Wedbush Securities latest to choose FolioDynamix's platform

Wedbush Securities Inc. will deploy FolioDynamix's full-service wealth management platform for its advisers, the companies announced. “We started looking 16 months ago, considering whether to acquire each piece separately or to find an end-to-end provider,” said Wesley Long, executive vice president of the private-finance services group at Wedbush. “We decided the end-to-end provider was the way to go.” The choice to farm out the upgrade is a departure from Wedbush's past practice, having always used proprietary software designed in-house. The previous platform, however, had its shortcomings, according to Mr. Long, that the FolioDynamix software will address. “The new platform provides access to unified managed accounts,” he said. “Advisers can keep their clients' mutual funds, stocks and even outside managed accounts all in a single place. Right now, we have to create separate accounts.” The platform is also intended to reduce reliance on outside money managers by allowing advisers to use their own trading models as well as those of money managers. “It's much more manual,” Mr. Long said. “There's also a nice front-end ability to interface with clients through features like a questionnaire.” The contract between the two companies is signed and the rollout is currently in progress. “We're in the programming stage,” Mr. Long said. “It should be ready no later than January.” At the end of July, Raymond James announced it would also be moving to a FolioDynamix wealth management platform.