One of the pleasant surprises we’ve experienced as we’ve helped RIA practices integrate our trading and rebalancing software is the creative spirit of our clients. Some of the best parts of this process are when RIAs find new and unexpected uses for the Blaze Portfolio app. We’ve summarized three of our favorite examples below.
SMA Creates a Portal with Customized Login
One of our clients is a Separately Managed Account (SMA) specialist who serves a network of independent advisors. In this case, the SMA manager innovated a system of allowing their advisors to log into our web-based trading and rebalancing software to make adjustments to their portfolios. For instance, advisors can execute a shift in asset allocation strategy or make more cash available from directly within our software. Rather than contacting the SMA manager via email or phone, the advisor can log into our software to input changes. These adjustments are automatically relayed to the SMA manager who can then execute the necessary trades.
Here is a case where providing different levels of access permissions in our platform, a feature designed to provide utility and security within a firm, found an unexpected use as a means of executing a sub-advisory function. Having a web-based platform makes all the difference here since each of the advisor sub-clients can tap into the service by just logging in (because there’s no software to download or install to use Blaze Portfolio). By giving login access to our software to their clients, while restricting functionality, the SMA advisor has provided an instantaneous, efficient, and precise interface for adjusting portfolio strategies and holdings.
Trading and Rebalancing Software Offers Marketing Models
While building and executing portfolio models is at the heart of our business, we hadn’t anticipated that this flexibility might become a marketing tool. We discovered that one of our clients who services large institutional and family assets had discovered that they could use our software in presentations to demonstrate flexibility of strategic possibility, and also to model different simulations in a live, boardroom presentation.
This sort of presentation shows how a potential client’s various accounts can be householded for strategic purposes and provides a live demonstration of the advantages of visualizing a complex variety of accounts as a whole. As an example, this can be especially powerful for a charitable institution that has a large number of endowed accounts, many of which may have their own investment directives. Being able to show the potential client different scenarios and how trades can be executed across accounts turns out to be much more powerful than simply talking through these possibilities.
Advisor Gains Insight from Running Trade Simulations
Rebalancing portfolios due to market shifts or strategic changes is the core functionality of our software. We were surprised to learn that one of our clients had discovered they could use this functionality to run simulations based on specific trades. In other words, rather than add to stock positions across the board after a period in which bonds outperformed stocks, this advisor wanted to look at different scenarios in which they would add selectively to their favorite stocks. This allowed them to view how each scenario would affect position size, sector allocation, and other metrics in real time, taking into account the inevitable volatility of stock prices. This, in turn, allowed them to fine-tune their rebalancing decisions while maintaining an active role in stock selection.
All in all, these examples show how RIAs are taking advantage of the powerful software integrations and tools that are now at their disposal, using them to meet the specific needs of their practices. It also shows us, from the developer side of the business, how vital it is to pay attention to RIA needs and actions, which can show us the path to the next stage of trading and rebalancing software functionality.