How 'competitive collaboration' is shaping the future of the advice business

Rarely would you find competing providers of customer relationship management, financial planning and portfolio management technology seated at the same table – let alone on the same side of the table. But some of the industry's top technology vendors dropped their competitive guards, at least for two days, to directly address some of the most significant challenges that are currently confronting independent investment advisers. Firms including Redtail Technology, Junxure, Orion Advisor Services, Morningstar, FinanceLogix and MoneyGuidePro convened at the TD Ameritrade Institutional' s 2014 Open Access Technology Summit, which brought together 16 of the nearly 70 technology providers that have integrated their software with TD Ameritrade's Veo open access platform. Guided by executives from TD Ameritrade Institutional, the technology firms openly tackled issues such as integration, workflows, their visions for developing mobile strategies and updates to their existing offerings – as well as ways that they could better work together to move both their firms and the industry forward. “I like to think of it as competitive collaboration, as opposed to strictly competition,” said Brian McGlaughlin, CEO of Redtail Technologies. “Bringing us all together helps accelerate the growth of our businesses and the progress that advisers can make in their own businesses as well.” “It's a lot easier to solve problems when you know the people on the other side of the table and the other end of the phone,” said Ken Golding, senior developer at Junxure. “And competition is always good – we always end up with better products when we work with competitors.” Quietly, TD Ameritrade Institutional has gathered this “think tank” of top technology minds annually since 2010. The goal? To address and some of the biggest technology and workflow challenges confronting advisers – and identify practical and universal solutions. The event and underlying collaboration has enabled the custodian to expand its Veo open access platform and present advisers with a comprehensive set of best-of-breed tools and technology solutions can improve their productivity and client service. "It was special to see that for two days, everyone in that room stayed focused on the vision for an integrated platform that solves advisors' workflow challenges,” said Jim Dario, managing director of product management at TD Ameritrade Institutional. “These technology leaders recognized that we as an industry have an opportunity to leverage each other's ideas and capabilities to achieve a common goal. Mr. Dario and others also noted that the despite the collection of competitors, there were no individual agendas pursued. “As a group, we all saw the benefits of working together on how best to create these key integrations, both for the advisers and for ourselves as firms serving the marketplace,” he added. “Alone, our firm and our software can't do everything,” said Tony Leal, CTO and Partner at MoneyGuidePro. “Advisers need selection and they need to be able to pick from different tools,” noted Mr. Leal, who added that MoneyGuidePro just added its 101st integration partner this month since the firm launch 12 years ago. “Ultimately, it's a really simple thing: We don't think that we are the people who should decide which specific application an adviser should use; our real job is to make sure that we all integrate and work well together and the adviser marketplace can decide the specific software and vendor they want to use.” Christopher Valleley, director, TD Ameritrade Institutional, responsible for technology solutions within technology product development at the custodian added, "TD Ameritrade's technology summit allows us to work closely with the vendors of technology that investment advisers use every day. We host the summit so we can collaborate and exchange ideas as a group. It also provides us great insight as to what the technology companies are doing to resolve key challenges advisers may be facing."