While many of us, in our consumer lives, anyway, find ourselves pretty logo-saturated, the same cannot be said for the typical adviser's professional life.
But advisers, get ready.
TD Ameritrade Institutional announced today what I suspect will be a trend among custodians and probably other providers, including a few large independent broker-dealers. The firm is introducing a new “Veo Integrated” logo meant for the registered investment adviser's benefit. The idea is to help advisers identify technology providers that have built integrations with TD's Veo account management platform.
RIAs will soon begin seeing the logos on the marketing materials and websites of participating technology providers.
TD has been working on its popular Veo open access initiative since 2010.
Today, integrations to varying levels have been built with 50 different technology providers in many different technology areas — far more than any other custodian to date.
“The process right now for providers to get access to the logo is that we have a whole style guide to give them for usage; they just need to sign an agreement that they will use it appropriately,” said Jon Patullo, managing director of technology for TD Ameritrade Institutional.
In a prepared statement, TDAI noted that its highly customized version of the Salesforce customer relationship management application is now in use with more than 1,000 users.
For those unfamiliar, TDAI's onboarding process for integrations with third-party technology vendors is fairly formalized and is meant to ensure that a firm's systems, data and coding are secure and that they would conform to and stand up to regulatory scrutiny.
Once a third-party provider has passed a stringent security audit, they are provided access to a TDAI nonproduction development environment, often referred to informally in developer parlance as a sandbox.
After the provider has built the integration, a period of testing by both parties happens, and once it is deemed solid, it is turned on. Firms have no restrictions in terms of timeframe and the process remains very much a “work at your own pace” affair.
As for the next general steps on the roadmap, Mr. Patullo said, “Eventually we intend to see the integrations enhanced with additional alerts like householding. That was a big topic of discussion [at a recent development meeting].”
TD Ameritrade has created a couple resources that can be useful for advisers using Veo. First, the firm keeps an updated
list of third-party providers that have integrated with Veo.
Another resource is the
Veo Integration Analyzer tool, which is meant to help advisers ascertain the actual levels of integration available among and between the applications they are using or contemplating purchase of.
Related stories:
see second half of column: “iRebal elucidated”
TD 2013 Live! TD No.1 at supporting third-party tech vendors
iRebal-Veo integration is enviable
Veo users now can go macro easily
TD to work on work flows for third-party technology partners
TD Ameritrade Institutional reporting progress on its open API initiative
TD to open Veo architecture to third parties to lure advisers
TD Ameritrade launches tech initiative, moves toward completely open architecture
