As educational editor of the 2013 TechLeaders Conference held on March 13-15 in Irving, Texas, Beacon Strategies LLC contributed to the conference's goal of developing thought leadership for broker-dealers of all sizes.
The firm sent a questionnaire to senior executives at a majority of U.S. broker-dealers with 25 or more investment professionals with questions on technology preferences and vendors, social media usage and trends, completed or planned technology initiatives and technology budget and staff. More than 80% of the major independent and insurance broker-dealers in the United States responded. Click here to read about the rise of cloud/SaaS solutions, the importance of high-quality data and how the way broker-dealers use social media has changed over the past year.
To evaluate which third-party providers are winning broker-dealers' loyalty, we divided this year's survey into three groups: advisor-centric, operational support infrastructure and management oversight/risk control. In each group and by category, we asked survey participants which solution they have adopted. (Answers may exceed 100% due to multiple providers.)
Figure 1: Tech Solution Providers: Advisor-Centric Group
| Provider Category | Leaders by Market Share |
| Social media outlets | LinkedIn (68%), Twitter (47%), Facebook (26%) |
| Client relationship management | Redtail Technology (33%), Salesforce.com (28%), Ebix SmartOffice (21%) |
| Financial planning | NaviPlan/Financial Profiles (50%), Money Guide Pro (47%), eMoney (44%), Finance Logix (13%) |
| Annuity due diligence | Morningstar Annuity Intelligence (38%) |
| Forms management | Laser App (71%), Quik! (38%) |
| Pure-play data aggregation | CashEdge (30%), By-All-Accounts (17%) |
| Data aggregation and performance | Albridge (58%), Broadridge Investigo (38%), Morningstar Enterprise (21%), DST Vision Professional (17%) |
As the only pure-business outlet among leading social media, LinkedIn has posed fewer compliance challenges than Twitter and Facebook, so it has been the first adopted (given permission) by many firms. However, Twitter has gained ground, moving solidly into second place. Since last year, Twitter's approved media rate has increased from 7% to 47% while Facebook stayed relatively flat (25% versus 26%).
In other advisor-centric categories, the major share-gainers this year were Quik! (from 9% to 38%), Broadridge Investigo (from 19% last year to 38%), eMoney (from 33% to 44%) and By-All-Accounts (from 11% to 17%). We believe this is a function both of firms offering advisors greater choice in solutions as well as the implementation of several enterprise level projects amongst larger firms
Annuity due diligence is a relatively new category currently dominated by one vendor, Morningstar Annuity Intelligence. However, there is room for growth because 33% of firms say they currently support annuity due diligence reviews manually, while 29% have no solution.
This means that almost two-thirds of our survey universe has no automated solution for what is considered to be one of the most labor intensive compliance processes.
Figure 2: Tech Solution Providers: Operational Support Infrastructure Group
