Notwithstanding the recent stock market comeback, it's hard to say anything nice about this long, deep recession. If there is a silver lining in the Great Recession of 2008-2009, however, it is that economic setbacks such as this have a way of making businesses focus on what's really important to their customers. That means those vendors selling products and services to financial advisors are more than ever motivated to come up with tools to improve the way advisors work.

Albridge Solutions and Schwab Institutional, two of the industry's most influential participants, for instance, have recently launched Web products to increase efficiency at independent RIAs, broker-dealers and independent registered reps.

Schwab's contribution is SchwabAdvisorCenter.com, an easy-to-use Web platform that will lead to the slow phase-out of SchwabLink and SchwabInstitutional.com. Albridge, meanwhile, recently launched two new systems: AppLink is a dashboard for broker-dealers to manage their reps using an approved set of CRM software, financial planning tools and other practice management applications; DataMart is a database customized to each B-D to help it create business performance metrics.

SchwabAdvisorCenter.com. Two of the key systems used by all RIAs holding accounts at Schwab Institutional are old. SchwabLink is a utility for downloading transactions, fees and other data from Schwab into portfolio management software (PMS). SchwabInstitutional.com is a Web site RIAs use for trading client accounts, managing cash for clients and transferring funds for clients.

Both of those systems remain reliable, and they're not being shut down. Instead, Schwab is cleverly continuing to support them, even as it launches a new platform that combines their features and improves efficiency. Keeping the old systems live will allow advisors time to transition to the new solution, SchwabAdvisorCenter.com.

Steve Hirsch, vice president of Schwab Institutional Web Platforms, along with Mike Golaszewski, director of SchwabInstitutional.com, say SchwabAdvisorCenter.com significantly upgrades the platform advisory firms use daily.

SchwabAdvisorCenter.com began usability testing in October 2008 with 12 firms, and Schwab now has 65 firms using the system.
The main navigation menu uses tabs for tasks. To help advisors in their productivity, the site alerts them to 13 different types of activity, such as account changes, corporate actions, money movements, asset transfers and dollar-cost averaging.

The "status" tab displays the stage of a client's paperwork on Schwab's system. When you are setting up a new account or transferring funds, this tab updates you on how far along the client is in Schwab's process. Because the information is automatically updated, it saves you and Schwab time because you no longer have to call Schwab to get updates on these activities.

In the "balances" tab, SchwabAdvisorCenter.com also displays securities positions by client. Though this feature was also available at SchwabInstitutional.com, now you can view aggregated position balances for clients instead of viewing just one account at a time as you did before. Meanwhile, the "positions" tab allows you to find a security in your clients' portfolios and then create an export to Schwab's Java trade applet.

One of the niftiest features in SchwabAdvisorCenter.com is displayed in the column on the left side of the browser, the column called "Associated Items." If you are looking at Bob Jones' positions in the main body of the page, for instance, the associated items column might display his wife's account, an account held by a trust in which the Joneses are beneficiaries or some other affiliated accounts. The associated items list will be different for each unique user ID, which is different for each member of your staff accessing SchwabAdvisorCenter.com, and will reflect how you use the site.

You also can set up a group for a family or household. Moreover, you can set up a group for clients who all use the same separate account manager, who are all billed using a common formula, or who all use the same model portfolio. A trade blotter for rebalancing clients against models can be exported from SchwabAdvisorCenter.com to Schwab's Portfolio Rebalancer, but Schwab says it plans ultimately to integrate trading into SchwabAdvisorCenter.com.

Albridge Solutions. While Schwab Institutional systems are available to about 5,500 RIA firms, Albridge technology systems are available to about 100,000 registered reps and affiliated staff members. Plus, staffers at 150 or so independent broker-dealers use Albridge. The point is, Albridge is a key system in the independent financial advisor business.

Albridge, which was acquired by PNC Financial Services Group in late 2007, has matured into a powerful platform for enterprise-wide performance reporting. While it focuses almost entirely on independent B-Ds, it is also making inroads with banks and with regional and national full-service brokerages and RIAs.

Applink 2.0, which went live in April, provides B-Ds with a dashboard for controlling how reps use practice management applications integrated with Albridge. That may sound simple, but it's not.

For the dashboard to work, Albridge had to create an application programming interface (API) that standardizes the way all practice management applications pull data from Albridge or send data to it. Applink specifies standards for industry vendors to use when they write programs to integrate with Albridge. "In the last 18 months, more and more B-Ds are taking control of the rep workstation with proprietary technology that they're using to define their culture and differentiate their firm," says CEO Gregory Pacholski. "By creating a platform that they want to be known for, a B-D is selecting what it considers best-of-breed components to bring together to build a workstation."

Albridge data on holdings, transactions and performance is the central component of a B-D platform along with CRM, financial planning, analytics and other systems used to run an advisory practice. A B-D could create its own workstation for reps and prepay a CRM and a financial planning software vendor for 100 or 200 licenses or for more. Then the B-D can resell its integrated workstation to reps for a profit or simply use it as a competitive advantage to recruit advisors.

Even if an independent B-D creates a proprietary workstation, it is unlikely to mandate that all reps use it. Independent B-Ds typically allow their reps some choices in CRM software, planning tools and other applications. Which is where Applink comes into play.

Applink allows the B-Ds to turn on each application that each rep needs to run his business. It allows the B-D to configure each advisor's workstation with his chosen set of applications. The B-D thus controls the user ID and password and allows the advisors to use its workstations, which allows the B-D to track and supervise automatically advisor activities.  

Applink's configuration dashboard is important to B-Ds, and it's also creating efficiencies that have never before been available to independent reps. The integration with the Chinese menu of applications streamlines an advisor's work flow. An advisor no longer has to input a client's data into financial planning systems; it is automatically fed from Albridge. Demographic data about a new client who transfers assets can flow from Albridge into a CRM system, such as Redtail or EZ Data SmartOffice or vice versa, or Albridge's portfolio performance data can also flow into a client's personal portal or into a financial planning program. The time advisors must spend keying in client data is slashed and advisors can offer a better client experience than ever before.

The other new release by Albridge, DataMart, is an enterprise level system for B-Ds. Applink is for advisors to report to clients on performance. DataMart provides a different level of reporting that spans a B-D enterprise.

"B-Ds want to be able to query their own database with their own business intelligence metrics," says Pacholski. "DataMart lets a B-D create a database that can be used for queries it wants to conduct."

Coates Analytics, a business intelligence software company owned by PNC Financial, provides a distribution management system that offers prefabricated metrics on mutual funds sales. Using Coates and DataMart shows a B-D which branches or even which reps are selling specific funds.

DataMart went live in April and United Planners, a B-D with about 300 reps, became the first broker-dealer on the system. After a few B-Ds pioneer use of the system, it's likely others will follow and DataMart will usher in a new era of efficiency for independent B-Ds.

And that makes systems like these more attractive.

Editor-at-large Andrew Gluck, a veteran financial writer, owns Advisor Products Inc., a marketing technology company serving 1,800 advisory firms.