Fidelity Investments recently announced upgrades to
its platform for registered investment advisors. The upgrades include
enhanced fixed income capabilities as well as a new trustee referral
program. According to Pat Jancsy, senior vice president of Fidelity's RIA
Group, the new and improved Fidelity Advisor CHANNEL offers advisors,
for the first time, "access to all Fidelity trading and information
through a single user interface and a single log on."
"Fidelity's online fixed-income platform,
BondTraderPro, now offers advisors direct access to more than 15,000
fixed-income securities, as well as analytical tools and online order
entry. This means that advisors will not be forced to call fixed income
orders into the bond desk if they don't want to," says Jancsy.
Fidelity Trustee Referrals will help advisors
simplify the process of selecting and working with trust companies to
serve as corporate trustees for their high-net-worth clients' trusts.
The service allows advisors to create and manage referrals from a
network of 10 trust companies that specialize in offering trustee
services to advisors. Through these trust relationships, advisors
retain the ability mange the investment of trust assets, thus enabling
advisors to maintain their client relationships. The 10 trust companies
operate on Fidelity's brokerage platform, providing a consistent
trading and account management process tailored to the independent
advisor.
In order to minimize disruptions to ongoing advisor
operations, Fidelity will be conducting a phased rollout of the new
Fidelity Advisor CHANNEL to its about 2,900 RIA
firms. "The implementation process will include documentation and
training so that firms can easily transition to the new platform," says
Jancsy. New Fidelity RIA customers will be put on the new platform
immediately.