Most advisors can access the technology to offer their clients a portal to interact with their finances, but according to Omaha-based Orion Advisor Solutions, relatively few clients end up using them.
In hopes of rectifying that problem, Orion recently announced updates to its client portal related to the integration with Apex it announced last week. Via the integration, users can now set up an account with the custodian, engage in financial planning and manage a portfolio from a single login linked to Orion’s prospecting and portfolio reporting technology.
“We built our legacy portal to support our core mission at the time,” Orion CEO Eric Clarke said in released comments. “It is still a robust, white-labeled solution for investors to see their key portfolio and investment information. But when we acquired Advizr’s powerful planning tools and user interface in the summer of 2019, we understood our mission had expanded to encompass a more complete fiduciary process. A year later, we’re proud to reveal a new portal that brings together everything an investor needs and expects from their advisor.”
The updated Orion Client Portal is built upon Orion Planning’s interface and includes most of the features of Orion’s legacy portal: access to investment performance reports, balance sheets and portfolio account details. Aside from the new interface, additions include access to planning tools, account aggregation, custodial services and a document vault.
The updates create a unified experience for a client’s whole financial experience that will reduce the need to shift between portals.
Currently, overall adoption of portals by advisors’ clients stands at 10-12%, according to research cited by Orion, partially due to the login fatigue of using multiple, potentally clashing client portals to reach all of their financial information.
The fintech firm says that use of client portals has risen during the Covid-19 pandemic, reporting a 20% increase in portal logins during the market volatility of February and March of this year.
“In today’s remote service world, digital first impressions matter,” said Hussain Zaidi, Orion’s chief strategy officer, in comments released to media. “… Advisors struggle to offer coherent service when investors are forced to juggle multiple portals just to understand their complete financial picture. Advisors can no longer settle for an archaic, fragmented collection of portals that hamstring client engagement and frustrate new prospects.”