Cambridge Streamlines Data Input for Advisors

News February 21, 2019 at 04:36 PM
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Helping advisors save time by eliminating repeated inputs has been a common goal of the industry. Today, Cambridge, an independent broker-dealer and financial solutions firm, solved that problem by introducing its CLIC Advisor, which is an extension of the firm's digital workstation, and CLIC Client, an investor center for end clients.

The new CLIC Advisor technology allows advisors to make changes at their workstation that will be made throughout the entire system, from Cambridge and custodians to fintech providers and clients. The system will be operational across all products, from laptops to tablets to cell phones, and is set for an initial release in April.

"CLIC Advisor is the broker-dealer workstation and it's a new evolution of that," Cambridge President and CEO Amy Webber told ThinkAdvisor. "This is bigger than the old workstation because of the bi-directional data … this pulls together everything from the fintech providers to the advisor through the client to the custodial choice and back again."

Bi-directional data is synced end-to-end from an advisor's fintech advisor choice to investing clients — delivering the same data to all points. This allows an advisor to open an account or change client data with one input that will be changed throughout the ecosystem.

"In the foundational level there is CLIC Core, which is an integration of all the business features and services advisors would expect to use to perform their internal firm level functions, and also the activity and nature of what they would do with a retail client," said Nick Graham, senior vice president and chief technology officer.

The technology has a large selection of fintech vendors and custodians (Fidelity Clearing & Custody Solutions and Pershing LLC), but is an open system, meaning as advisors request vendors, they can be added. Cambridge worked with eMoney, Invent and Fidelity "to forge this first iteration of a new era of technology for financial professionals," the company said in a statement. Graham noted that even with working with these vendors, Cambridge chose to "operate off of our version of the data."

Firms like SalesForce, Riskalyze, eMoney and Redtail already are available to advisors, said Jeff Vivacqua, SVP and chief marketing officer, "but that doesn't limit us because we have the ability to add additional integration." He says that "our digital strategy is based around the voice of the client, our advisors."

Vivacqua said that "Cambridge decided a while back that the future from a digital perspective is not to build a one-off integration where the systems don't talk to each other. We saw the future for a front-office strategy of back office and the middle office to the advisor and clients is fintech integrated."

Webber added that providing advisors this technology "makes them more efficient and effective without sacrificing sophistication or choice."

In addition, Cambridge WealthPort, the firm's managed account technology, will be integrated with CLIC Advisor and will include eMoney features.

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