Tech Headaches, Innovations and Threats in Focus at T3 Event

Compounding this view was the news that a potential challenger to the Schwab/TD Ameritrade merger, E-Trade, could be gobbled up by Morgan Stanley. Virtually everyone at T3 agreed that this development would be the end of E-Trade's RIA custody business, as no advisor wants to custody with a direct competitor, and no Morgan Stanley advisor wants to have a competitive channel within its own company.

Other T3 Buzz

While these custodian bombshells were dropping, the conference continued with news from Whealthcare Planning that industry veteran Kevin Ruth is joining the company as its interim CEO. He will oversee Whealthcare's efforts to deliver integrated enterprise solutions.

Ruth led Wealth Planning and Personal Trust at Fidelity Investments (from June 2014 to January 2019) and its Wealth Planning efforts (from July 2013 to June 2014),  and earlier was head of planning, trust and financial products at UBS and private planning at Merrill Lynch. (Fidelity just lost Matthew Chisholm as its head of practice management and consulting for Clearing & Custody Solutions to Commonwealth Financial Network.)

How are these and other announcements and product demos shared at T3? The first day consists of individual keynote talks, enabling advisors to focus on what's happening at one company (that typically is larger and better funded) at a time. Subsequent days feature sessions of dual keynote presentations happening simultaneously.

On the final day and a half, the main stage is split into thirds to accommodate even more technology content in 12-minute flash sessions, all taking place at the same time. This creates lots of FOMO (fear of missing out) and makes it very difficult for attendees to decide which session to attend.

In addition to the frenetic pace of T3's last day or so, this event included the much-anticipated results of the T3/Inside Information Advisor Software Survey. T3 host Joel Bruckenstein and industry veteran Bob Veres produced the latest look at the growth and use of technology by advisors.

This year, over 5,000 advisors weighed in on 500-plus applications. Typically, the industry's largest incumbents maintain their market share advantage; CRM Redtail, for instance, has extended its dominance with a 63% market vs. its nearest rival at 7%.

MoneyGuide and eMoney remain in the top spots in the financial planning category. Riskalyze towers over their competition in the risk category with a 32% market share vs. 6% for its closest competitor.

As for the custodians, the jury is split. Custodial giant Schwab comes in behind TD Ameritrade in both market share and advisor satisfaction, which again triggered advisors and tech vendors' angst that the award-winning Veo platform may be squashed in TDA's submission to Schwab.

There is hope, however, as much-admired and liked custodian Shareholders Service Group (SSG) has the top position in terms of advisor satisfaction. Could that provide some solace and a potential new home for the thousands of soon-to-be- disenfranchised RIAs on the TDA platform?

Ultimately, what most concerns Bruckenstein is the low use of cybersecurity applications (7%): "This is the biggest threat to the industry by far, yet advisors are more than complacent, they actually have their heads in the sand." (To learn more about what went on at T3, check out the many tweets on the #T32020 hashtag on Twitter.)

Timothy D. Welsh, CFP® is President and founder of Nexus Strategy, LLC, a leading consulting firm to the wealth management industry, and can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @NexusStrategy.