Can two serve more efficiently as one?

Three months after the creation of Thomson Reuters, company executives are promising financial advisers that an improved platform is on the way. Meanwhile, advisers are hoping that the combined giant can get past the integration stage and actually deliver. "What advisers will find is a window, a portal into a vastly more robust set of content," said Debra Walton, the global head of market development for New York-based Thomson Reuters, describing the eventual combined adviser platform. Yet the look and feel of the company's upgraded offering won't be a dramatic departure, she said. Some changes already have been made.
The 125,000 advisers and other professionals who use the electronic Thomson One Wealth Management platform, for instance, are now able to access Reuters News, fund data from New York-based Lipper Inc. and other Reuters content not previously available, and at no additional cost, for now. Designed for enterprisewide use at brokerage firms and offering 140 content modules sold in various combinations, the typical Thomson One installation ranges in cost from $100 to $300 per month per user. Customers using the Reuters 3000 Xtra trading platform or Reuters Knowledge, an information and analytics tool for money managers, either already have or soon will have access to Thomson's Street-Events content, Tradeweb benchmark fixed-income data, Thomson's municipal data, and IFR capital markets news. Over the next 18 months, the company will run a pilot of a new customer relationship management system called Book Connections and overhaul the performance-reporting, portfolio-planning, asset allocation and financial planning functions of Thomson One. It also plans to combine the capabilities of four online products — Reuters Knowledge Direct, Lipper databases, Thomson's iWealth and InvestmentView — into one platform available via a web interface. InvestmentView, a software tool used by advisers for comparing mutual funds, will be enhanced, the company said, and integrated with Lipper classification data that was available previously as an extra-cost add-on. As advisers learn of the coming improvements, many are hopeful but uncertain. "I think it's just too early to tell how well this will all be integrated for advisers," said a brokerage firm executive who has used Thomson One for many years. "What they need is a benign dictator to put it all together. But if anyone has a shot at pulling off a true end-to-end technology solution for advisers, it's Thomson Reuters." One technology executive at a large broker-dealer, who asked not to be identified, summed up the sentiments of colleagues and advisers who are skeptical about the post-merger changes. "To the everyday adviser or rep, this is just one more company mash-up," the executive said. While satisfying and retaining its current clients, Thomson Reuters also must try to lure brokerage and advisory firm clients away from the competition. This could be a challenge. For instance, results of the "Practitioner Technology Report," released in July by the Denver-based Financial Planning Association, found that 84% of respondents used web products from Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. to find product and market information, while 14% made use of similar products from Thomson. Reuters users were mixed in with the 29% of respondents who selected "other." A simplification of the company's product nomenclature could help the sales effort. "We will be rolling out a new branding scheme towards the end of the year," Ms. Walton said. E-mail Davis D. Janowski at djanowski@investmentnews.com.