“Technology has become a key differentiator in being able to help advisors thrive in today’s environment,” Pettman says. “Being able to invest today and over the long run in the technology and capabilities that advisors need will be a key to attracting and retaining advisors.”
BNY Mellon’s Pershing
Pershing, based in Jersey City, N.J., is one of those custodians that prides itself on staying out of the advisor’s way and in the background, letting the RIAs brand its products as their own.
One of the company’s lead offerings is its NetX360 platform. “More advisors are breaking away from wirehouses, and NetX360 provides services to broker-dealers, RIAs and dually registered RIAs who break away,” says Christina Townsend, the recently appointed head of Pershing Advisor Solutions’ platform strategy. Townsend is charged with leading the firm’s technology for the RIA segment and expanding its tech consulting capabilities.
“We do not have a direct-to-consumer model,” she says. “We are allowing the advisor to initiate the action with the client and we provide the backbone of support.”
Michelle Feinstein, the director of product strategy and client engagement at Pershing, adds that Pershing partners with third party providers. “This is more than just having a single sign-on for the client; it means true integration with the providers.”
This year, the company announced it is making a multiyear investment of more than $50 million, in part to add eight new application programming interfaces (APIs) by the end of the year that connect with advisors’ workstations.
Pershing has launched a next-generation integration service that it calls “componentization” that adds capabilities to its NetXServices solution. Through the new program, Pershing provides digital components that are ready-to-use and come packaged with Pershing connectivity and work-flow information for a rapid setup. Many advisors still do not have efficient work-flow programs and continue to rely too much on paper, Feinstein says.
With the Pershing platform, advisors can integrate financial planning and market research. Users can also integrate block trading and rebalancing in conjunction with all of the client’s assets in a single portfolio.
“Looking into the near future, clients want a better user experience with more personalized features that will provide them with more control over how the data is presented to them,” Pershing says.