“I hate having meetings, but we solved the culture problem by acknowledging it, and having more meetings,” said Deru. “We basically set up times just to talk.”
During the second quarter of 2020, AdvisorPeak is engaging upon “Operation Rebalance,” where it is offering advisors new to its rebalancing and trading platform access free of charge.
“We looked at it as a way to give back and help educate the market and the industry as well,” said Deru. “It’s free, no-strings-attatched, no contracts, no credit cards access, just come and sign in. We think that once advisors see how easy it is to use tools like ours to calculate their trades, they’re going to be adopters. We feel like rebalancing software is not utilized enough in the industry.”
Deru said that ahead of the outbreak, as many as “50%, 60%, 70%,” of advisors were not using rebalancing tools, “depending on what study you read.”
The realities of working from home during the pandemic make it a natural laboratory for advisors to experiment with new technologies, said Deru.
“It was a good litmus test for advisory firms to root out their inefficiencies, and if there’s a silver lining to all of this, they’re going to come out stronger and better on the other side,” he said. “Advisors are taking advantage of these offers to utilize software at a free and reduced price to help them through this period – we’ve seen record signups over the past two months.
“From a technology standpoint, I would encourage advisors not to be shell-shocked, but to use this as an opportunity to grow and strengthen their processes for the future.”