TD Ameritrade updates software, Vanguard improves robo

Aside from the recent surge in the development of artificial intelligence, I would argue that the biggest technology story confronting financial advisors in 2023 is the ongoing merger of TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.

In addition to providing custody and clearing services to a large population of financial advisors, both companies are significant providers of technology. TD platforms such as iRebal and Veo were particularly popular in the advisor fintech ecosystem and are a main focus of the ongoing integration efforts.

Schwab designated September 5 as the date when everything from the Schwab platform will be transferred and says it is on track to meet the target. But the amount of data that needs to be transferred will be huge, and there will undoubtedly be technological hiccups along the way.

What that means for the larger ecosystem will be a defining trend for adviser fintech for the rest of the year. What will that mean for tools that pull data from Schwab or TD’s systems? What about account aggregation? Will competing custodians, TAMPs, fintech companies or aggregators be able to offer a compelling enough alternative to successfully solicit advisors to their platforms?

We’ll see. If this is something your firm or fintech company is working through, I’d love to hear from you.

In the meantime, here’s a roundup of some of this week’s fintech updates you may have missed.

TD AMERITRADE IMPROVES THINKORSWIM

Before completing its integration with Charles Schwab’s brokerage platform, TD Ameritrade is finalizing a series of new features and services for thinkorswim, its online and mobile trading product. Updates include predictive text when searching for live news and new ways to visualize results on the desktop version, while the mobile version of thinkorswim gets improved customization options, a more unified trading experience and improvements to exchange tickets. Thinkorswim web also received some upgrades.

It was interesting to see this announcement coming from TD Ameritrade more than two years after Schwab completed its acquisition of the firm. Thinkorswim isn’t moving over to Schwab until later in 2023, but it’s a bit surprising that new updates aren’t attributed to Schwab.

VANGUARD ROBO GETS NEW FUNCTIONS

New tax-loss harvesting capabilities and actively managed mutual funds are coming to Vanguard Digital Advisor, according to Barron’s. Of the five new funds, three are exclusive to customers of Vanguard’s purely digital and hybrid robo-advisor products.

Vanguard’s entry into the digital advice market came with financial advisors and quickly amassed an industry-leading sum of assets, primarily by moving over existing accounts. However, their digital products have lagged in terms of user experience, according to researchers at Condor Capital Wealth Management, which publishes the quarterly Robo Report. Improving tax-loss harvesting helps the product catch up with other robos on the market, while the new investment products could help broaden Digital Advisor’s appeal to investors.

PONTERA INTEGRATES WITH ENVESTNET

Envestnet has brought Pontera, the fintech that enables financial advisors to trade and manage clients’ retained retirement accounts, into its financial wellness ecosystem. Advisors can plan, review and bill employer-sponsored retirement accounts within the Envestnet Tamarac platform.

Pontera is quickly growing as a presence in the space. The company had a number of deals in 2022 after landing $80 million in funding and rebranding, including partnerships with SageView, Morningstar and Dynasty. The Envestnet integration is just another step in Pontera’s rapid progress.

TIFIN announces MORNINGSTAR COLLABORATION

Advisor technology company Tifin announced that it would begin pulling aggregate industry trend information from Morningstar into Tifin’s asset management platform, which provides marketing, distribution and sales to asset managers. The data can facilitate more precise intelligence about the consumption of different investment products, the company said.

The deal is an extension of an existing relationship between the two companies, as Morningstar invested in Tifin’s Series B funding in April 2021. Tifin continues to sign deals and market itself as an AI-powered wealth technology platform, but it’s unclear how much traction it will be among either financial advisers or asset managers.

HEARSAY ADDS FEATURES TO WEBSITES

Hearsay Systems, which provides various client engagement tools to financial advisors, added new features to Sites, its product for building a personalized website. Advisors now have more options to customize the appearance of their website; a new administrative interface for updating the website; built-in SEO tools for website visibility; and an improved hosting platform for faster load times and integration with third-party widgets.

Websites are good! It’s hard to know how effective this is without actually using it to create a website, but if you’re a business that needs to upgrade your digital presence, check out Hearsay and let me know.