Orlando, Fla. – Raymond James is previewing enhancements to Advisor Access, the firm’s client portfolio management and financial planning platform, at its professional development conference here this week.
Advisor Access easily displays and summarizes a client’s financial relationship with the advisor’s firm.
Keeping in lockstep with industry-wide efforts to consolidate and simplify technology for advisors, the upgraded system integrates all of the previously fragmented elements financial advisors have been using, Josh Bohlander, director of the technology group at Raymond James, said during a demonstration at the conference.
“They would have to open the different screens to view and work with the various components,” Bohlander said. “This is more integrated.”
Thirty-five investors are testing the system’s latest version, and the firm expects another 125 to begin testing next month, ahead of a phased rollout across the firm that will begin in June and July.
The new environment allows advisors to accomplish a lot from one screen. An enhanced CRM component allows advisors to create notes to the client’s profile, and attach Word, Excel or PDF with the same ease as attaching files to email, Bohlander says. Also, the enhanced “client correspondence” section allows advisors to generate statements, tax filings, and trade confirmations.
With the upgraded system, advisors will take a different approach to managing client portfolios. It lets advisors pull up a client’s investments under the “Portfolio” section, allowing them to run portfolio performance reports, access third-party ratings on certain holdings and submit trade orders on underlying securities in the account.
Managing clients’ accounts from one screen is just one of two big changes. In cases where an advisor has created a financial plan for a client, Advisor Access now features a hyperlink to the Goal Planning & Management component, powered by MoneyGuidePro.
The link is front and center on the summary screen just below the client’s name.
Once advisors click through to MoneyGuidePro, they will find a white-labeled Raymond James environment where they can manage and track all aspects of a client’s financial plan.
Advisors can select and add a litany of components in a financial plan such as buying a car, college planning, investing or retirement. The advisor can also input the estimated cost of the advisor’s goal, using a slide tool. The system then automatically assesses the likelihood of the investor client achieving that goal, and displays the result as a percentage on the “Play Zone” meter with a needle that moves through the range of outcomes.
“As we continue to the next phase, more components will be added to the system,” Bohlander added.
Donna Mitchell writes for
