The folks behind Total Rebalance Expert announced Tuesday evening that they have been awarded a patent!
I love seeing startups making good and protecting their intellectual property. It does my heart good.
Co-founders Cheryll and Sheryl, aka Cheryll Lurtz and chief executive Sheryl Rowling applied for their patent, “Portfolio Management Analysis System and Method” in 2010 and were granteded US Patent 8,321,320, on November 27, 2012.
Congratulations.
Specifically this patent is for the “Analysis Expert” function currently found in TRX; it outlines the methodology the software utilizes for identifying rebalancing opportunities and listing them on a single screen across an entire client base at the account, household and asset class levels.
Here's more of the prepared statement in their own words:
“Advisers have been telling us all along that our approach to providing the needed technology to automate the portfolio rebalancing process was unique and innovative,” said Cheryll Lurtz, TRX co-founder and CIO. “Now with this patent, advisers using TRX can uniquely benefit from that intellectual capital that was generated from the experiences in tax-efficient rebalancing developed in advisory practices.”
The Analysis Expert feature in TRX enables advisers to view their entire client base on one screen and then sort for which accounts or households are out of guidelines and need rebalancing. The sorting capability can be used to identify “transaction triggers” for client needs and opportunities, such as:
• Excess cash that needs to be invested
• Cash that needs to be generated for distribution reasons
• Tax loss harvesting opportunities
• Asset class rebalancing needs
• Asset subclass rebalancing needs
From this screen, advisors can then simply click on a particular client or group of clients to produce the needed trades. The Analysis Expert capability enables advisors to rebalance much more frequently, even on a daily basis, to take advantage of market moves, tax law changes or other client needs.
Without this advanced level of functionality, advisors are forced to manually drill down on each account or household periodically to see if there is a need to rebalance. For firms with hundreds of accounts or households, this process, even with other rebalancing systems that just calculate rebalancing amounts, often limits them to rebalancing on a quarterly or even annual basis.
“As a practicing financial adviser, I was frustrated with the current offerings on the marketplace that did not have the features needed to really take advantage of technology to automate the rebalancing process,” noted TRX CEO Sheryl Rowling.
“Accordingly, we set out to build a portfolio rebalancing system that had the necessary flexibility and sorting capabilities to simplify the identification of rebalancing opportunities and this patent is a tremendous validation of the innovation inherent in TRX,” concluded Rowling.
I have to add that I'm now curious what patents already exist from other rebalancing vendors, namely the creators of iRebal, Tamarac, ASI technology, RedBlack, RebalanceMax et al.
I'm sure I'll be hearing from them.
For more information visit
TRX online.
Related Stories:
Another promising one-off integration, Total Rebalance Expert meets Orion Advisor Services
Another tool to help rebalance the books [RebalanceMax from Advisor Innovation Inc.]
Shareholders Service adds RedBlack and TRX to the mix
A modular approach to rebalancing
New re-balancing solution cost-effective for smaller firms
LPL Financial rolling out new portfolio rebalancing technology
Tamarac takes a leap by offering a single solution
Tamarac announces new Advisor 9 and outsourced services
Fidelity platform on schedule, [Northfield used for rebalancing]
Fidelity, Pershing, Schwab, TD in a tech 'arms race'
Top re-balancing-software vendors duke it out for new customers
