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.