May 2021

Among the many fallacies investors must overcome, overconfidence is one of the most prevalent – especially during bull markets. This campaign helps illuminate the dangers of investing without the future in mind and shows how your firm can guide clients and prospects in the right direction.

With this retirement-focused campaign, show clients and prospects how, with the right financial planning guidance and investment strategies in place, their retirement can be the start of a new chapter in life.

In the first of a new series of campaigns focused on high net worth investors, you can target young professionals marked for future success with a suite of engaging content.

Previously when updating a what-if in a retirement goal, the Monte Carlo result that calculated upon making the change would recalculate after clicking “Apply To Plan”. With this update, the result that appears after updating the what-if will remain even after applying to the plan.

As part of our continued integration of the legacy Advizr platform into Orion’s technology suite, we have updated the branding in the Planning web application to reflect the name “Orion Planning.” We will continue to make updates to other logos and verbiage over the coming months.

Communities welcomes new strategies to Orion’s robust model marketplace. Here’s the list of who has recently joined the platform: 

• KraneShares
• NASDAQ Dorsey Right 
• GlobalX
• Putnam Investments

Learn more about these strategists on our Communities Corner.

Users are now able to import ESG Restrictions into the Eclipse trading tool in order to block specific themes on a portfolio-by-portfolio basis. By restricting a theme, securities under that theme will be updated to “always sell all” in Eclipse, meaning existing securities will be marked unassigned and liquidated in the next trade. In addition, these securities will be marked do not buy so accounts will not buy them going forward.  Users will need to obtain an export from an ESG Provider, or create their own, and then can import those restrictions into Eclipse.

Systematics in Orion Connect will now sync into Eclipse and automatically set aside cash. For distributions, the amount set aside can also be multiplied with a new preference that will allow you to set aside more than just the exact amount being distributed. This way, users can set aside 3 months worth of cash, without changing the systematic amount. Dollar cost averaging systematics will exclude the remaining amount on the account in Eclipse, and will reduce the amount protected each time a traunch hits its due date. For sleeved portfolios, custodial sleeves with systematics will set aside the cash at the portfolio level.  Please see the sleeve portfolio level set aside cash for more information.

Eclipse will now be able to keep equities that are not settled from being sold.  If a user wants to sell unsettled lots, it will provide a warning to the user on the orders grid. 

The FIX Mutual Fund Batch tool is now available in Eclipse.  This will group mutual funds by custodian and action and execute them in a group, rather than sending each order individually.  Once in the batch, users can add, remove, or process individual orders without updating the entire batch.  The batch tool also has the ability to easily execute all sell trades prior to executing buy trades for an easier execution experience.

Users will now be able to allocate a partially filled block in Eclipse and automatically open a new block with the remaining quantity.  This way users can have blocks stay open day over day while continuing to allocate the trade orders via FIX.

Users can now remove trade orders from blocks when the trades are in accounts removed from Eclipse, or marked as do not trade.  This way users can validate that the orders in the block are not attached to accounts they no longer can trade.  Eclipse does not receive real-time updates from the custodian for trade block information, so users will need to manually update accounts if the trade is blocked.

The Manual Tax Harvester in Eclipse has created a new revamp giving more targeted gain and loss harvesting capabilities.  Users can determine the term, securities available to trade, and minimum/maximum gains or losses to be harvested.  This will provide a more focused harvesting experience that can be used for one-off client needs. 

Account level information will now display on the portfolio line item in the portfolios grid.  This will display the account number, account ID, tax qualification, registration type, and custodian on the portfolios grid, rather than needing to expand the portfolio out first. 

Sleeve strategies in Orion Connect can now be customized in sleeve setup.  This allows a registration to be a part of a sleeve strategy aggregate, while still having a customized allocation tailored to the clients needs. 

Models in Orion Connect and Eclipse can now establish an asset category, asset class, or risk category. This classification can also be used to restrict the models available in sleeve strategies.  For example, a domestic equity sleeve strategy could restrict available models only to those with the asset class of domestic equity.

Portfolio level set aside cash is now available on sleeved portfolios in Eclipse. This set aside cash can be targeted into the contribution or distribution sleeve. Set aside cash in the contribution sleeve will be protected from a spend cash trade.  Set aside cash on the distribution sleeve will be raised in rebalance, cash needs, and raise cash trades.  Users also have the ability to target the set aside cash pro-rated across all of the sleeves in the portfolio. This will allow users to obtain a client cash protection without needing to disrupt the models themselves.

