Seven months after parting ways with TD Ameritrade, Tom Bradley has landed a gig on the advisory board of financial technology firm
MaxMyInterest.
Mr. Bradley, 55, who spent 31 years at TD and remains under a non-compete agreement through March 2019, said his near-term plans will be along the lines of what he is doing as a paid advisory board member to MaxMyInterest.
"I'm not making any decisions on any major moves this year," he said. "You should expect to hear about me joining a few more boards over the coming months. That's my focus right now, looking at where I can add value to smaller fintech firms."
MaxMyInterest is a privately-held business that launched in September 2014 as an "intelligent cash management and optimization platform for individual investors and financial advisers," the company press release said on Thursday.
The business model, according to founder and chief executive Gary Zimmerman, is based on partnering with banks to secure the highest-available yields for cash management.
The current yield for customers on the platform is 1.61%, which compares to a national average bank savings account yield of 9 basis points.
MaxMyInterest, which does not accept advertising or referral fees, charges depositors a quarterly fee equal to 2 basis points of their account.
Mr. Zimmerman doesn't make public many details about the business, but he did say he is currently working with about 400 businesses, ranging from small advisory firms to large asset managers.
MaxMyInterest has not advertised and most of the growth of out-sourced cash management comes from word-of-mouth referrals through the advisory space, he said.
Mr. Bradley was brought on to help advance that cause.
At the time of his departure, Mr. Bradley was the head of retail distribution at TD, but he was an executive widely recognized as one of the main leaders and advocates for the registered investment adviser industry.
"We're very excited about Tom joining the advisory board. We've been considering the idea of adding a board member to focus on the financial advisory space for about a year now," Mr. Zimmerman said. "When we met Tom, the answer was instantly clear. He is very bright, very entrepreneurial, and he is a leader in this space."
Michael Kitces, a partner and director of wealth management at
Pinnacle Advisory Group, tweeted out an endorsement of Mr. Bradley's move onto the board Thursday morning, calling it "interesting adviser fintech news."
"As yields continue to rise, and suddenly the return on cash actually matters again, I suspect there will be a growing interest amongst advisers in services like MaxMyInterest, to help clients maximize the yield on their cash positions," Mr. Kitces said. "Ironically, though, the expense ratio from cash funds is a major source of revenue for custodians themselves — potentially putting MaxMyInterest at odds with the RIA custodians themselves as advisers potentially use Max to automate the process of taking profitable cash away from custodians."
Mr. Kitces, who wrote a favorable
review of MaxMyInterest in February 2016, pointed out the irony of Mr. Bradley joining the board, "given his rich history with the retail brokerage and RIA custody channels."
"It suggests to me that MaxMyInterest remains very interested in figuring out how to better integrate their solution with RIA custodians to help advisers," Mr. Kitces said. "With, again, the caveat that that creates new partnership and integration challenges, as advisers may want the service, but RIA custodians have a strong interest in not making it easier for RIAs to take their most profitable assets on platform away from them."
