Hosted version of PortfolioCenter is now available

Schwab Performance Technologies officially announced the availability of PortfolioCenter Hosted two weeks ago. Basically, this means that a financial adviser's full iteration of the portfolio management application can be migrated from running on its 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 it pertains to portfolio management. SPT said last June 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. “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,” Mr. Shenson said. PortfolioCenter will be priced as low as $1,200 per quarter and there will be no transition costs for advisers that already use Schwab Advisor Services as an asset custodian.

PRICED "AGGRESSIVELY'

“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. The hosted version will provide immediate access to various integration enhancements, such as access to products that make up the OpenView Gateway offering, including Junxure, Microsoft Dynamics and Salesforce customer relationship management offerings, he said. Mr. Shenson 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.