An open secret of the financial technology space is product vendors' willingness to integrate their applications so advisors can more easily move from customer relationship management to portfolio rebalancing to financial planning software to compliant document storage.
It's still unusual, though, to see the fintech crowd come together so closely that it results in the creation of an entirely new app for advisors. But on Wednesday at the Technology Tools for Today (T3) conference for broker-dealer enterprises in Atlanta, a partnership of four firms announced a new tech tool designed to help advisors determine clients' return on investment.
The new tool, called Project IV, comes from CRM provider Redtail Technologies, advisor consultant ActiFi, risk-assessment tech firm Riskalyze and independent broker-dealer Securities Service Network. Project IV crunches a huge collection of customized data, figures out whether or not a client's ROI is worthy of an advisor's time and spits out a numerical client score on a scale from 1 to 100.
"It's way more than a simple integration," said Redtail Chief Executive Brian McLaughlin. "We want to fully mesh with and build a broker-dealer platform that gives ROI and efficiency gains, scientifically."
Joseph Simpson, director of information technology at Securities Service Network, credited Redtail's recent CRM software update, Project Tailwag, for providing a solid next-generation platform that supports Project IV's deep data mining efforts. Even before then, he added, SSN and Redtail were in search of a CRM platform that could help advisors grow their businesses with integrated technology.
"Securities Service Network is in a unique position to given Redtail data they don't have access to," Simpson said. "We're feeding them data about advisor revenue on a per-client basis."
