United Planners on Its Tech: The Glue That Holds It All Together

“Our master philosophy is ‘enter once, use many,’” Sheila Cuffari-Agasi says when describing the technology employed at United Planners Financial Services.

The vice president of partner development with the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based broker-dealer notes that she keeps a “small, personal” book of business to maintain a rep’s perspective and a view of what they might need in the field. And what she finds is they need glue — yes, glue.

“From a technology perspective, United Planners is all about creating efficiencies through what we call the software glue, which helps various platforms integrate and work better together,” she explains. “We want to free up time for the advisor from doing all the administrative and compliance tasks so they can concentrate on marketing and spending time with clients.”

The firm’s Advisor Front Office “seamlessly integrates with Pershing and TD Ameritrade’s Veo, among other custodians.”  It can pull statements, auto-archive them and even file them if needed, she notes, which is especially helpful during a regulatory audit.

“We have them here so it’s not a burden to the advisor during the audit process. It also means the administrative person doesn’t have to store, file, burn them to a CD or anything else at the advisor’s office.”

UPFS is able to the “back share” the statements and files to the advisor’s own repository in one of two ways: through its own proprietary system or through Redtail technology. The advisor gets a copy, the office of supervisory jurisdiction gets a copy and it’s saved to the client’s vault as well.