TD Ameritrade Institutional announced Thursday that it will acquire the research, benchmarking and consulting capabilities of FA Insight, the Tacoma, Washington-based research firm that analyzes large sets of advisor information, aka big data.
FA Insight is a "powerhouse," Tom Nally, president of TD Ameritrade Institutional, said during his opening Thursday remarks at TD's NationalLINC conference in Orlando. The acquisition is set to close by the second quarter.
Nally said that the brokerage firm will integrate FA Insight's research and customize reports with TD's upcoming release this year of its CRM and portfolio management platform Veo One.
Initially launched last January, Veo One has been going through beta testing with a select group of advisors. Veo One originally featured Redtail, MoneyGuidePro and Orion, but TD Ameritrade plans to add more vendors and integrate 14 of them with Veo One once the platform goes live later in 2016.
Veo One will allow advisors to bring their existing Veo integrated third-party technology applications (CRM, financial planning, portfolio management) onto one platform.
With the addition of FA Insight, founded by Daniel Inveen and Eliza De Pardo, into Veo One, advisors will be able to see "how they stack up" with their peers, "and use those insights to help [them] make better business decisions."
Said Nally: Veo One is advisors' "technology home."