At Securities America's national conference in Denver, Jim Nagengast, CEO and president of Securities America, was optimistic about the firm's future and partnership with Ladenburg Thalmann, which acquired the broker-dealer in the fall.
"This is our first national conference with Ladenburg Thalmann as our new partner. There's been an overwhelmingly positive response," Nagengast (left) told AdvisorOne at the conference on Tuesday. "Dick Lampen and Adam [Malamed] are very advisor-centric. With the additional tools that Ladenburg brings to the tool belt, our value proposition has never been stronger."
Malamed, chief operating officer for Ladenburg Thalmann, agreed. "So much of what we do comes from here," he told AdvisorOne, referring to meetings with advisors at conferences. "We're learning what works for them, what doesn't work."
Some of those tools currently include asset management, proprietary research and investment banking, but in the future, the firm expects to add IPOs and secondary offerings.
"We're headed in the right direction," Nagengast said.
Among the new and enhanced tools announced at the conference is an enhanced desktop, Dashboard 2.0, that allows advisors to create customized views for users based on their job duties. The desktop is based on Securties America's customer relationship management (CRM) product, so advisors can consolidate data from all their sources.
"That includes third-party sources," Doreen Griffith (right), executive vice president and chief information officer, told AdvisorOne during a demonstration of the desktop. "We're setting the foundation to allow advisors to use cloud providers."
The desktop features an account servicing tool that makes it more advisor-friendly and office friendly, Roxanne Wieland, director of field technology, added. "Actions are driven by the type of account" the advisor is looking at, she said. This streamlined process "takes the thinking out" because only the relevant options are available.
Another new release from the tech pipeline is Securities America's mobile app, which will make advisors' most frequently used information available "any time, anywhere, any device," Nagengast boasted.
"There's a steep learning curve" to retirement income distribution, Zach Parker (left), first vice president of income distribution, told AdvisorOne. With the enhancements to NextPhase, advisors can "change the levers" they need to, to help their clients meet their goals.
