TD Ameritrade Institutional kicked off its national advisor conference Thursday with visions of automated assistants using big data to help advisors make timely strategic decisions.
Organizers at the event in San Diego even gave Amazon’s Alexa digital assistant a front-row reserved seat for the opening session, quizzing her about the mass of the sun and asking her to tell a joke.
“We’ve got big plans for big data,” said Tom Nally, president of TD Ameritrade Institutional, before nearly 2,000 advisors at the San Diego event.
A first step toward the virtual assistant of the future will be a rollout later this year of VeoOne Analytics, an on-demand data-analytics engine.
VeoOne is TD Ameritrade’s RIA workstation, which the company is populating with 15 years worth of data from FA Insight, the research firm it bought last year, together with internal data from advisor activity.
The workstation’s Analytics piece “will be a data engine built right into VeoOne,” Nally said, “with easy access for deep insights into your client base [and] an opportunity to act in real time.”
TDA officials stressed that the data-mining will be personalized and simple to use, tracking clients, business operations, growth factors and financial performance. Links to relevant studies, webcasts and other resources that could help improve performance will be provided. Advisors can also work with the firm’s consultants based on the findings.
The firm already provides personalized snapshots of key business analytics, but advisors have to request the reports through their relationship managers. VeoOne Analytics will be on-demand.
“We’re trying to keep it really simple,” said John Ruda, managing director of strategic planning and analytics, in a meeting with reporters. “We want to give [advisors] context and help them understand how their results compare” to peer groups of similar advisors.
The firm will be adding compensation and staffing data at some point, added Vanessa Oligino, director of business performance solutions, so advisors can determine appropriate staffing and pay levels.