May 2018 Software Update Highlights

On May 19, we’ll release the next Software Update to the Orion platform. As a company built by advisors, for advisors, much of our new development is created as a result of direct advisor feedback, and this spring’s release is no different. It features a number of enhancements to existing Orion Connect apps, upgrades to the experience delivered by our Client Portal and mobile app, and many updates to our integration capabilities.

In this preview we’ve collected a few of the biggest and brightest highlights of what’s to come in the May Software Update. Be sure to stay tuned to the Orion blog when we publish the full Release Notes—including notes about system optimizations and enhancements not covered in this preview—after they are launched on May 19th!

 

Billing

Enhanced Bill Pay Feature for Financial Planning and More

What We Built
Previously, bills could only be generated on a per account basis to support traditional AUM fee billing processes. With this new enhancement you can now add Financial Planning fees to existing Households, or create new Households to bill a variety of one-time fees, including financial planning, tax planning, estate planning and more.

Why It Matters
You can now centralize all types of advisory fees, for all of your services, within the Orion platform to provide a consistent billing experience for your clients.

How to Learn More
Log into the Prospect Portal App, select the Client Portal App OC and open the Billing Generator app.

 

Collect Financial Planning Fees from Custodial Accounts

What We Built
This enhancement allows you to assign a managed account to pay for financial planning fees, and create fee files in your specific custodian’s preferred format.

Why It Matters
Help your team create a more efficient and consistent overall billing process and offer your client a simpler way to pay for your financial planning services.

How to Learn More
To set paying accounts: Open the Billing Audit app, navigate to Edit Household > Financial Planning Fees.
To create a fee file: Open Bill Generator and click on Live Bill Instance > Fee Files.

 

Secure Financial Planning Fee Payments in the Client Portal

What We Built
We enhanced our integration with BluePay so clients can now securely enter their billing information in your Client Portal. You can also process financial planning fees directly with the BluePay integration.

Why It Matters
Provides a convenient, consistent, and secure way for clients to pay for financial planning fees and advisory services. It also creates transparency into the billing process to help further build trust between you and your client.

How to Learn More
Read more about our integration with BluePay.

Compliance
Compliance Corner Solutions

New Compass Tool: Supervise

What We Built
We’ve added another tool to the Compass app to build a more robust compliance dashboard. This tool is called Supervise and will allow you to schedule various exception reports and compliance testing data queries to help you align compliance testing and supervision exception reporting with your unique business model.

Why It Matters
Supervise revolutionizes compliance and supervisory oversight testing by eliminating manual compliance reviews of extensive spreadsheets to help you save significant time. It will also help mitigate the risks specific to your firm’s compliance procedures.

How to Learn More
Open the Compass app and select Tools: Supervise.

Integrations

Integrations

Orion Connect in Salesforce Lightning

What We Built
We now support Orion Connect in Salesforce Lightning. Previously, we supported Orion Connect in Salesforce Classic, Financial Services Cloud, and Salesforce through TD Ameritrade.

Why It Matters
This integration brings the full capabilities of the Orion portfolio accounting technology platform into Salesforce’s new and intuitive Lightning interface.

How to Learn More
Check out our latest blog post to learn more

 

iRetire by BlackRock

What We Built
Later this month we’re launching an integration with iRetire by BlackRock, making their retirement income planning technology available in Orion Connect.

Why It Matters
Orion advisors will be able to access BlackRock’s intuitive retirement income technology to better engage with prospects and clients — on both saving and spending planning — at no additional cost.

How to Learn More
Watch for more updates about the launch of this exciting new integration in late May.

 

IncomeConductor 

What We Built
Our newest integration with IncomeConductor will connect IncomeConductor’s segmented retirement income plans with the Orion platform and provide you with the ability to associate your clients’ accounts and sub-accounts with one or more income plan segments in just one click.

Why It Matters
Daily automated updates of your client account values ensure that you can easily monitor all your plans and act quickly when opportunities arise to meet with clients and make important plan modifications.

How to Learn More
Search for IncomeConductor in the Orion Social Integrations Group. You can contact IncomeConductor directly via 860-969-3672, info@wealthconductor.com, or www.incomeconductor.com. Orion users receive a 10% discount and 30-day trial.

 

Client Experience

 

User Interface

In these software updates, we focused on deepening our integrations with partners whose solutions impact the experience of your clients in the Client Portal and Mobile app.

