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Technology > Marketing Technology

New RIA in a Box Open API Helps Advisors With Compliance: T3 Tech Roundup

By Jeff Berman

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RIA in a Box used the Technology Tools for Today Advisor Conference in San Diego to introduce a new open application programming interface Tuesday for its MyRIACompliance tool.

The new open API will allow technology providers and RIA firms to connect into the MyRIACompliance platform to “ensure that compliance requirements are addressed quickly,” RIA in a Box said.

Although RIA in a Box already integrates with several leading industry vendors, the new open API will enable additional technology providers and “even tech-savvy RIA firms to plug directly into” the compliance software, it said. The API platform is live and available to all current MyRIACompliance clients.

One use case for the new open API is integrating third-party data sources from portfolio management systems with the MyRIACompliance software to allow firms to “seamlessly track registrations and notice filings in real time,” the company said.

The other use case enables integrations with additional customer relationship management solutions providers to view and complete tailored regulatory compliance tasks, all within the CRM’s task and calendar system, it said.

That type of integration “allows for increased engagement with clients, streamlined operations, and automated completion of regulatory compliance requirements,” according to RIA in a Box. It also “removes the need for an RIA firm to manage multiple calendars or log into multiple software systems and automatically stores all compliance activities completed within the CRM in the firm’s MyRIACompliance digital compliance log,” the firm said.

Also, RIA in a Box can now add new use cases for the API as technology providers and RIA firms look for ways to connect directly into MyRIACompliance, either by accessing their data to display into other dashboards, or by pushing relevant data from other technology systems into MyRIACompliance, it said.

“It was important for us to develop the open API for MyRIACompliance because we understand that we are a critical compliance technology and data hub for thousands of firms around the country,” according to GJ King, RIA in a Box president. 

“By unveiling this API, we invite other leading technology providers in the industry and even RIA firms themselves to push data into our system to save compliance officers time and create deeper integrations within the tech stack,” he said in a statement.

New AI-Powered Tech Solution for Advisors Introduced

Andrew Altfest, president of RIA Altfest Personal Wealth Management, launched FP Alpha, telling T3 attendees that the new wealth management platform uses artificial intelligence.

The software “enables advisors to transform financial planning into comprehensive wealth management by streamlining financial planning processes and offering more services to clients,” he said.

FP Alpha was “designed to easily integrate with financial planning software on the market today, he said, noting its technology “allows advisors to scale efficiently and decrease the burden of time-consuming spreadsheets, checklists and labor-intensive tasks — enabling them to save time in the process and add more value to client relationships.”

By cutting down on “laborious, manual tasks within wealth management services and financial planning processes, FP Alpha helps advisors deploy high impact and personalized recommendations to clients in a scalable, intelligent and cost-efficient manner,” he said.

FP Alpha gives advisors a “competitive advantage as fee-compression continues to affect the advisory space,” according to Joel Bruckenstein, T3 CEO and founder. The new technology offers “impactful recommendations with limited insight into a prospect’s financial and personal circumstances — jump-starting relationships and allowing planning to be a living, breathing experience for all parties,” he said in a statement. “I believe this technology is essential to the evolution of the industry as we enter into a new generation of wealth.”

The “tangible benefits” of FP Alpha, along with its “compelling output displays, enable advisors to demonstrate their value beyond investments and differentiate themselves from robo-advisors and discount alternatives, while justifying their fees and showcasing value,” according to Altfest.

He has been in the financial advisory business for more than 15 years and had yet to have “access to a technology that gives me the tools I need to provide the high impact comprehensive wealth advice my clients were requesting,” he said in a statement.

However, the “emergence of artificial intelligence allowed us to build a tool that meets clients’ needs for more in-depth financial planning services while analyzing their financial wellness on a deeper level than humanly possible,” he said.

In the past, when “working comprehensively, there has been no way to scale, while the robo-model has essentially commoditized basic planning,” he noted, adding: “Our industry needed a user-friendly wealth management tool that allows us to cover more ground quickly and gives us an edge as premium service providers, which is what FP Alpha provides.”

FP Alpha is “powered by insights from the industry’s top minds” and was “built by financial planning and wealth management experts,” according to Altfest. As a result, advisors can use it to create a comprehensive plan and “build a solution for clients across planning disciplines.”

Advisors can also “engage with educational videos that simplify complex categories” including auto insurance, divorce planning, disability insurance, estate planning, life insurance, medical insurance, property tax, protection from identity theft, student debt, tax planning and variable annuities, he said.

Orion Debuts New Interface

Orion Advisor Tech introduced a new Orion Connect experience, which it called a “reimagined, next-generation” user interface.

The new experience combines Orion’s “core app-centric model for grouping essential capabilities with a flexible dashboard-based layout” that the firm said at T3 enables users to “take quick action and easily move throughout the platform.”

In creating Orion Connect, the company said it drew from “meticulous analysis of user behavior and feedback from a focused group of superusers across a range of roles and business models.” The new home experience was designed to “highlight, centralize, and operationalize information crucial to an advisor’s day-to-day responsibilities, like client portfolio data, RMD reports, new account workflows, and more,” it said.

Users also have the ability to personalize home screen views via a custom card library — a collection of widgets displaying different business data, the company said. This way, advisors “can start each day armed with the data they need most, at a glance,” it said.

A key goal of the new interface was to give users “more flexibility and options for personalization,” Orion also said. To support that, advisors will be able to build their own home-screen experience by choosing from dozens of data cards to surface the information most relevant to their jobs, including account summaries, a list of frequently used reports and queries, portfolios out-of-tolerance and reconciliation status, it said.

“Each card offers a one-click direct path to additional information across the platform, so advisors no longer need to remember where the data lives,” Orion noted.

Some cards also “empower advisors to complete common tasks without leaving the home dashboard,” it pointed out.

“Another driving redesign mandate was to enable users to more easily manage client data and related tasks,” the company said. With that in mind, in the new Orion home-screen experience, a simple client search “leads to an intuitively designed portfolio tree, a collection of key client insights that connect related household details, such as account summaries, goals, allocation aspects, performance and more, to help advisors make more informed decisions,” it said.

Administrators and executives can also use the Orion home experience to gauge the performance of advisors, Orion said, noting the home dashboard can be filtered by advisor, “unlocking easy metrics for analysis of the health of each advisor’s business and other valuable insights.”

— Check out Orion, MaxMyInterest Give Advisors New Client Cash Solution on ThinkAdvisor.

Jeff Berman

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