Page 34 - Investment Advisor - November 2021

PRODUCTS, PROGRAMS & SERVICES ing proprietary analytics capabilities on risk and perfor-
mance that augment firms’ and advisors’ ability to manage
American Portfolios Financial client relationships, construct portfolios and execute trades
Services, at the onset of the pan- and to evaluate the performance of their own enterprises in
demic, implemented its business aggregate. The firm’s white-labeled Investor’s Application,
continuity plan to ensure no inter- available via the web and mobile, provides clients with 24/7
ruption of services and operations within the BD’s home access to their portfolios through a customizable, interactive
offices and at the firm’s more than 400 affiliated branch and intuitive experience.
offices. Ninety-five percent of home office employees were
able to work remotely throughout 2020 and into 2021 due to IncomeConductor’s retirement
its cloud-based technology. Remote working also enabled AP income platform provides daily
to bring its family of affiliated advisors and their support staff plan performance updates, seg-
more value-added opportunities and content from the firm’s ment analytics, business intelligence that supports plan
business partners via teleconferencing and webinars, as well reviews, one-click reporting and automated alerts to help advi-
as the firm’s first-ever virtual national conference, sors manage hundreds of client plans without having to add to
Connections 2020. staff. During the pandemic, IncomeConductor aided advisors
with webinar meeting applications. Its dynamic plan editor
Brentmark, which provides financial allows advisors to quickly change plan assumptions and illus-
and educational institutions and trate the effect of those changes on a client’s income plan dur-
government agencies with software for estate planning and ing a meeting. In March, IncomeConductor became available
charitable giving, rolled out its first web application in 2020. on the SEI Wealth Platform, enabling independent advisors
The Estate & Charitable Planner LIVE, which is made up of that use both platforms to connect their clients’ underlying
some 125 modules and combines its Estate Planning Tools for accounts and facilitate scale through automation.
estate planning calculations and Charitable Financial Planner
to help with complex planned giving calculations. It also pro- La Meer built the Grace suite of cloud-
vides the most current calculations to advise in clients’ best based web tablet mobile solutions for
interests, from monthly applicable federal rates and federal RIAs and BDs to facilitate operationally
estate tax updates to other tax legislation changes. Brentmark efficient, visible, transparent processes to empower client-
has created a web application to avoid jeopardizing client data facing staff and compliance-monitoring groups. The system
security or compliance protocols that cloud solutions present. enables them to choose the right products for each customer
based on that client’s risk profile and to oversee each choice
CircleBlack’s portfolio management and made. Grace’s integrated life cycle management of client and
performance reporting platform allows compliance addresses four Regulation Best Interest obliga-
advisors to customize their tech stack, inte- tions: disclosure, duty of care, conflicts of interest and compli-
grating their choice of technology and custodial feeds into a ance obligation. The system’s modular design allows
unified digital marketplace. Over the past year, CircleBlack has organizations to buy and pay for what they require immedi-
developed new technology with which firms with their own ately and as needed.
infrastructure can access only the functions of the platform
they need or select from other features, such as investor-based NaviPlan by InvestCloud in 2020 and
views and themes, investment segment aggregations, and into 2021 implemented several updates
workflow upgrades addressing document vaults and custom to its platform, including new reports to
alerts. Advisors pay only for the applications they want. The support client estate planning needs and a new recommenda-
firm recently hired a user interaction specialist to monitor tion plan feature, which allows advisors to display different
advisor and investor interaction with its tools and capabilities strategic plan approaches to clients. In April 2020, NaviPlan
while in development. made its client portal available at no charge to all advisors
through December 2021 to facilitate client communications
d1g1t, a Canadian fintech platform, enables during the pandemic. NaviPlan has entered strategic partner-
multi-family offices, RIAs and IBDs to holisti- ships with health care analytics company Aviante to help advi-
cally manage client portfolios with institution- sors more accurately address strategies for meeting healthcare
al-grade analytics and risk management tools to get a needs in retirement, and with MX, a financial data platform, to
complete picture of clients’ progress toward stated mandates improve account aggregation and data connectivity for advi-
and the status of their own businesses. It does this by leverag- sors using NaviPlan.

32 INVESTMENT ADVISOR NOVEMBER 2021 | ThinkAdvisor.com