Dan Sachar joined the firm last January as vice president for Enterprise Innovation and was assigned to run the Ladenburg Innovation Lab. “The lab is looking at where we want to be five or 10 years from now for technology,” Sachar says. For instance, Ladenburg is working with Track Technologies, a payroll system for independent workers, through its Enterprise Innovation program. “This is a trend. Forty-seven percent of millennials freelance all or part of the time. This is something advisors will need to pick up on to be able to serve these clients. New managed account and retirement platforms are also in the pipeline.
“Advisors may not know what would help them until they see it,” he says. “At the lab, we look further ahead for them and we look for these products.”
Some firms such as Charles Schwab & Co. are reaching out to advisors to help them adopt technology platforms. Schwab sponsors one-day seminars for advisors across the country.
“Technology is a driving force behind the sustainable growth of the independent advice industry,” says Andrew Salesky, senior vice president and head of digital advisor solutions for Charles Schwab. “We are seeing independent firms realize the benefits technology can offer as they make strategic investments and thoughtfully implement the wide array of solutions available to them.”
Schwab Advisor Services in September announced the upcoming rollout of its Digital Account Open tool, which will be provided later this year in conjunction with Orion Advisor Services, a portfolio management and reporting provider, and made available through Schwab OpenView Gateway. The tool, now available to institutional advisors, replaces paper forms with digital forms for account opening and ancillary transactions, which creates efficiencies for advisors and their end clients, Schwab says.
Some firms market themselves primarily as fintech companies with broker-dealer and RIA platforms included. Chalice Wealth Partners in San Diego is such a firm, according to Christopher Giles, president of Chalice Financial Technology. Most advisors affiliating with Chalice do so for the fintech offerings, which are aggregated from tech vendors and all accessible through a single sign-on platform, he says.
“We want to help advisors make their technology decisions, especially if they are in the $50 million to $250 million AUM range,” Giles says. “Some advisors try to bite off more than they can handle for fintech. We help them put together a plan and set priorities.”
Broker-dealers use companies such as Advicent, a software company in Milwaukee that provides an advisor-facing tool known as NaviPlan.
“It is critical for the broker-dealer to be able to offer advisors the most efficient software,” says Tom Burmeister, director of financial planning at Advicent. “A lot of advisors and teams are switching broker-dealers, and technology is a driving factor in those switches. Anything that broker-dealers can offer advisors to eliminate the barriers for advisors to talk to clients is critical.”
“We get feedback from broker-dealers on what their advisors need,” he adds.