Lincoln Financial Network

According to David Berkowitz, president of Lincoln Financial Network, his firm decided in 2014 to undertake a major strategic technology initiative: to build a next-generation advisory platform. Lincoln has partnered with Fidelity to build this new advisor platform: “They are building it according to our specs,” Berkowitz says.

Currently, Lincoln clears through both Pershing and National Financial, Fidelity’s clearing arm. As part of this initiative to gain efficiencies, the firm will move to an exclusive clearing arrangement with National Financial.

When the first version of the new platform, dubbed “Advice Next,” debuts in the latter half of 2016, the focus will be on three goals: automation, integration and productivity. The whole idea is to connect advice with technology to better serve the end client.

When completed, the Advice Next platform will offer integration with three CRM applications: Salesforce, Redtail and Ebix. Third-party marketing databases will be integrated with the platform. It will feature enhanced managed account platform capabilities through Fidelity and Envestnet. Lincoln’s proprietary Design It financial planning application will also be integrated into the platform.

Lincoln Financial is also working closely with Fidelity to develop unified account opening capabilities and to embed sophisticated business process management into the platform. 

Berkowitz emphasized that the release of the Advice Next platform is only the beginning of the technology initiative. After the initial rollout, the firm will turn its attention to adding functionality for a version 2.0 release. This second release is expected to add mobile capabilities, scenario planning and dynamic financial planning. Berkowitz says that the goal of version 2.0 will be to drive further advisor/client collaboration in the future. 

Clearly, with the rollout of such a new, powerful platform, advisor adoption will play a key role in the product’s success. Lincoln Financial is already gearing up to meet the challenge. The company will have 20 dedicated practice management consultants go out on the road to help drive advisor adoption. “We are making an investment in people to help drive productivity,” he says.

LPL

Technology changes have been under way at LPL for over two years now. Last year, the company did a considerable amount of work laying the technology foundation for the future, but much of the work was not apparent to advisors. The initial work involved building the infrastructure that would support all that was to come. 

Now ClientWorks, the enhanced, integrated cloud solution for advisors, is starting to emerge. Currently, approximately 300 advisors are participating in the pilot program, and more are being added. It looks to be a vast improvement over the old BranchNet system.

ClientWorks has a clean, intuitive interface. Its sorting and filtering capabilities are excellent. The system does away with some of the most annoying aspects of BranchNet—such as the ugly yellow screen, its incompatibility with many popular web browsers and the user’s inability to use the browser’s “back” button. ClientWorks, by contrast, is mobile-friendly. Its responsive design means that it will have a display optimized for the device the user is using.

Unfortunately, some functionality has not been moved to the new platform yet, so ClientWorks users will still need to use BranchNet for certain functions, such as trading.

The trading has been enhanced, but the update was long overdue. According to an LPL spokesperson, it used to take an estimated 45 hours for an advisor with 600 accounts to sell out of one security position and replace it with two other securities. That’s because in the past, you had to trade each security for each account separately. The same set of transactions now takes approximately seven minutes with the addition of block trading and various other improvements. While this is great news for LPL advisors, the obvious question is, “What took you so long?” Those functions, after all, have been available to many advisors for years.

LPL has also upgraded its rebalancing technology. Formerly, it was powered by ASI. It is now powered by FolioDynamics. According to LPL, the new system “blows ASI out of the water.” Although LPL does not yet offer asset location or tax-sensitive rebalancing optimization, these are on the road map.

LPL recently completed an integration deal with Redtail CRM. The response from LPL advisors to date has been overwhelmingly positive. Currently, the Redtail integration is a one-way integration only—ClientWorks data moves to Redtail—but a bidirectional integration is in pilot now, and more enhancements to the integration are scheduled for future release. Perhaps the greatest challenge for Redtail in the short term will be to efficiently on-board LPL advisors fast enough to satisfy demand.

There have been numerous other technology improvements over the last 12 to 18 months. The reporting solution has been improved, as has tax processing. The client portal was totally revamped last year. There is also a new e-mail platform hosted by LPL.

And LPL recently announced the launch of its affinity program. This makes a wide variety of technology solutions available to advisors at discounted prices. 

LPL also announced that it has begun work with a third party on developing a robo-advice solution, one that is intended to complement the advisor’s core business. Few details have been made available, so it is not clear to what extent the technology will be driven by a third party, or how much of it will be based on LPL systems.