Tech-savvy indies a draw for some advisers

Advisers tell me that broker-dealers are not created equal when it comes to technology support. A few, though, do have teams dedicated to helping advisers with their techno-conundrums. "Commonwealth [Financial Network] has done a great job following though with their technology promises and not every company does that," said Gary Williams, president and chief executive of Williams Asset Management, a Columbia, Md., firm that manages $80 million in assets. "There's no question I'd go with them again," he said. He spent 12 years with the Minneapolis firm now known as Ameriprise Financial Services Inc. before joining Waltham, Mass.-based Commonwealth in 2005 as a registered representative and investment adviser representative. "There's never been a time in the last three years where they [Commonwealth] couldn't come up with an answer to any technology problem I was having," Mr. Williams said, even if that meant having a support technician take over his PC remotely. "Every time I called Amerprise [for tech support] it would cost me $95," he said. Advisers interviewed for this and other stories have agreed that Commonwealth is a model firm when it comes to how it handles the technology needs of the advisers it serves. One-quarter of the firm's 400 employees work in the IT department. "Our rep tech-help desk, alone, has 26 employees split between Waltham and San Diego," said Darren Tedesco, director of business systems and strategic development.

TECHNOLOGY EDGE

Other broker-dealers have mounted concerted efforts in the last few years to gain a technology edge and have enlisted it as a carrot to attract new advisers. One firm that is having success in that effort is St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Raymond James Financial Services Inc. Joe Amalfitano left New York-based Smith Barney in March to go independent and said that technology support was one of the key reasons he chose to affiliate with Raymond James. "When I got over here I was shocked how comparable, if not superior, Raymond James' technology was to that of Smith Barney," he said. Two things impressed him most, Mr. Amalfitano said. First was the efficiency of the transition team that worked with him to get his office up and running. One tech person even spent a week at Mr. Amalfitano's new office in King of Prussia, Pa., to make sure everything was networked properly and working. "The other thing that got me is how the automated customer account transfer system is so well-integrated with Raymond James' systems," Mr. Amalfitano said. That system allowed him not only to quickly and efficiently move his 350 accounts worth $100 million in assets from Smith Barney to Raymond James, but he could also look up real-time estimates of how long the process was going to take for a particular account and be able to share that with the client. Steven B. Siskin, a Raymond James branch manager in Encino, Calif., with $100 million in assets under management, said that he took comfort in all the real-time data that Raymond James was feeding its advisers over its platform, RJNet. "It has been very helpful because the info is so current," Mr. Siskin said. He added that Raymond James also held frequent online video conferences covering its technology platform to help advisers understand what effect the constantly up-and-down market was having. Mr. Siskin said he found the information very valuable in his constant dealings with clients. Several other broker-dealers have burgeoning technology teams as well. Roxanne Wieland, director of field technology for Omaha, Neb.-based broker-dealer Securities America Inc., said that 50 of the firm's 400 staff members are engaged in technology support for its more than 1,500 advisers. These technology experts are divided among a practice-management department, a training group and a help desk, as well as an eight-member field team that is soon to grow to 10. Attendees at the company's annual conference questioned Ms. Wieland about going paperless, she said, adding that one of the firm's big initiatives was educating advisers about e-signatures. "Advisers would come up and say 'I really don't want to rent another room for storage cabinets. What do you have?'" she said. E-mail Davis D. Janowski at djanowski@investmentnews.com.