Year after year, most investment advisors surveyed for Investment Executive‘s Brokerage Report Card are frustrated with their firms’ technology tools – and 2015 is no exception. The most common complaint was that firms are unable to keep these important tools up to date.
This is most evident when looking at the ratings advisors gave their firms in the “technology tools and advisor desktop” category. The overall average performance rating of 7.5 is significantly lower than the overall average importance rating of 9.0. This results in a “satisfaction gap” of 1.5 points – the largest of any category in the Report Card. In fact, this category now has had the largest such gap every year during the past decade.
Some of the most dissatisfied advisors work for bank-owned brokerage firms, including Montreal-based National Bank Financial Ltd. (NBF) and Toronto-based firms CIBC Wood Gundy, TD Wealth Private Investment Advice (TD Wealth PIA) and ScotiaMcLeod Inc. These firms not only had some of the lowest ratings in the category, they also garnered significant satisfaction gaps of 2.3 points or higher for technology.
For Wood Gundy, whose tech rating dropped to 6.8 from 7.6 in 2014, advisors’ main points of contention were ineffective client relationship management (CRM) software and outdated tech tools.
“The version of Internet Explorer that we use has not been supported by Microsoft [Corp.] for years. And our version of Excel is old. I can’t open some documents I receive,” says a Wood Gundy advisor in British Columbia.
However, Wood Gundy advisors will be relieved to hear that the firm intends to update advisors’ PCs to Windows 7 from Windows XP and to Office 2010 from Office 2003.
“We’ve now sufficiently tested the systems we have to make sure everything doesn’t go tilt when we put [the new software] in,” says Monique Gravel, managing director and head of Wood Gundy.
For NBF advisors, who also rated their firm lower in technology this year, at 6.8 vs 7.3 in 2014, lack of upgrades is not the issue. Rather, what occurs after their tech has been updated is what is a source of frustration. Advisors said that once new tools have been implemented, they’re either unreliable or have many glitches.
“They launched a lot of tools, but there are a lot of glitches,” says an NBF advisor in B.C.
ScotiaMcLeod and TD Wealth PIA had the lowest ratings among the bank-owned firms, at 6.5 and 5.9, respectively. Still, they also were among the four firms in the Report Card that saw their tech ratings increase. These firms’ advisors acknowledge that their firms are trying to improve in this category, but more needs to be done.
ScotiaMcLeod has undergone a massive technological investment over the past year, which includes rolling out improved systems for opening client accounts, trading, reporting and CRM.
“There have been major improvements. We’ve come into the new millennium. We rolled out Salesforce, and senior management seems to understand the importance of technology,” says a ScotiaMcLeod advisor in Atlantic Canada.
But many ScotiaMcLeod advisors said the process is taking too long. In fact, Alex Besharat, managing director and head of ScotiaMcLeod, admits the much anticipated tech overhaul has experienced delays, which adds to the cost of the process.
“The delay is an expensive problem, but we have to roll out the system in the right way,” he says. “Yes, [the process] has been slower than we would have hoped for. But, at this point in time, the big branch rollouts have started and these rollouts are happening on schedule. So, I’m pretty confident we’ll finish at the end of June.”
TD Wealth PIA advisors, for their part, said that even though their firm has updated its tech, the firm still is way behind its competitors. “We did get some more stuff this year, such as a CRM program and some new portfolio-manager functionality, but we’re still light years behind other firms,” says a TD Wealth PIA advisor in B.C.
Meanwhile, Vancouver-based regional independent Odlum Brown Ltd. saw the biggest year-over-year drop in its performance rating for tech, down to 6.4 from 7.3 in 2014. The main reason is not old technology, advisors said, but the absence of a CRM system.
Odlum Brown’s management is listening, though; the firm is working on providing a CRM system to advisors.
“We’re in the process of building the back-end piece to [the CRM system] right now,” says Debra Hewson, Odlum Brown’s president and CEO. “The first piece of that is to build a link between our back-office processor, which is Broadridge [Financial Solutions Inc.], and the CRM software.”
In contrast, some firms were praised for paying attention to advisors’ tech wish lists. Toronto-based Raymond James Ltd. had the largest rating increase in the technology category this year, to 7.8 from 7.3 in 2014. The firm’s advisors generally were happy with the firm’s regular tech updates.
“Raymond James spends a lot on tech upgrades. And so, we have a really good platform. It’s clean and fast,” says a Raymond James advisor in Atlantic Canada.
Suggestions to improve Raymond James’ tech platform come directly from the firm’s Chairman’s Club of top-producing advisors, which may help. “We went through a series of workshops in which that group identified their highest priorities,” says Thomas Raidl, senior vice president of Raymond James’ private client group and national director of independent financial services. “That’s how most of our development for the next few years is being driven.”
Calgary-based Leede Financial Markets Inc. received the highest performance rating in the category, at 9.1, because advisors appreciate the firm’s efforts to upgrade its tech tools regularly.
For Robert Harrison, Leede’s president and CEO, ensuring that advisors’ technology works well is just good for business: “You can’t tell somebody, ‘Sorry, I can’t get your account information because everything is down right now.’ [So, for us, upgrading is] a continual thing.”
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