Organize the Data: Idea File

Advisor360° has an idea for help financial services organizations increase sales efficiency: eliminate the client data scavenger hunt.

Darren Tedesco, the president of the Weston, Massachusetts-based wealth tech firm, says the company aims to give distributors, and advisors, a consistent, unified, easy-to-use view of each client household’s finances.

“The secret sauce is what you do up front,” Tedesco said last week in an interview. “Understanding what advisors need.”

(Related: Why the Commonwealth-MassMutual Tie-Up Is a ‘Big Deal’)

Commonwealth Financial Network, the largest independent broker-dealer in the United States, created Advisor360° in early 2019, by turning its own advisor platform team into a stand-alone company. Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company then agreed to use Advisor360° technology, to help MassMutual advisors and field partners with activities such as customer relationship management, workflow management and portfolio oversight.

Commonwealth Financial and Commonwealth Financial

For people involved in life insurance, one thing the technology deal did was lead to some confusion about which Commonwealth Financial everyone was talking about.

Commonwealth Financial Group is a Boston-based general agency that has been helping MassMutual distribute its products since 1857.

Common Financial Network is a separate company. Joseph Deitch, a financial professional with experience at Mass Indemnity and New England Life, formed the Cambridge Group, a financial planning firm, in 1978, and then started Commonwealth Equity Services, the independent broker-dealer that now goes by the name Commonwealth Financial Network, in 1979.

Commonwealth Financial Network began developing the technology at the heart of Advisor360° in 2003.

Advisor360° has been supporting the MassMutual relationship by beefing up tools advisors can use to manage products such as life insurance, annuities, disability insurance and long-term care insurance, and, for example, see the names of the beneficiaries, and any policy expiration dates or deadlines.

A broker-dealer can also integrate carrier servicing and in-force illustration platforms into the system.

Depending on how a broker-dealer’s system is set up, an advisor may, for example, be able to filter a database to create a mailing list consisting of clients with life insurance policies that are about to expire.

Advisor360° is also offering broker-dealers a new user feedback tool, to help advisors and other system users to submit and rate system improvement ideas.

Advisor Tech Thoughts

Tedesco was the managing principal for innovation and strategy at Commonwealth Financial Network from 1994 through March 2019.

He became the president of Advisor360° in April 2019.