I have been in the industry for almost 18 years, all the time with Halbert Hargrove. I fell into it by accident. I started in the mortgage industry. That exploded early in my career. My parents are clients of Halbert Hargrove. After leaving my last job, I contacted them about rolling over a 401(k). They had several jobs that they asked me to apply for. I ended up as a financial analyst. My skills evolved. I got my CFP. Finally, I was working with clients. I also worked as a trader for several years. I served a term on the investment committee. Then I started to specialize more in operations and IT. I was promoted to director of technology and cyber security, but I continue to work with clients.
I started at our headquarters in Long Beach, California. I am a California native but moved to Denver in 2016 where I am now. It's been part remote and part in the office since COVID-19. It was fortuitous because when I moved, he helped me get everything ready for the firm to be mobile. When COVID hit, it was a smooth transition for us to work remotely. We had everything ready. No one needed any new training.
CRM, Reporting, Rebalancing, Portfolio Management and Trading: Envestnet | Tamarac with Microsoft Dynamics 365
We use Envestnet | Tamarac for reporting, rebalancing, portfolio management and trading. Because of this, we are using their CRM implementation, Microsoft Dynamics 365. We are a Microsoft store. Close integration is essential. We had our own internal implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365. Over time, we migrated to Envestnet | Implementation of Tamarac. Honestly, there's not much difference between it and the plain, vanilla version of Microsoft Dynamics 365. I like that it's portable. If we had ever migrated from Envestnet | Tamarac, and I'm not saying we're going, we can always find another provider.
Financial Planning: Envestnet | MoneyGuidePro
We are a big one MoneyGuidePro store, and is tightly integrated with Envestnet | Tamarac. They have done a lot of work behind the scenes. We have taken advantage of this and exploited the efficiency. Ten years ago, every time we made a MoneyGuidePro financial plan, we would have to manually update the accounts. This can be a bad thing. With Envestnet | Tamarac integration, you push a button and those properties are pushed to MoneyGuidePro. It refreshes everything, and in about 10 seconds, you have all your accounts up to date, which helps.
Account Collection: Yodlee by Envestnet
We have not implemented this firm across or consistently, but we do use Envestnet | Yodlee for account collection. It has been frustrating. It never worked perfectly. Some related institutions work better than others. Fidelity and Schwab, which most clients work with, tend to be stable. We have to deal with collection issues. I wish the technology was better out there, but I don't think we're unique in this problem. This is a sore point in our industry. It's a mixed bag.
Cyber Security: CrowdStrike / Proofpoint / KnowBe4 / Cisco Umbrella / Microsoft Sentinel
There is no one app that takes care of everything. There are several parts that work together to cover different use cases.
We upgraded to CrowdStrike about a year ago. They've added some AI features that I'm excited about this year. The threat landscape is evolving rapidly. My concern is that it will move faster than we can adjust to over time. Our specialty is wealth advisory, not cyber security. Having a good salesperson out there that uses technology as much as possible is essential.
For email security, we moved to Proofpoint about five years ago. It is never possible to filter out 100% of all bad emails, but reducing them to a smaller number is good. Sometimes, you get false positives that filter through, but overall it's been good.
Employees are the weakest link in the chain at this point. I hate to say it, but I think it's correct. We are good at training. We use KnowBe4. It's easy to use, cheap and seems to work well. We have also conducted simulated phishing attacks. It scares many people because it is effective. You can send them text messages that appear to be phishing attempts. Some people have responded to them, and she's responded, “Hey, you shouldn't have done that.” It is effective in attracting people's attention. When you set it to “aggressive” you can have it send them emails and text messages at the same time. It looks convincing. We have scared people enough that they pay attention now. They ask before they click.
We also use Cisco Umbrella for domain name system filtering. This has been a lifesaver. If someone is on their computers, even if they are not on the network, it is still running in the background. We can make sure they don't visit any website they want, such as gambling or video games. It makes it easier for me. I don't have to worry about people going to strange websites and downloading things that might be problematic. People complain about this from time to time, but I think it's worth it.
We use Okta for identity management. We have it integrated with almost every third-party web application we use. It has strengthened our network security and user authentication. Okta implements multi-factor security for users on our Virtual Private Network system. It is quite simple to use and adjust the system when necessary. If an associate leaves the firm, we first go into Okta and revoke their access. They can then no longer access any systems we use. We don't have to worry about someone doing something strange or fraudulent if they are no longer with the firm. It will not allow them to export data. Instead of me messing around and disabling access to 30 different systems, we do it in one place. It is efficient.
Our log management system is Microsoft Sentinel, which we only set up in the last few years. We don't have it working as well as I'd like, but it's still producing good results.
Virtual Meetings, Phone System, Scheduling & AI Assistant: Zoom / Zoom Phone / Zoom Scheduler / Zoom AI Companion
We have used Larger numerous meetings since the beginning of the pandemic. We have just implemented Zoom Phone for our phone system. I'm excited about it because it's integrated now. We used to have RingCentral. People never liked the interface. They tried to put together their own video service, but it was overpriced. Zoom Phone saved us money. Now we have one app that does several things instead of three apps. We also had a separate scheduling system, OnceHub. We are now using Zoom Scheduler. We're consolidating into the Zoom system, which I'm excited about. We have fewer sellers. You can do it at a lower cost. It's also easier for our associates to use. Requires less training. There are more intuitive tools to use. Zoom AI Companion just came out. We're trying to be careful with her, but she's shown real promise. You can record a meeting and have Zoom AI Companion transcribe it. It can send you detailed notes within a minute or two of the meeting ending. It has a high degree of accuracy. It gives you formatted paragraphs, who said what, and follow-up and action items. This is a natural place to try to leverage technology. If we can get comfortable with data protection and how to make sure customer data doesn't end up there, that's going to be the tricky part.
Document Management: Laserfiche
We have used Laserfiche for more than 20 years. We host it on Microsoft Azure, so it's in the cloud. We still have a lot invested in it. We use a lot of custom metadata there, so it would be a pain to migrate from that. We have no plans to do so now. This is where we are not using one of the systems that is one of the market leaders in our space. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I don't doubt Laserfiche, but the bread and butter of their business is not in financial services.
As told by reporter Rob Burgess and edited for length and clarity. The views and opinions are not representative of the views of WealthManagement.com.
Want to tell us what's in your possession? Contact Rob Burgess at (email protected).