As it acknowledges signs of rising technological adoption and innovation among its clients, Fidelity is offering advisory firms, broker-dealers and fintechs an array of new tools to help them build and customize their technology.

Fidelity announced today that is expanding its Integration Xchange open-architecture digital store with new functions, support and updated integrations with AdvisorEngine, Black Diamond, Redtail, Orion, Riskalyze and BlackRock’s Advisor Center.

The Integration Xchange, at heart, offers advisors and broker-dealers and fintech firms a universe of integrations with over 200 third-party technology providers via APIs that they can use to customize their technology stacks,  said Lisa Burns, head of platform technology at Fidelity Institutional.

While Fidelity does offer an all-in-one solution, WealthScape, most of its client firms also choose to work with third-party technology providers. In the recent 2020 Fidelity Financial Advisor Community COVID Series -- Technology Study of more than 300 advisors, more than half of the respondents reported working with at least 6 third-party fintech firms, and 94% of the respondents felt like the number of technology providers they worked with will increase or remain the same over the next five years.

Over 90% of Fidelity’s clients use at least one of its third-party integrated vendors, said Burns.

“We’ve recognized that for our clients, there’s not one single solution that meets all their needs, we need to make sure we have choice and flexibility,” said Burns. “Across the marketplace, we’re seeing that the integration of solutions is the winning solution for advisors in lieu of the all-in-one tech solution.”

Companies like Fidelity also realize that with the diversity of their institutional clients, there isn’t really a “single solution” that would meet all of their needs, said Burns, so they have to offer both choice and flexibility to advisory firms and broker-dealers.

The updates to the Integration Xchange include  smart API filtering to allow users to more easily navigate Fidelity’s API inventory based on their business needs and the type of API being offered.

Advisors and tech developers will also have access to additional functions to manage integrations, like the ability to view fintech transmission rules within the Integration Xchange. Additional APIs have been added to the store’s “Try It Out” feature that allows firms to test-drive integration prototypes before moving forward with a full build.

“Advisors and third-party vendors want to understand the inventory of services available to them, and then they want to test those services out,” said Burns.

Step-by-step tutorial videos and other support resources for self-service are also included in the latest update.

A new WealthScape integration with AdvisorEngine will allow account opening, ACH, ACATs, non-ACATS, delivery of an IPS and a daily data feed that AdvisorEngine can use to provide performance analysis and reporting for advisors and end-clients, and to calculate advisory fee billing.

WealthScape’s single sign-on can now be used to seamlessly access BlackRock’s Advisor Center, and advisors using Fidelity’s custody and clearing platform can now analyze Fidelity model portfolios along side BlackRock  model portfolios using BlackRock’s tools and compare portfolios, identify areas of risk, anticipate tax impacts and create client proposals.

A Black Diamond integration allows contextual linking capabilities, and allows Fidelity alerts to be viewed within Black Diamond. Real-time alerts from WealthScape have also been integrated into Orion  Insight Tiles and Redtail’s CRM. And advisors can now add Fidelity clients in Riskalyze and sync account data, including positions and balances on-demand and intra-day.

Fidelity’s Technology Study survey, released earlier this month, also found that 67% of advisors felt that Covid-19 was prompting their firms to look at new technologies to potentially add to their existing platforms.

“One challenge firms have struggled with is getting advisors to really adopt the technology they have available to them and get the most of of their tools,” said Burns. “Now, adoption is being driven by a need to use digital solutions. Instead of us pushing adoption, advisors are wanting to adopt technology at an increasing pace.”

The survey also found that 82% of respondents expect the importance of integrations to increase over the time – none of the respondents expected it to decrease. For a number of these respondents, 25%, keeping up with the latest technology solutions presented a serious challenge during the Covid-19 crisis, and 32% of the respondents expected staying up-to-date to be one of their biggest technology challenges post-pandemic.

Integrations are becoming more important to advisors as they’re faced with more choices and as they adopt  solutions from a greater of vendor, said Burns. While building custom technology solutions via APIs was once primarily the realm of large broker-dealers and a handful of super-sized RIAs, smaller RIAs are now seeking integrations.

Integration Xchange launched in October 2018 as more of an an educational platform to help firms tailor their own technology platforms.

“We recognized that it would be great to have a single destination where clients and third-party vendors could go to do that early exploration and experiment on their own,” said Burns. “That evolved to expand into more self service, with the ability to test out APIs for our developer’s community.”