One additional enhancement coming soon: the ability for advisors to access their client’s Fidelity.com accounts through WealthCentral. The idea here is that if a client of an independent RIA or a dually registered advisor is having difficulty with something on Fidelity.com, the advisor can log on and help address the issue in real time. “We want to be more supportive of collaborative online engagements between the client and the advisor,” O’Brien says.

Fidelity also recently announced a referral program with Betterment Institutional. Although there is no integration with the Fidelity custodial platform at this time, nor are there any integrations between Betterment Institutional and third-party software providers serving the RIA community, this relationship does provide an outlet for those Fidelity advisors looking to team up with a robo-advisory technology provider.

TD Ameritrade
The new TD Ameritrade advisor dashboard is currently in production. It is the first open, fully customizable, deeply integrated custodial dashboard. Some custodians offer deep integration with a select few third-party providers, but the TD Ameritrade platform breaks new ground in custodial dashboard integration.

In the initial release, only a handful of TD Ameritrade Institutional’s 77 VEO integration partners are participating, but more partners will be added regularly. The initial participants in the dashboard rollout are: Orion, Redtail, MoneyGuidePro, DocuSign and Laser App Anywhere. Within a few months, TD Ameritrade plans to add Morningstar, Salesforce, FinanceLogix, eMoney, iRebal, ThinkPipes, Black Diamond and Junxure to the dashboard.

The dashboard is designed to provide the advisor with a unified, customizable experience. The advisor can select widgets provided by TD Ameritrade and/or third-party providers and place them on a home page. In most cases, with the click of a mouse, you will be able to shift from a table view to a graphic view. In the initial release, smart searches will be limited to the VEO environment, but they will be expanded in a future release to search the third-party data as well. Searches are powered by the Google Search Appliance.

This dashboard provides the ability to designate the data sources. For example, if you create a landing page comprising firm analytics such as asset mix, revenues per client and largest holdings across the firm, you can designate which data feed flows into the widget. If all of an advisor’s assets were held at TD Ameritrade, it would be appropriate to use TD Ameritrade as the data source for those widgets. However, if there are a lot of 401(k) assets and other held-away assets to account for, a third-party provider can supply a more comprehensive and accurate data set, so the firm would designate its portfolio management firm or an aggregation firm as the source of the data.

Initially, there will be a selection of widgets, most of which will be TD Ameritrade-sourced, but as more third parties participate in the project, the library of widgets should expand rapidly. One TD Ameritrade widget that will be available from the launch is a cash activity widget. This much-requested feature will let users see, at a glance, all recent money movements.

A Client Center will provide all relevant information about a client relationship. There will be a client dashboard page from which advisors will be able to access CRM data, financial planning data, portfolio management data—and soon iRebal data—all with a click, in context.
Deep integration with Redtail will allow advisors to make edits to a contact within the VEO environment and have it reflected in the Redtail contact. Advisors can also create a note within the VEO dashboard and have it post to Redtail. There is even some drag-and-drop capability, where you can drag an activity from a VEO screen right into the Redtail calendar or into a Redtail task.

One enhancement already being built is what Jon Patullo, TD Ameritrade Institutional’s managing director of technology product management, refers to as “easy buttons.” The concept is to build some common work flows like account openings, processing management fees, etc. into the system so that advisors can initiate them with as little as a single click.

Pershing
This year and next, Pershing is undertaking a total revamp of its technology ecosystem. According to CIO Ram Nagappan, the company’s primary focus is on improving both the end investor experience and the advisor experience.

Pershing has completed the rollout of the new NetXInvestor, the end client portal. In addition to a fresh, intuitive user experience, this new client portal packs many new features and functionality. Perhaps the most noteworthy is its ability to integrate third-party applications into itself. Albridge will be the first application integrated into the portal, so advisors can make performance reports available to their clients from within NetXInvestor. Pershing will also be opening NetXInvestor to its clients, so B-Ds and large RIAs can integrate their own applications into the NetXInvestor experience for their clients. It is anticipated that shortly thereafter, popular third-party software providers will integrate their applications with NetXInvestor.

NetX360, the advisor-facing portal, has also received a total makeover, with a more intuitive interface, and more enhancements are on the way. “I don’t think we’ve received enough credit for the integrations we have done,” says Nagappan. “We have over 250 integrations; about 50 of them are deep integrations,” he says. The plan is to improve and deepen many more integrations in 2015. Pershing also intends to make NetX360 a global platform by adding multiple currency support and multiple language support.

A new, persona-based analytical dashboard is available, and it will be enhanced in 2015. Currently, the dashboard can pull Pershing data and display key analytics in graphical format. For example, the analytics dashboard will provide asset movement visualization, so advisors and management can see where assets are coming from and where outflows are going to. In 2015, the dashboard will be able to pull data from integrated third parties, including providers of CRM software, financial planning software, etc.

Pershing is also working on improving the client on-boarding experience. Currently, much of the process can be automated and initiated digitally, but some types of accounts cannot yet be processed digitally, and there are opportunities to simplify the current process. Look for improvements here soon.

Mobile has been another ongoing area of development, and the company recently released “360 Mobile.” According to Nagappan, “advisors love it.” He says Pershing will be adding even more functionality in 2015. “We’ll be adding collaboration and sharing to the mobile experience soon,” he says.

The Outlook for 2015
As we have seen, all of the major custodians continue to invest significant resources in their technology platforms. While each custodian has its own list of technology priorities, there do seem to be a number of commonalities across all platforms. Each custodian is investing in improving the user experience, both at the advisor level and the end-client level. All are working to enable a seamless client on-boarding and support experience through electronic work flows, e-signatures and electronic money movements. Other areas of commonality appear to be improved integrations with third-party providers and improved mobile technologies.

The pace of change in the field of technology has seemingly never been greater, and custodians are poised to deliver noticeable improvements in the months ahead.

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