Cloud cover: Hosted version of Schwab's PortfolioCenter now available

Schwab Performance Technologies officially announced the availability of PortfolioCenter Hosted last week. Basically this means that an adviser's full iteration of the portfolio management application can be migrated from running on their own on-premises systems or that of another third-party hosting provider over to SPT, thereby getting the adviser out of the IT management business, at least so far as regards portfolio management. SPT announced in June 2012 that it would be building a hosted version of PortfolioCenter, the company's widely used portfolio management software. I spoke to Brian Shenson, vice president of Advisor Technology Solutions for Schwab Advisor Services, about the rollout last week. “We had a pilot running over the first quarter with a small group of advisers and have been onboarding others and since the announcement we have had 15 commitments from current PortfolioCenter clients to adopt the hosted solution,” he said. PortfolioCenter will be priced as low as $1,200 per quarter and there will be no transition costs for those advisers that already custody assets with Schwab Advisor Services. “Over 50% of clients we surveyed have expressed their intent to move to the cloud in regards to Portfolio Management and we think we have priced it pretty aggressively too,” Mr. Shenson said. He said that the hosted version will provide immediate access to various integration enhancements including, for example, access to products that make up the OpenView Gateway offering, including Microsoft Dynamics, Junxure and Salesforce customer relationship management offerings. Mr. Shenson also noted that Schwab has made other investments in PortfolioCenter development as well, including impending enhancements and improvements to the product's reporting and billing features.