Newtown Square, Pa.-based TradingFront, which offers an end-to-end wealth management platform for RIAs, announced on Wednesday the launch of a new integrated white-label advisor and client platform in partnership with Interactive Brokers.

Wednesday’s announcement ushers in a platform that unifies technology, brokerage and clearing and custody services in one package priced well below the industry average, said Yang Xu, TradingFront founder.

“The first platform we had build wasn’t really seamless enough,” said Xu. “The new platform can serve the whole client cycle. RIAs need to serve the end client, and they have a fiduciary duty to find the service that is the best fit for their client.  The whole industry is changing rapidly, and we think what we’re offering is a good fit for the advisor community.”

Advisors will be able to use the combined services starting at a $100 flat fee per month for up to 100 client accounts or $10 million in AUM, at the advisor’s discretion. Thereafter, advisors electing to be charged by account will pay $1.50 per account per month for every account over 100, or a maximum of 8 bps annually for AUM over $10 million.

TradingFront offers advisors a turnkey, integrated platform that the firm describes as easy-to-use for both advisors and clients. Taking an all-in-one approach, the platform includes digital client on-boarding, white-labeling, client-relationship management, customizable questionnaires to assess among other things a client’s risk tolerance, rebalancing, performance reporting, compliance features, data aggregation and a mobile application, among other features, all folded into a single platform.

Xu says the firm preferred to take an all-in-one approach to offer advisors simplicity and to keep costs low.

“The open-architecture approach is not good for the small- to mid-sized RIA, especially in the beginning when they’re getting started,” he said. “We believe our platform can best serve these small- to mid-sized RIAs by doing everything in-house.”

TradingFront has had a working relationship with Interactive Brokers since it launched its concept in 2015 and 2016 after being spun of from AlphaArchitect as a response to the proliferation and growth of business-to-consumer roboadvisors like WealthFront and Betterment.  In March 2018, it was acquired by Tiger Brokers, an Asia-Pacific-oriented online brokerage of which Interactive Brokers had bought a stake in 2017.

In the future, the firm will explore additional integrations and consider working with other RIA custodians, said Xu, but TradingFront’s continued focus will be on building and maintaining a holistic platform for advisors.

“Interactive Brokers is the custodian we think of as the best fit for the advisor community, because they’re a transparent, affordable, high-quality custodian,” said Xu. “By focusing on working with them, we get a deeper integration with their platform and everything looks more seamless. They also don’t’ have a direct-to-consumer business arm, they’re not competing directly with RIAs.”

TradingFront was founded to focus on the RIA marketplace, particularly small-to-mid-sized RIAs, breakaways, and younger industry entrants, said Xu. “No one is serving those guys properly – everyone loves the big fish, but we wanted to get something started for the smaller guys.”

Recent consolidation of RIA custodians and RIA technology firms may leave advisors seeking new partners, said Xu.

“TD Ameritrade, Motif, E*Trade all appealed to smaller advisors, and the mergers potentially leave 10,000 in limbo,” he said. “Schwab and Morgan Stanley can play with minimum AUM, but we feel like it’s a big uncertainty. We don’t want to go out to market with a service where you can’t serve everybody and anybody. That’s where fintech is moving towards.”

Independent advisors are challenged to keep up with wirehouses and other financial services firms launching their own direct-to-consumer roboadvisor platforms, said Xu, and it’s unreasonable to expect smaller advisors to put all of the pieces together to offer a similar service themselves.

Many of these advisors are looking for a “just right” solution, said Xu. They don’t want to incur the expenses of time, money and effort to build their own technology stack component by component, they want something very easy to use and set up out of the box, but many also seek an offering that allows them to more deeply personalize client experience than many of the other low-cost technology offerings on the market.

While Oranj, with its “freemium” service model, remains the least expensive end-to-end RIA technology offering on the market, Xu said that the new TradingFront solution offers advisors more by bundling brokerage and custodial services into its costs.

TradingFront beta tested the new platform in November and December of 2019, said Xu, and already has 35 RIAs on board.

“This was not a great time to start, but from what we’ve been hearing from advisors, quite a few more in February and January were reluctant to try new platforms or upgrade,” said Xu. “After that they got back to us in March, because now suddenly everyone is working from home, and they need new technology to facilitate communication while working remotely. Quite a few advisors see the need for an upgrade, the need to try a new platform to help them hold onto their clients and to make their lives a little easier.”