Advent's new spirit of openness means more support for RIAs

A new spirit of openness appears to be permeating Advent Software Inc. One indicator of this is that for the first time in its 30-year history, journalists were invited to attend Advent's national conference in Boston last week. When it comes to registered investment advisers, indications point toward much greater willingness on the part of Advent to listen to and address their business needs. Representatives of RIA firms made up a small but significant portion of the 1,200 attendees at the conference, and several sessions highlighted or actively included Black Diamond Performance Reporting LLC, the mostly RIA-focused portfolio management and reporting firm acquired by Advent in April. Of the 170 RIA firms represented at the conference, 33 are clients of Black Diamond. The bulk of the remaining attendees represented asset management firms that use Advent.

MISTAKES MADE

In an interview at the conference, Advent president Peter Hess admitted that mistakes had been made by previous leadership at the company, especially when it came to working with RIAs. He said, however, that a new era has begun and as proof, he reaffirmed his commitment to keeping Black Diamond functioning as an independent unit within Advent. “We have already seen plenty of synergy where we least expected it,” Mr. Hess said, referring to cooperation between the sales teams of Advent's Axys and APX product lines, and that of Black Diamond. As evidence of continued momentum post-acquisition, he pointed to steady Black Diamond sales. “In fact, we are no longer losing out on occasion to Black Diamond,” Mr. Hess quipped, referring to competition from the firm before its acquisition. One bit of non-news that nonetheless is newsworthy — confirmed by Mr. Hess in our conversation and reiterated in several sessions at the conference — is that there are no plans to discontinue Advent's Axys application. Axys, which has been around for more than a decade and has undergone several major upgrades, is used by 3,000 Advent clients, including a mix of advisory and asset management firms, as well as hedge funds. During his introductory remarks for one session, Anthony Sperling, senior vice president and general manager of Advent's asset management group, referred to Mr. Hess' general session remarks, saying that Axys is not going anywhere. “As long as it continues to meet your needs, we are happy to continue supporting it,” he said. Advent is continuing to make significant upgrades, most recently including support for the Microsoft Windows 7 operating system, meaning that advisers using the system finally can upgrade to new PCs running the system, according to Chris Flynn, a vice president of product management in the asset management group. Axys also has made major upgrades to support cost basis legislation and soon will be able to produce a Form 1099 reconciliation report. One session attracted more than 30 attendees, many of them asset managers. Titled “Which Platform For Our Firm?” it outlined for the attendees which of Advent's four accounting platforms (Axys, Advent Portfolio Exchange, Black Diamond or Geneva) is most applicable to which type and size of firm. One adviser at this session, a longtime user of Axys who declined to give his name, said that he would not have attended the conference were it not for the Black Diamond acquisition and his interest in migrating to that platform. Compared with other industry events, Advent's conference was far less focused on news and announcements — half of its sessions were purely educational. However, a few developments significant to advisers were discussed. For example, an integrated re-balancing engine is in development and entering alpha with a handful of Black Diamond clients.

RE-BALANCING TOOL

While this will not interfere with the integrations that connect third-party re-balancing vendors RedBlack Software Inc. and iRebal (now a subsidiary of TD Ameritrade Institutional), the new re-balancing initiative came at the behest of Black Diamond clients seeking a completely internalized set of features. Dave Welling, the former Black Diamond executive who is now Advent's vice president of sales, marketing and client services, said that the unit has several other initiatives under way, including additional enhancements to its open-architecture BlueSky platform, rolled out last year. These include several third-party integrations under development and additional features for Black Diamond's popular iPad application. Probably most anticipated by advisers is the introduction of some automated alternative-investment features. Working with and bringing in these assets to Black Diamond has been largely a manual affair to date but is an area where Advent has a lot of expertise. A new Advent wrinkle that could prove of interest to many — mainly larger — RIA firms with diverse accounts to manage is a partnership and integration project currently under way between the Advent custodial data group and third-party account aggregation provider ByAllAccounts Inc. This is a positive development that will be of interest to a lot of the group's 2,500 custodial customers, which include asset management firms. The custodial group provides data on 2.5 million accounts from thousands of institutions on a daily basis, while ByAllAccounts has grown popular among advisers for providing aggregated data feeds from a diverse set of held-away account types, some of which are not covered by Advent. This is a small subset of feeds, comprising primarily retail data, including those of retirement accounts, that are difficult to get on a direct custodial feed. Advent is phasing in its rollout, which will begin with its outsourced Advent OnDemand clients and is planned for some time in the first quarter of 2012, with remaining clients gaining access in the second quarter. Email Davis Janowski at djanowski@investmentnews.com