Over the last year, ongoing market volatility has created a revived demand for account aggregation to help facilitate smart financial decisions for clients. So, to help shed some light on the aggregation options available to advisors, I’m going to offer you a quick overview of three of the leading account aggregation vendors in the independent advisor space – Advisor Exchange, ByAllAccounts, and CashEdge.

All three vendors offer a whole new paradigm in data aggregation and offer financial advisors a way to increase productivity, improve operational flexibility, and reduce costs. Simply, in addition to providing the dynamic account aggregation technology you need for a comprehensive view of your clients’ total portfolio, including assets that are held-away, these vendors can “push” aggregated client data into third-party applications you uses to run you business, eliminating the time spent manually collecting and entering financial account information. And that means more time in front of your clients.

The innovative, integrated approach offered by these vendors continues to win accolades from their clients, some of which are the most well-known wealth management firms in the financial services industry, for delivering innovative tools, ease of use, and flexibility to integrate the data into 3rd party applications.

Yes, we’re dealing with a difficult market, but in that difficulty lays a tremendous opportunity to grow your business. Account aggregation puts you, the trusted advisors, at the center of the client relationship with increased transparency and improved communication. Account aggregation enhances the trusting relationships you enjoy with current clients and engages them more deeply in their financial plans.

In the interest of full disclosure, I want to point out that I am the Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Advisor Exchange. While each vendor has strengths and weaknesses, I’m only going to provide you with a high-level overview of each vendor’s main features. Anything more than that would not be fair to the other two vendors or to the reader of this blog that wants to learn about the aggregation options available. You will also notice that I am leaving off eMoney – a financial planning tool, Albridge Solutions – portfolio management software, and Advent – portfolio accounting software. Do they each offer account aggregation as an enhancement to their primary offering? Yes. But they are not account aggregation solutions. If you are using either of those vendors solely for account aggregation, then you should consider how the following three vendors may be able to help you.

Advisor Exchange  

Advisor Exchange offers a web-based account aggregation solution that integrates with portfolio accounting systems, CRM, and Financial Planning software. With a focus on working with financial planners and wealth managers, Advisor Exchange offers one of the most open account aggregation solution available.

• Aggregates balances, positions and transactions from over 7,000 financial institutions
• Aggregates advisor managed accounts from 75+ financial institutions
• Web-based advisor and client dashboards provide comprehensive view of client accounts
• Reconciler, a proprietary application that allows advisors to create global custom rules which identify and translate incorrect or missing data from the aggregation feeds
• User defined security master
• Exports available on demand throughout the day
• Approximately 50% of the data is aggregated from HTML harvesting, 50% via file downloads, proprietary scripting solutions, and direct data feeds
• Integrates with Portfolio Center, Morningstar, Black Diamond, Orion Advisor Services, Junxure, Redtail, ProTracker, Money Tree Software, Cheshire Software, FPS Systems, Advisor Products Client Portals, LightPort

ByAllAccounts

Their website home page nails what they do best – “Providing an unprecedented breadth of actionable data for reconciliation, performance analysis, and consolidate reporting.” If you’re an RIA or wealth manager looking to import reconciliation ready aggregated data into portfolio management and accounting software, then ByAllAccounts deserves a look.

• Aggregates balances, positions and transactions from about 3,000 financial institutions
• Hard-coded rules analyze and interpret the aggregated data, filling in any missing or what is determined to be incorrect data prior to delivering a standardized data set into the end reporting system
• User defined security master
• Custodial Integrator, a desktop application that imports the aggregated data into portfolio management and accounting software
• Customer-specific data translation available
• WebPortfolio , a web-based solution used by advisors and their clients, provides a comprehensive view of financial accounts
• Approximately 70% of the data is aggregated via file downloads, 15% from HTML harvesting, and 5% from direct data feeds (Source InvestmentNews)
• Integrates with Portfolio Center, Advent Axys, RedBlack, Morningstar, INDATA, IAS, Metavante, AccuTech, AllBackoffice, B-Ready, Black Diamond, BOSS, Bridgeportfolio, CSSI, First Rate, Orion Advisor Services, Outsource This!, Rockit Solutions, WealthTouch, LightPort

CashEdge

The most widely used account aggregation solution in the independent advisor space, CashEdge offers RIA’s, wealth managers, and financial planners a web-based account aggregation solution called AllDataAdvisor.

• Aggregates balances, positions and transactions from over 7,000 financial institutions
• Aggregates advisor managed accounts from 75+ financial institutions
• Web-based advisor and client dashboards provide comprehensive view of client accounts
• Approximately 50% of the data is aggregated from HTML harvesting, 50% via file downloads, direct data feeds, and other proprietary scripting solutions
• Normalizes and enhances data into a single feed for use in Albridge, eMoney, and MoneyGuidePro.

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