Orion touts fractional share trading for advisors who custody with Schwab

Orion is offering fractional share trading for advisors who custody with Schwab Advisor Services, the RIA technology giant announced Tuesday.

This means that advisors can now implement client models to the dollar, rather than rounding to whole shares, reducing uninvested cash, Orion said. The fractional share trading is offered through Orion’s trading and rebalancing platform and its order management system.

The capability became available last month to Orion Advisor Tech clients who custody with Schwab.

“Advisors have told us fractional shares would make a real difference in how precisely they can manage client portfolios, and we’re glad to bring that to advisors and firms who custody with Schwab,” said Trent Mumma, chief product officer at Orion, in a statement.

 Fractional share trading has become part of the wealth management landscape in the last few years. In 2021 Fidelity Institutional started offering advisors access to fractional shares for ETFs and stocks. Two years later, Well Fargo introduced Stock Fractions, which lets investors buy a piece of an ETF or a stock for as little as $10. However, in 2024, Pershing attracted the ire of FINRA over its fractional share trading reporting.

Omaha, Neb.-based Orion is having a busy few weeks. The company recently surpassed $6 trillion in assets under administration, and also extended the capabilities of its Denali AI platform. Orion launched Denali AI in February at the company’s Ascent conference and has now expanded the platform into three different tiers – the original Denali AI; Denali Solutions, which is customized to clients’ strategies; and Powered by Denali, which is embedded across Orion’s individual products, such as Redtail CRM, portfolio accounting, trading, risk, compliance, and planning.