The Dec. 31st RMD Deadline is Near: Are You Ready?

Great technology should help you keep tabs on the health of your clients’ portfolios. So when your clients reach the golden years of retirement (or ages 70 ½ and older), Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) should become part of your discussions.

A client’s first RMD must be satisfied by April 1 of the year after the client turns 70½. After that, RMDs must be taken by December 31 of each year. But with the December 31st deadline approaching, keeping up with RMDs doesn’t have to prevent you from enjoying your holiday festivities.

Orion’s platform provides the RMD Dashboard app to help you monitor RMDs for clients who are over the age of 70 ½, making it easy for you to track annual distributions and minimize the risk that those clients will take an incorrect amount and be subject to a penalty.

With an intuitive layout that puts all your critical RMD information front and center, you can use the app to quickly track all the portfolio requirements.

Here are just some of the ways Orion’s platform can help you this week:

1. Focusing on the Details

Helping your clients stay updated with their RMD amounts is all about the details.

Calculating how much an eligible client needs to withdraw per year isn’t difficult, but it does require time that could otherwise be spent engaging with clients or even prospecting.

Orion’s RMD Dashboard app calculates each eligible client’s RMD amount for you. As RMD withdrawals are taken throughout the year, you can also keep track of the amount remaining — so you know at all times whether a client is on track to meet the required withdrawals.

2. Keep Clients On Track

Orion Connect makes it as simple as checking a single column to see if a client is on track to meet the required withdrawals.

To determine the state of a client account, just look at the Status Icon column. If you see green, you’re good. A yellow warning sign tells you that your client’s portfolio is off-track from their systematic withdrawal plan for the year. Finally, a red icon indicates there is no SWP set up at all

These visual icons help you complete your review quickly — all from the RMD app home screen.

Once you’ve completed your status review, you can quickly engage with clients for constructive conversations about what they need to do meet their requirements for the year.

3. Maintain Forms in One Place

Your firm probably uses a cloud storage solution, and it’s likely that employees save some documents locally — or even on hard drives.With so many different options for file storage, wouldn’t it be convenient to know where any given file has been uploaded or saved?  

The RMD Dashboard app makes this value proposition a reality. We keep TD Ameritrade and Schwab account transfer forms as menu items in the RMD Dashboard app, so if you ever need them, you know where they are for easy downloading.

And what’s more, you can upload your own forms to make the app even more useful for your team.

Form management is just one more way the RMD Dashboard can help you save time and keep your sanity when things are hectic.

4. Find Added Flexibility with Account Tools  

If you haven’t noticed by now, the RMD Dashboard has been designed to save you time throughout your day.

That’s why the app includes additional filters and quick actions to help you get from one task to the next as fast as you can click.

With quick actions, you can take immediate action when you see a need. For example, you can initiate a prorated cash trade or a sell rebalance with a one-click quick action.

Quick actions also let you perform fast filters. Want to see everyone who’s the same age at the end of the year? Simply select the age field in the Slick Grid in the middle of the screen, and the system will present you with an automatic filter to narrow down your entire list to the information you’re currently viewing.

Orion’s RMD Dashboard app provides you with all the tools you need to make quick work of portfolio check-ups for all your clients who are 70 ½ and older.

With quick actions, smart filters, and visual indicators of RMD progress throughout the year, your team can spend less time checking on portfolios and more time with the people who own them.

Ready to put what you’ve learned into action? Log into Orion Connect to begin taking advantage of these system features.

Don’t work with us yet? Click here to talk to our sales team and schedule a personal demo.