Another big thing that Albridge is working on is predictive analytics. There seems to be a lot of talk surrounding this subject, but very little in terms of solutions. Albridge is working on bringing real solutions to the marketplace.

Albridge’s business model

Albridge is not a one-trick pony. Whilst wealth reporting is what they are most well-known for, Albridge has the advantage of being in multiple businesses. Their business model is focused around how they can serve a number of areas within financial services, whether the client is a financial advisor, a robo-advisor, or a broker-dealer.

A lot of it starts with the data. Albridge has over 50 million accounts on their platform and half of the investing households in the US have an account somewhere on their system. In the document management space, Albridge has a storage solution that is in compliance with SEC Rule 17a-4, which helps broker-dealers drive efficiency with their workflow capabilities. Albridge also has a market leading compliance surveillance solution which helps to automate a broker-dealer’s compliance responsibilities and a data warehouse solution which helps a broker-dealer to use data-driven insights to drive decisions.

Advantageous integrations and APIs

The point of integrating a system is to provide access to data and to bring that data into other solutions. Albridge was one of the first to develop and deliver on an integration network, referred to as Applink®. Albridge also has integration partners in financial planning tools, risk assessment tools, and compliance evaluation.

“Our approach is really simple.…We want to make it easy for whoever is using our solution, whether it’s a financial advisor or a broker-dealer, to be able to use other solutions within this network. We’re pretty open in that respect. We typically get a lot of solutions that come to us saying, ‘Hey, can we become an integration partner?’ It’s relatively easy to do. We have a toolkit and a sandbox we make available to partners to enable them get started. ”—Marc

Albridge offers a number of different APIs for their partners, from basic things like holdings and balances to rate-of-return performance calculations. Marc explains that their API set is not only used for integrations with other FinTechs, but those same APIs are also used for the integrations that RIAs or broker-dealers want to achieve. For instance, if a firm does not want to use Albridge’s front-end, they can use those APIs to connect to Albridge’s data or, in some cases, connect to those performance returns.

Data analytic tools and vision

Marc says Albridge’s goal, or vision, is for financial advisors to use the platform without thinking about the technology. Albridge Wealth Reporting is a reporting platform that provides both performance and wealth reports. The next step is the creation of dashboards so that instead of having a conversation based on a report, clients can sit down and look at a dashboard to see insights, whether on performance or the distribution of assets.

“There may be information out in the market space which will allow financial advisors to get smarter about their investors. We want financial advisors to be able to turn on our solution and have it deliver insights directly to them. We don’t want them to have to run a report and have to derive the insights on their own. What we’re really getting to is what we call the next best conversation. How do we enable financial advisors to have the next best conversation with their investors?”—Marc

After dashboards comes predictive analysis. With accurate predictions, another aspect comes into play—attrition analysis. In other words, which activities on an investor’s account indicate that he or she are at risk for leaving a financial advisor? Next is segmentation analysis. Segmentation analysis provides the flexibility for financial advisors to think differently about how they segment their clients. Obviously, to do this properly, financial advisors need data on generational differences and on the total value of a family. Another piece of the predictive puzzle is being able to take the information that is available in the public space and use it to a financial advisor’s advantage. Marc notes that this approach is still under development.

Product-management approach

Each of the different solutions mentioned earlier have a general manager who is in charge. Albridge’s philosophy is that the product management team is really the CEO of the product. They are empowered to define what the product should be based on field study visits, trends in the industry, and innovation.

“Nobody asked us to do predictive analytics, yet our product-management team said, ‘This is really where we need to go with all of this data that we have.’ At the same time, product managers need to be concerned with, or we’re asking them to be concerned with, if we build something, how do we operationalize it? How do we make sure that we can have a steady state?”—Marc

The support behind the product is of the utmost importance. If the client needs something, like training, they should be able to call up the company and make arrangements. Albridge takes this a step further. Sometimes clients come to Albridge with a great idea that motivates Albridge to build the solution for not only the client requesting the solution but for the benefit of all of its clients.

Getting feedback from clients and sharing knowledge is another area where Albridge remains focused. Their relationship-management team visits clients and learns what clients like, what they don’t like, and examines the way the clients are using, or not using the platform. The end result is the creation of smarter technology professionals that will be more successful with every new project.