When Rockville, Maryland-based Bronfman E.L. Rothschild acquired Highline Wealth Management in 2015, choosing a technology system was an important point of discussion. After thoroughly evaluating all the financial planning software solutions currently on the market, management decided to migrate the newly merged firm to Tamarac.
Highline — also headquartered in Rockville — first invested in the Tamarac product suite in 2011, said Jill Lizzi, wealth advisor at Bronfman E.L. Rothschild, and the offerings had proven extremely helpful to the firm in many ways, notably on the administration front by, among other things, reducing the preparation time for client performance reports and improving the accuracy on billing.
Lizzi, who was responsible for the Tamarac integration at Highline, has been instrumental since the merger in converting Bronfman E.L. Rothschild to Tamarac's Advisor View, which gives advisors a complete picture of their entire book of business and allows them to easily share up-to-the-minute, in-depth performance reports with their clients; and Advisor CRM, a web-based client relationship management system. Both these tools are part of Tamarac's Advisor Xi suite.
Today, "about 60 people in our firm are involved in some aspect of the Tamarac suite almost daily," Lizzi said, "and we are about 90% done with the integration, which is pretty good for a year after the acquisition."
In her view, Tamarac offers everything an independent advisor would want and need in a software solution.
"It is a general industry trend that more firms are going toward the RIA set up, and once you break apart from major brokerage firms, you have to find your own reporting solution," she said. "This is different from 20 years ago when you used whatever a wirehouse had, so the rise in the independent management group is propelling a lot of Tamarac's success, I think."
In addition to being easy to implement, integrate and use, Tamarac's products are highly customizable, Lizzi said, and allow for ample firm-specific specialization, all the while ensuring complete security of client data and protection from potential breaches and fraud.
Administrative Tasks '0% Value' to Clients
The software tools greatly reduce the administrative load associated with such necessary — yet time-consuming — activities as account reconciliation, client billing and the aggregation of information from outside sources, thereby allowing advisors to spend more time meeting with their existing clients and pro-actively seeking out new ones.
