platform for their advisors,” said Bob Curtis, CEO and president of PIE Tech Inc, the creators of MoneyGuidePro. "Through this agreement, MoneyGuidePro will be more than just a software provider to Scottrade; we will be a true partner. We plan to add value by acting as a resource to help Scottrade advisors with their financial planning needs.”

—Joel Bruckenstein