The Gatekeepers

Chambers might find his clients have a little more enthusiasm if they were able to have as many options and layouts to choose from as the West Hartford, Connecticut-based Eagle allows.

Launched originally as a consulting firm, Eagle shifted its focus to software in 1996 after noticing its clients were having difficulty managing data in investor’s portfolios, and also difficulty with integrating different software platforms, says John Lehner, Eagle’s president.

Its first product, PACE, a portfolio management program, is still one of the company’s primary offerings, and dovetails with the rest of the line including another product, a Web offering called Eagle Portal, which can be white labeled by clients with their own logo. “Most of our clients use it like an in-box,” says Lehner. “Their clients can go in and pull up information that’s been made available to them.”

But unlike an in-box, clients can actually customize how they see the data. While the portfolio manager determines how many reports, and what type, will be ultimately viewable to the investor, the program does allow an advisor’s client to play with what Eagle has tagged its “dashboard.” Options? Pulling up pie charts, year-to-date numbers, and quick summary charts, “That’s very popular,” says Lehner. “Clients like to see the data in graphic form.”

With the dashboard portion of the program available for the past few years, Lerner and his team are at work on the next version that will give investors even more options in how they view their data on the Web. While currently in a test run, Eagle expects to have the new version available in March 2007. “We just finished a client conference and the number one request is that we continue to enhance the portal side,” says Lehner. “As our advisors’ clients become more comfortable with the portal, they want to be able to go in and modify their views. They don’t just want to give their client a report–they want to give them flexibility.”

Highlights of the new version include allowing investors the option of choosing how they organize the way they look at their holdings. Lehner believes the additional options that advisors can offer their clients will make the investor’s experience richer–and easier–especially as reports are migrating more and more to the Web. “This is becoming the primary mechanism that advisors are using to communicate with investors,” Lehner says. “They’re not mailing or faxing reports much anymore.”

Optima Technologies: Old School

Louise Schroeder might disagree with Eagle’s Lehner. The Stillwater, Oklahoma-based investment advisor knows many of her clients spend time on the Internet, but they hire her because she can deliver more data to them in less time by building the portfolios herself. “That’s why they pay me,” she says. “They don’t feel they have the knowledge level for that.”

Many old-school advisors like Schroeder have gravitated to the portfolio management solution offered by Atlanta-based Optima Technologies. Bundled with a customer relationship management tool, the product, IAS Software, can print, e-mail, and also upload reports to an advisor’s Web site. While the software allows investors to change some of the ways they view their portfolios, there’s little tweaking allowed in terms of changing the actual report. “That came from our advisors,” says David Grace, president of Optima Technologies. “No customization.”

Instead the software firm is focusing on different kinds of tools, such as an enhancement to the billing system, allowing advisors to choose how to charge clients. Next up is a rebalancing tool for portfolios at the institutional level. Since prices for the software start at $250 a month per user, the solution is one that works for even one-man shops who can find it difficult to have both desktop and Web-based options at scalable prices.

Keith Newcomb spent six months trolling for a new portfolio management platform after he dropped his broker/dealer in 2006. While he started his firm as a fee-only practice, he is slowly moving to one that bills for assets under management. “But I’m just establishing myself on that level and it’s really hard to find a price point that makes sense,” he says.

Staying in touch with the individual user, like Newcomb, is something Grace believes is important. He wrote the first version of the software in the 1980s, sold it in the early ’90s, and has stayed very connected to IAS’s client base. It was a user group that actually contacted him several years ago and asked Grace to bring the product back, plus develop new tools. Grace knows that advisors want to have new options for the way their reports are presented, like having new fashion choices each season. But he also knows they want to be the ones who make that choice even while they want the software to actually do the work for them.

Advent: Investor Involvement

Raymond James wants to make sure its independent advisors have the option of letting their clients check reports online. For the moment, its proprietary software allows investors to access data only on a quarterly basis. Investors can’t pick their own time period for downloading reports, but that could come with a future redesign, says Joe Meyer, a technology product manager with Raymond James. Still, even if access is opened up, there are no plans to make every piece of information available to a client without an advisor’s involvement. “You want to be able to add that value,” he says. “We put up basic performance data but advisors then explain what that means. They can run a more sophisticated report.”

But how an investor experiences her time online, even if it’s just once every few months, is where Raymond James is currently focused. Starting this year, the company is beginning a large project to redesign the client’s side of its Web site.

In the meantime, Raymond James also supports Advent’s Axys software and Schwab’s PortfolioCenter if an advisor chooses to run these instead of the broker/dealer’s proprietary program.

But Advent too, is changing its portfolio management offerings. It launched a new software program, Advent Portfolio Exchange, in 2005, which can be used as a desktop download or as a hosted Web-based solution. Coupled with the firm’s WealthLine solution, in testing now, advisors will be able to create customized spreadsheets by changing the market sector they are viewing, or the way that their portfolio is grouped. “It’s a very dynamic online tool,” says William Penney, Advent’s senior director for product management in San Francisco.

Having more options to play with is always fun for advisors who spend a great deal of their time on their PCs. Giving their clients online extras can also be good for the business relationship. An investor clearly wants to feel he has some control over his money and how it’s invested. Giving him some choice in how he can view his portfolio as it grows can help him feel empowered as well.

However, it can be hard to walk the fine line between too few choices and so many that the investor grows confused and potentially dissatisfied. Even as some advisors grapple with technophobic clients, most know that investors now expect not just the option to check their portfolios online–but to also be allowed to shape the way they look at their own holdings.

“As more and more people access the Web for their banking and other transactions, they’re used to being online,” says Jim Colvin, senior VP and general manager of Windsor, Connecticut-based SS&C Technology, makers of Pacer software. “If I asked our clients three or four years ago if they wanted their investors to have Internet access to their reports, they would have said, ‘No.’ Now it’s become the norm. If we don’t offer it, we lose clients.”