Getting More Efficient Through Paperless and Aggregation
Last week I attended my second TradePMR conference. This year’s conference was in Orlando and was important on a number of fronts. Let me begin by sharing what I perceived to be Trade’s overall approach to the one-and-a-half-day event. They had three main speakers covering the following topics: business operations including marketing, technology tools, and compliance. The permeating theme was how to increase advisor efficiency. In addition, TradePMR formally unveiled some of its exceptional technological offerings. Here’s a brief description of each.
Paperless Applications
Find the form, fill out the form, print the form, get signatures on the form, mail the form, file the form, etc. That was the old way of doing things. Now we can find the form, fill it out, and have the client go through a verification process, all online. Paper not required! In fact, if the client is already in the system, the forms will automatically populate. This has the potential to save a number of man hours (sorry ladies, it’s just a figure of speech).
Enhanced Performance Reporting
While they have had this for a while, the new version is much improved. Want to group accounts together? No problem! Want to combine all clients together to measure performance on your entire book? No sweat! Do you prefer graphs? Good, they have ‘em. How about numbers? There are a lot of them as well. In fact, you can even click on the numbers to get a detailed description of the underlying data. Is it reasonably priced? Compared to most, I’d say absolutely. I’ll have to compare this to Morningstar’s Office Edition before deciding which one I’ll use.
And last, but certainly not least….
Account Aggregation
I realize this is not a brand new technology, but it is perhaps one of the most valuable tools in the competitive toolbox. With account aggregation, you can easily aggregate clients’ outside holdings and create a comprehensive report on the entire enchilada. If you do financial planning, you can use this information to easily update a client’s financial plan. Instead of asking the client to provide a list of updated documents, the information is easily retrieved in the aggregated report. This represents a significant uptick in operational efficiency.
I am just getting started with paperless applications and account aggregation. I’ll keep you posted.
Mike,
Your articles keep getting better and better. As a financial planning assistant with a large fee-only firm, I have encouraged our “mature” planners that technology is something we should embrace and have the research to back it up, but I seem to meet a brick wall.
Being of an entrepreneurial spirit like yourself, I am eager to become an solo-RIA and start the ride. How long did it take you to where you could pay yourself a steady, recurring income? The jump itself scares me, but the stagnation of where I’m currently at scares me more.
Thanks
Dave
Dave,
Thanks for your comments. It’s hard to say exactly how long it took before I could pay myself a steady income. Really, the question was how long until I could pay my living expenses. That said, it’s important to keep your expenses to a minimum in the beginning unless you have a cash supply to sustain you. I’m getting ready to help another advisor make the transition, sort of a trial run as this is not my core business. If it goes well, and you’re interested, I might do some of this on the side. In any event, I hope things go well with you.
Mike
I was on the phone with Fred from Trade PMR not too long ago getting some useful information regarding the platform. I am glad to hear that there are making improvements to make it more efficient. Would love to hear the sort of improvement currently being made. I think I’m pretty much settled on the custodian thanks to mike!
Mike,
Thank you for making your journey so trasnparent. It really helps those of us who are considering the jump to independence! I have been looking at TradePMR quite a bit lately, and was curious if you had come to any conclusions about switching from Morningstar to TradePMR’s performance reporting solution?
Thank you!
David
Hi David,
Sorry. Somehow I missed your comment. I like Trade’s performance reporting tool and haven’t been able to use MS’s performance reports for over a year. I did attend a webinar the other day and it looks like MS has really improved their tool. I suspect I’ll like it better, but can’t say for sure until I actually use it. Hopefully that will be soon!