Fidelity
Boston-based Fidelity has also taken a comprehensive, multipronged approach to addressing RIAs’ technology demands. Fidelity’s Wealthscape platform includes account opening, trading solutions, reports, market data and research, modeling and rebalancing, risk management and compliance tools, as well as mobile capabilities.
Fidelity recently updated Wealthscape with advanced rebalancing enabling household, asset class and tax-optimized rebalancing.
In 2015, Fidelity bought financial planning software provider eMoney and immediately embarked on linking Wealthscape to it through a series of deep integrations, says Tom McCarthy, head of platform technology for Fidelity Institutional. “Today, with many of the planning tools out there, once you’ve exercised financial planning with a client you have to swivel over to a different platform to re-enter data, open accounts and fund them. We’ve hard-wired eMoney and Wealthscape together to allow advisors to seamlessly transition back and forth between planning and action.”
Information now moves seamlessly between Wealthscape’s client data repository into the eMoney planning functions, then back into Fidelity’s portfolio tools.
The company also recently added a regulatory “Early Warning System” that uses web-crawling capabilities to scan the websites of regulatory organizations for updates relevant to individual firms.
In 2018, Fidelity plans to add fee billing to Wealthscape to help advisors reduce time in invoicing. Also in the works is the Automated Managed Platform (AMP), a digital advice solution that allows advisors to scale down to serve low-net-worth and small account clients efficiently, and to offer digital-facing service to tech-savvy clients.
“We’ve seen a wide chasm of firms where basic services don’t meet their needs,” says McCarthy. “Optimal solutions often have a high price tag; we’re trying to find something in the middle to serve a broader swath of clients.”
Pershing
At Jersey City, N.J.’s Pershing Advisor Solutions, the custodian’s main focus is on enterprising advisory firms serving high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients; however, the company’s client base remains large and diverse enough to require a full suite of technological solutions for RIAs.