The sleeve suffix has now been added to Eclipse. This will now reverse sync back into Orion Connect to allow all model maintenance features to be maintained in Eclipse. For existing Eclipse clients, we have updated Eclipse models with the sleeve suffix from Orion Connect to avoid any business disruption.

We have added the ability to target product types (i.e. Fixed Income, Stock/ETF) into specific sleeves, even if the products are not targeted in the model. This is beneficial for users who want to place all fixed income into one specific sleeve. This process will run when initially sleeving out a registration, or when using the journal only rebalance in Eclipse.

The journal only rebalance will now journal positions back and forth between models.  This will bring the portfolio as close to target as possible without creating any trades.

Users can now run a focused rebalance in Eclipse based on a sleeve strategy.  This way you can rebalance one sleeve, or a group of sleeves, without rebalancing the rest of the sleeves in the portfolio.

As a rule C Shares should not be billed or included in the billed market value. For firms who provide C shares as an option, we now have the ability to exclude them by selecting a database option. Once this option is set to true then any account with a C share asset will automatically be excluded for billing.

Users can now create parameters around the deletion of a default rep. This new enhancement will require that a new default rep is set before the current default rep is deleted.  A new message will appear providing instructions, “Cannot delete a default representative. Please set a new default representative first.”

If the firm uses fee hierarchy, we now have the ability to have any new account default the “use fee hierarchy” to true at the account edit screen.

Tracking outstanding receivables for advisors who use sleeves used to mean multiple line items would be used to display the management fees calculated for each sleeve.  This development allows management fees to be rolled up at the registration level.  This way the post payment app will match the information that was provided to the custodian on the fee file, thus making it easier to match and post fees.

In our ongoing effort to increase the flexibility and security controls around our API, we have added a scoping privilege for account number masking. This will allow Orion to mask all but the last 4 digits of account numbers through the API for connected integration partners, giving more control over which partner has access to this data.

This will not affect advisory firms connecting directly to the API, as they will have the default privilege needed. However, firms could use this functionality if they are using an outside consultant and want to restrict their account numbers from being accessed.

One of the best features of the Salesforce app is the ability to access Orion functionality from within Salesforce, especially while on a household or financial account. By popular request, we have added in an option from your contextual links bar to launch the RMD dashboard from the household level.

As an advisor-level user, the homepage dashboard is able to be viewed in the context of the entire firm or filtered by a representative user. Prior to this development, when applying a rep filter, it would be removed when changing applications or the next time a user logged in. We have made it so this filter sticks until removed manually.

We have added benchmark returns to the performance detail grid in the Portfolio View. This will allow the user to compare the performance returns of their chosen grouping level to the benchmarks assigned at the corresponding level.

We have implemented your established asset category, class, etc. sort order settings into the applicable cards in the Portfolio View and homepage dashboard.

We want you to be able to access your most relevant client information as quickly as possible. With the default settings, each user is able to determine what their defaults will be when loading the Portfolio View.

We have restored your ability to make edits to static sub-reports within the report editor. Please note, users can still create sub-reports in the sub-report builder but we’ve re-enabled your ability to make in-report edits.

Users can now hide empty date ranges on bar charts.  Prior to this development, if you were running a report for a client who had no activity for a displayed date, it would show as blank on your report. With the “Hide Empty Date Range” option checked the system will remove those empty data points from the report. This adjustment allows for more dynamic, cleaner looking reports.

Compliance admins now have the ability to customize the email notifications sent to employees for a more personal look.  These will be for questionnaires as well as the tasks created in Inform.  The admin will have several templates to choose from for customization.

Compliance admins now have the ability to leave comments on trade violations en masse as opposed to updating them individually.  This will help admins complete their reviews in a more timely manner. 

The trading expense transactions have been updated to include the amounts Pershing list under the Misc Fee and Other Fee data points. This ensures the trading expense transaction includes all fees associated with the purchase or sale of a security.

This breaks out the individual components of the trading expense transaction to make each component available to be queried. The data points that are broken out are: Interest, Commission, Tax, Transaction Fee, Misc Fee, Other Fee, TEFRA Withholding, Pershing Charge, Brokerage Charge, Sales Credit, Settlement Fee, Service Charge, Mark Up/Down.

We have updated the engine our Composites are using to generate composite reporting. We have updated the UI of kicking off Composite Reports and there will now be a Run Report button on the Dashboard, Accounts, Reports, & Rules pages within the Composites app. This update will also allow you to include multiple benchmarks into your Firmwide Composite report. To enable this new Composite Report generation you will need to turn on the “Show New Composite Report Prompter” firm profile option.