Mobile adviser dashboard? There’s a Merrill app for that

Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. announced Wednesday the rollout of a new mobile app for its advisers to access all the information from their adviser dashboard on a desktop via smartphone in an effort to ease the transition from remote work to back-to-office life. 

The "mobile adviser experience," or “MAX” for short, is automatically available on all advisers' corporate work phones as a customizable mobile dashboard to access frequently required information about clients, such as wealth planning reports, investment proposals, holdings allocation, performance, balance, available funds, and gain-loss activity. 

The app includes Salesforce integration for advisers to engage with clients while creating notes and tasks visible to the entire advisory firm. 

“We have access to almost anything we want on our phones, so there's no reason why a financial adviser shouldn't have his or her practices, information and clients information on their phones,'' said Kabir Sethi, head of digital wealth management for Merrill and Bank of America Private Bank. 

Merrill gave InvestmentNews a demo of the app. It’s designed for an adviser to pick and choose which tools are presented first, whether it be a calendar, meetings for the day, or client reviews. 

A sharing function is also available so advisers can send compliant emails, texts or social content just by clicking on the “email” or “socialize” tabs within the app, said Michael Lestina , director at Merrill Lynch who manages mobile, social & collaboration strategy. 

Advisers can even connect the app to an Apple TV and use their smartphone as a remote control to present a report when meeting with a client. “Advisers have the ability to share reports off to multiple devices with no Internet or WiFi required,” Lestina said. “It’s direct device-to-device communication.”  

The ability to make text and video calls to clients as well as voice integrations to use Bank of America’s artificial intelligence assistant Erica will be rolling out next year, Sethi said. 

The launch of Merrill’s MAX app is the latest digital innovation Merrill has rolled out in the last year for its network of advisers. In March, Merrill launched Digital Wealth Overview for advisers to send narrated and personalized videos for client accounts.

Last summer, the wirehouse launched Personal Wealth Analysis just two months after it unveiled its tech-driven workstation, Client Engagement Workstation, a browser-like platform personalized for financial advisers to manage and connect with their clientele.