Transforming Financial Advising With Seamless Data

Wealth technology solutions such as Direct Advisory Suite have become essential for financial advisors and their financial services home offices. These tools enable advisors to provide top-notch investment proposals and portfolio reports and also assist home offices in adhering to crucial regulations.

The success of these solutions, however, depends on their ability to integrate and analyze financial account data from many sources.  

• Data overload. Advisors get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information available, making it hard to absorb and apply. The challenge from this becomes normalizing the data so that advisors can present the data and build trust for long-term relationships.
• Time. Time is a precious commodity in the investment landscape. Advisors often find themselves bogged down by operational tasks, leaving less time for what truly matters—building relationships with clients and providing tailored investment advice.
• Loss of assets under management and providing holistic advice. Plus, when advisors lack a holistic view of their client’s landscape, they miss out on managing additional assets and providing more holistic advice for their clients.

Direct Advisory Suite is a powerhouse portfolio analytics and research application on its own. ByAllAccounts, a top data aggregation service, consolidates all of the data that allows enterprises to provide more holistic advice, portfolio analytics, and research to clients. 

Maeve Doonan, SVP of business development, helped explain how ByAllAccountst transforms data integration for financial enterprises.

As the saying goes, “Two heads are better than one.” 

In this case, it's the strength of two tools working together to create a consolidated, efficient, and high-quality experience. This is where ByAllAccounts steps in. The data aggegration service changes how advisors manage data and interact with their clients through Direct Advisory Suite. 

“Imagine managing 100 clients, each with a brokerage, a 401(k), and a taxable account,” Maeve said. “The manual entry of such vast amounts of data into is not only time-consuming but also prone to errors. I’m using the power of our aggregation to pull that data in seamlessly so I can actually spend more time being a relationship manager, being an advisor, focusing on a client’s goals and making better investment recommendations, which can be both brokerage and advisory accounts." 

The goal for an advisor is to balance time getting to know their client's life goals, risk tolerances, and time horizon while still putting together a strong investment strategy and maintaining a trustworthy brand presence. The ideal divide is about 51% client-focused energy, 29% focus on an investment strategy, and 20% focus on operational and brand strategic needs.

According to Morningstar's Voice of the Advisor survey, advisors spend 51% of their time on operations tasks. Using aggregation gives advisors back time to focus on prospecting and relationship building. 

By centralizing data, home offices can achieve a 360-degree view of advisor activities from proposal generation to report building.

A consolidated data approach empowers home offices to proactively identify and address compliance issues before they escalate. By having all information at their fingertips, they can ensure accuracy in fee impact representations in client proposals, which is crucial for maintaining transparency and trust. Firms can also verify that investment proposals align with clients’ risk tolerance. 

ByAllAccounts seamlessly integrates data across wealth ecosystems, eliminating the fragmented user experience that many advisors face. This integration saves time and enhances data accuracy.  

“The benefits of ByAllAccounts extend beyond just the advisors. “How it benefited the fintech world, in this case, was through the enhanced power of Direct Advisory Suite,” Maeve said. “It benefited by making a better user experience for the individual, being able to access that data so easily integrated within the system. We can't do it without a tool like ByAllAccounts.

She added, “If we didn't have this integration with ByAllAccounts, data wouldn’t be normalized from a data transaction into a comprehensive resource. Data is just words on a piece of paper, but the combined power of Morningstar ratings and analytics makes it much more meaningful across the wealth ecosystems, including home offices and financial advisors to use with clients.

Maeve said, “We‘ve automated that entire workflow. ByAllAccounts is a key piece of the data in and supports the data outflow because it can seamlessly pull those fragmented experiences into a single connection. ByAllAccounts is the data source that feeds aggregated data into Direct Advisory Suite, which then runs portfolio analytics and research to generate reports.”

With the help of ByAllAcccounts financial data aggregation, Direct Advisory Suite can integrate and migrate data into its platform. 

Workflows are simplified, and users are empowered with a holistic view of their operations. By seamlessly aggregating data from many sources, ByAllAccounts and Direct Advisory Suite support comprehensive analysis of client portfolios. Users can access and analyze all necessary data, for hypothetical performance to client account details, without leaving the Direct Advisory Suite environment. The result is a unified platform that enhances efficiency and provides a strategic advantage. 

By consolidating data and enhancing efficiency, it empowers advisors to focus on what truly matters—delivering a stellar client experience.

ByAllAccounts connects over 15,000 financial data sources including ~200 direct custodial feeds with two-way integrations with leading portfolio management platform, more than 60 wealth tech platforms, and over 16,000 advisors with ease. Talk with a Morningstar specialist today about integrating ByAllAccounts. 

Maeve Doonan and Steve Novak have not received any cash or non-cash compensation from Morningstar, directly or indirectly, in exchange for this client success story.