Firms step up efforts to improve advisors’ desktops

In some ways, Richardson Partners and GMP have the advantage over their larger and older competitors when it comes to technology. The two recent start-ups — Richardson Partners will celebrate its fifth anniversary this year — have no legacy systems with which to contend; they have built their own scalable platforms. So, they are able to tailor their offering to clients’ and advisors’ needs. And they have a smaller number of advisors who are more homogeneous in the type of businesses they run. It isn’t a matter of firm-wide upgrades every few years.

In a word, say advisors at Richardson Partners, it’s all about flexibility. “I can do my work from anywhere,” says a Richardson Partners advisor in Eastern Canada. “We have monthly partner meetings and the firm has a program that allows me to attend these meetings [virtually] from my desk.”

The firm’s advisors also have the freedom to use the software of their choosing. “We don’t believe that every single team needs access to the same software or the same tools,” says Sue Dabarno, president and CEO of Richardson Partners in Toronto. This is all a part, she adds, of respecting what has helped make the firm’s advisors successful in the past.

“We’re looking to improve advisor-managed software, performance-measurement applications and our Web site for our clients,” she says. “Our advisors direct the prioritizing of technology spending and upgrades through a technology steering committee.”

Richardson Partners also understands that no technology system is without a learning curve or breakdowns, which is why it has a 24-hour, on-call tech support service that makes house calls.

“Every time I have a problem, they phone me back right away,” says a Richardson Partners advisor in Ontario.

At GMP, advisors applaud its custom-built contact-management system.

“Having built a brand new platform from scratch, we have the advantage of not having a lot of the legacy issues that plague a lot of the other firms with older platforms,” says GMP CEO James Werry, who makes sure his advisors also have the training to go along with the cutting-edge technology.

“We have a department dedicated to training advisors on new technology,” he says. “It will be very hands-on, person by person.”

EXECUTIVES DELUDED

But ScotiaMcLeod is proving training isn’t everything. It upgraded to Odyssey Financial Technologies Inc.’s WealthManager platform this year at a cost of $30 million over three years. At the time advisors were being interviewed, January through March, WealthManager was being rolled out to 200 branches every two weeks. Branch trainers were getting advisors up to speed, training them in multiple waves on the platform.

“First, there is adoption and then, right now, we’re getting a team to go back in after the advi-sors have been using it for two to three months,” says Hamish Angus, head of ScotiaMcLeod. “Basically, the resources we used during rollout are now being refocused toward continued training.”

But what advisors report experiencing seems more like torture than teaching.

“The executives are deluded about the quality of the new technology,” says a ScotiaMcLeod advisor in Western Canada who rated technology tools a zero in performance but a 10 in importance. “Everyone hates it. I wouldn’t have started my career here if I knew it was going to be this bad. It’s like a digital kick in the groin every day. But I can’t leave because I have a book and it’s really hard to take it with me at this stage in my career. I’m in for a penny, in for a pound.”

Only three out of the 50 ScotiaMcLeod advisors surveyed had anything positive to say about the tech upgrade. The rest complained and named technology as the worst aspect of their firm — or the reason they wouldn’t recommend ScotiaMcLeod to another advisor. With all the effort on training, most advisors say the problems had to do with the technology itself.

@page_break@”It’s counterproductive, downloading is slow and there are many application complications,” says a ScotiaMcLeod advisor in Central Canada.

Adds a colleague from the West: “What’s wrong with technology? What isn’t? It’s out of date, it fails regularly, I can’t do quotes and screens won’t open.”

But ScotiaMcLeod is not alone in awakening advisor displeasure. Another bank-owned firm, Toronto-based TD Waterhouse Private Investment Advice, which had the third-lowest score at 6.8, also rolled out the WealthManager platform this year. A TD Waterhouse advisor in Ontario says it’s so cumbersome and antiquated, he has created his own software to replace it.

Despite the complaints from ScotiaMcLeod advisors, Angus remains optimistic: “We’ve never made as large an investment in technology during my entire [20-year] career.

“We have the support from a shareholder who wants to see the advisors receive the best technology for their clients,” he adds. “We are going to get this done; we’re right in the middle of it and I think [Investment Executive researchers] caught people at a frustrating point in the process.

“Yes, there’s a learning curve; there are things that are challenging. But we will get it done,” Angus continues. “It’s not just an investment of money; there’s equity being spent here from all sides. But I am confident, years from now, people will say, ‘I can’t believe we ever did without this’.” IE