MoneyGuidePro Single-Sign On

What We Built
We’ve added single-sign on to MoneyGuidePro within the Client Portal. This update allows your clients to access the interactive and engaging PlayZone financial planning tool without re-entering their password credentials in the MoneyGuidePro system.

Why It Matters
This will create a more interactive and engaging way for your clients to seamlessly access their PlayZone through your client portal. Using the PlayZone, clients can adjust variables affecting their financial plan to see how changes will affect their goals.

How to Learn More
In the Client Portal, click the Planning tab and then launch MoneyGuidePro.

 

Deeper Riskalyze Client Portal Integration

What We Built
We’ve enhanced the Riskalyze integration in the Client Portal to include the client’s questionnaire score, current portfolio score, and model score. Also, clients can see their Risk Number for each account, and each asset within those accounts.

Why It Matters
This update helps enhance transparency so clients can get a better understanding of their risk throughout their portfolio and also helps match the client experience to what you can create using the Riskalyze tile in the Insight app.

How to Learn More
To enable these updates, open the Client Portal and navigate to Admin Menu > Settings > Integration Tab > Riskalyze Risk Profile.

 

Reporting & Portfolio Accounting

Reporting

New Growth of $1K Sub-Report

What We Built
You can now show portfolio growth over time by selecting increments of $1, $100, $1,000 or $10,000, in addition to the benchmarks you’ve associated with your composite groups.

Why It Matters
This update will help you and your clients better visualize their portfolios against your selected benchmarks.

How to Learn More
Open the Composite app and navigate to the Dashboard.

 

Track Managed Account Changes

What We Built
You can now use the Change History tool to track changes to the Managed Account checkbox on individual accounts. Through this update, you can identify when an account entered or exited managed status by your firm, as well as add or remove accounts within your monthly composite account list.

Why It Matters
This enhancement adds clarity if an auditor would want to know why a composite excluded a certain account during a month’s calculations.

How to Learn More
In the Portfolio Audit app, navigate to Accounts > Edit Account > Change History > Managed.

Alternative Investment Data Download Format

What We Built
We’ve created a download file format that allows alternative investment data vendors to provide their data in Orion’s preferred format so you can quickly and easily upload your alternatives information into Orion.

Why It Matters
This feature helps automate alternative data delivery and creates a streamlined process that will save you time when inputting alternative data into Orion.

How to Learn More
This update will occur automatically. 

 

Enhanced Pershing Data Feed

What We Built
Our data feed from Pershing will break out commissions into their own separate transactions from trades. This update allows for more accurate transactional data and activity summaries on reports.

Why It Matters
This update makes it simple for clients to understand commission fees, which will help you have a more transparent conversation to build greater trust.

How to Learn More
This update will occur automatically.

 

Custom Time Periods for Composite Groups

What We Built
You can now run composite groups for any time period you choose.

Why It Matters
This highly-requested update allows Investment Committees to gain insight into composite model performance mid-month, and now your Investment Management team can strategically track composite performance.

How to Learn More
Open the Composite app and navigate to Daily Composites.

 

Trading

Integrations

 

Aggregate Sleeve Strategies

What We Built
You can now use the Sleeve Strategy app to create an aggregate sleeve strategy. This feature acts similarly to a weighted model and allows you to assign multiple sleeve strategies to a single sleeve.

Why It Matters
Previously, each sleeve could be assigned only one strategy. This feature helps determine alternative targets for sleeves more easily and enhances the previous workflow.

How to Learn More
Launch Orion Connect and open the Sleeve Strategy app, then navigate to Sleeve Strategy Aggregate.

 

Schwab Prime Broker Allocation File

What We Built
We’ve developed an allocation file for the Schwab Prime Broker trade desk.

Why It Matters
Once blocks have been executed at Schwab, you will be able to create the Prime Broker file for direct upload at Schwab to allocate those trades to client accounts. This feature is part of an ongoing effort with Schwab to help our advisors access more powerful trading functionality.

How to Learn More
Launch Orion Connect, open the TOM app, and navigate to Allocations.

All of the highlights you’ve read about in today’s article, plus many more enhancements and upgrades, will be coming to you when the Orion software update rolls out on May 19. Click here to sign up for our software update webinar on May 23, 2018 to learn more about how to put these enhancements to use in your business.

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