Fidelity launches platform for RIAs

Fidelity Investments today announced the formal launch of its Fidelity WealthCentral management platform for registered investment advisers. The platform is in a pilot with 25 firms and will be rolled out to the firm’s remaining 3,500 RIA clients during 2009 and 2010. Boston-based Fidelity spent $50 million and 18 months developing the system. “A team of over 250 individuals has spent two years working closely with our third-party business providers to develop hundreds of modules in order to get the systems to virtually talk with one another,” Edward O’Brien, senior vice president of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, said in a statement. The system combines customer relationship management, financial planning, and portfolio management —including rebalancing and trading — into one platform that’s accessible from a single log-in. “The real accomplishment here is the data integration and backend reconciliation of that data that we’ve achieved,” said Scott Dell’Orfano, executive vice president of Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services. For more information visit Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services.