All iPad-toting financial advisers who clear through National Financial Services LLC, rejoice.
The firm has rolled out an iPad version of Streetscape, its broker workstation, which is used by 300 correspondent and independent broker-dealers around the country.
On the road and need to pull up a client's information? Look cool and be productive by opening the file on your iPad using SSL encryption (the application requires both a password and another piece of required information, just as your workstation does).
Sure, there are things you still can't do with the app.
For example, you must be logged in to your workstation to move money or open an account, but for many of your workaday tasks, the new app should serve fine. (Both of the above-mentioned tasks are up for consideration in future releases.)
The Streetscape iPad app provides brokers and advisers with access to brokerage data, including clients' holdings, account balances and orders, as well as with their order histories, suitability information and alerts.
Users also have access to the watch lists they have set up on their workstation.
To download the app from the Apple Store, brokers must have an account on Streetscape.
If some parts of the app look familiar to hybrid advisers, it is because National Financial has incorporated in it some components of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Management's WealthCentral mobile applications, which were developed for iPhones, Androids and iPads.
“Their look and feel and navigation are very similar,” said Richard N. Hart III, senior vice president and head of platform solutions at National Financial. “Just as IWS did with taking the best of Fidelity.com and applying it to WealthCentral, we have done with Streetscape and My-Streetscape — build once across the complex and reuse where it makes the most sense.”
With their broker-dealer's permission, advisers can trade equities and mutual funds on the app.
“If a firm wants to put their look and feel and logos on [the app], we have the ability,” Mr. Hart said.
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Regular readers know I am an advocate for standards in the advisory industry. In the many instances where standards are lacking, I advocate out-of-the-box thinking.
In a bit of a departure, the hybrid advisory firm United Planners Financial Services of America has formed a partnership with Finance Logix, a division of Oltis Software LLC, to put the latter's financial planning software platform, also called Finance Logix, front and center.
For those unfamiliar with United Planners, it is both an independent broker-dealer and registered investment adviser.
What the firm intends to do is different, in that RIAs typically make customer relationship management software both the main front-office access point and hub of their advisers' daily operations, while broker-dealers use their account manage- ment systems to fill that role.
I spoke at length with Aaron Spradlin, vice president of information technology at United Planners.
He said that United Planners, which already uses client vaults and portals from Finance Logix, now is the process of linking its CRM system from Redtail Technologies and the Finance Logix financial planning software.
“It is a strategic initiative, a core thing that we think gives us an advantage in the long term,” he said. “When you are talking about the investment adviser, the financial plan should be core to the client engagement process with a collaborative integration with the CRM system,” Mr. Spradlin said.
“As a team, we are all focused on the client. The fiduciary piece should come first, so we asked ourselves, "How are we facilitating that process?'” Mr. Spradlin added as a way of explaining the logic behind United Planners' plan.
The partnership between Finance Logix and United Planners still is in the early stages.
I will provide a more detailed outline of where this is headed on my blog this week, but suffice it to say that this will be an interesting and unusual ecosystem.
djanowski@investmentnews.com Twitter: @ddjanowski
