A few members from our RIA In A Box team traveled down to Dallas, Texas a few weeks ago to attend the 2015 Technology Tools for Today (T3) Advisor conference and to officially release our new MyRIACompliance® software platform, as well as meet with other firms in the industry to pick their brains and discuss the RIA world. While it was great to speak with current RIA firms and hear about their needs, interests, and get their feedback, as well as to see some familiar faces with some of our local clients in attendance, it was also great to meet with some other technology vendors in the RIA space to discuss their latest developments and offerings.
Throughout the course of our 3 days in Dallas, in between demonstrations at our own exhibit, we were able to stop by and visit other exhibits to get a better understanding for technology in the RIA world. It was very encouraging to see how many different technology solutions are readily available to help assist RIAs of all different shapes and sizes. Account aggregation was a hot topic and there were multiple providers showing off their solutions that will help simplify and enhance other systems to help run your business smoothly and effortlessly. There was also a fair amount of talk circling around robo-advisor institutional platforms presenting opportunities for advisors. Our take on the presentations given by these providers at the T3 conference was that robo-advisors’ institutional offerings present financial planning-oriented firms a unique commercial opportunity, and they are presently not much of a threat to the traditional RIA industry.
Despite many impressive exhibits and technology offerings/solutions for RIAs, there was one area that was almost non-existent throughout the conference: investment adviser compliance technology solutions. Unfortunately, technology has traditionally not played big role in the investment advisory compliance world, and it was further confirmed at the T3 conference. So our main question is: why not? Why, when there are so many other technology solutions for RIAs, has compliance not caught up? Unfortunately, there is no great answer other than the reality that many such providers remain focused on serving the broker-dealer industry and continue to neglect the investment adviser industry.
Our goal, and our hope, is that the MyRIACompliance® software platform will be able to solve this problem and be a user friendly, streamlined solution to assist the Chief Compliance Officer (CCO) of an RIA firm with its ongoing compliance responsibilities. We believe that in today’s day and age, compliance technology is very necessary to keep up with the rest of your business, the rest of the industry, and the ever-changing regulations that all RIA firms must adhere to. In addition to housing all of a firm’s compliance materials in one place, the interactive platform also creates tailored checklists and calendars and helps ensure that the firm is registered in the proper jurisdictions. The positive feedback we received from other vendors at the conference, as well as the many investment advisory firms that visited our exhibit throughout the course of the week confirmed these beliefs and proved to us that there is in fact a need for technology in the RIA compliance space.