Products August 5, 2013

Judy Diamond Debuts Prospecting Tool

Retirement Plan Prospector is a Web-based prospecting and research tool from Judy Diamond Associates for the defined contribution and defined benefits markets.
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The tool was designed as an intuitive online sales prospecting and plan analysis tool. Its features are based on the results of in-depth research into the sales and analytical needs of the firm’s subscribers, which include financial advisers, agents, brokers and other retirement professionals.

According to Eric Ryles, managing director of Judy Diamond Associates, retirement plan professionals who wanted to identify new leads and market trends needed time and expertise to search through mountains of dense plan data to find the leads and actionable intelligence they needed. The Retirement Plan Prospector does this work with plan scorecards that allow for quantitative comparisons across plans. The firm’s suite of prospecting recommendations and key performance thresholds easily guide subscribers through the data, he said.

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Information included in Retirement Plan Prospector is derived from the Form 5500 disclosure documents submitted to the Department of Labor by ERISA-qualified retirement plans as well as the market research of Judy Diamond Associates and various third parties. Retirement Plan Prospector includes data on more than 750,000 plans across the U.S. 

“Retirement Plan Prospector brings smarter prospecting and research tools to both the defined contribution and defined benefits markets,” Ryles said. “Its data and tools present streamlined prospect-level data to support the sales pipelines of agents, while also providing the in-depth and complete information needed to create complex market analytics.”

More information about the Retirement Plan Prospector is here. Judy Diamond Associates is a provider of retirement industry lead generation and market intelligence tools.

Products August 5, 2013

Raymond James Creates Portfolio Management Tool

An integrated portfolio management and research tool, the Portfolio Management Center (PMC), is powered by FolioDynamix and incorporates proprietary research from Raymond James Financial Inc.
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The tool is available to advisers at Raymond James as part of the firm’s Advisor Access platform and enables a fully discretionary modeling, rebalancing and trading platform for an adviser’s business. According to Vin Campagnoli, chief information officer at Raymond James, FolioDynamix was chosen for its range of functionality and flexibility, which creates efficiencies for advisers who have discretionary trading authorization on behalf of their clients.

“We have already rolled out new proposal and research tools, and are now launching upgraded technology for discretionary manager programs, all while providing a single, seamless Web interface for advisers,” Campagnoli said.
The Portfolio Management Center can generate customized client proposals for clients; perform discretionary modeling, trading and rebalancing; and access Raymond James proprietary research within the context of investment and account analysis.

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The tool has been tested by several Raymond James advisers over the past few months, with positive results. An early pilot user of the program, David McKee of Fairfax, Virginia, called the software functional, easy to use, and a state-of-the-art discretionary order entry platform. Joel Faircloth, an adviser in Portland, Oregon, said it changed the way he trades and monitors client portfolios. The Portfolio Management Center allows him to reallocate discretionary portfolios within minutes. Customizable trading rules and automated portfolio tracking are two features he cited. Todd Knickerbocker, an adviser in Northville, Michigan, called the platform intuitive and said it eliminated many of the cumbersome, manual functions found in the old system and streamlined the process.

More information about Raymond James is on their website.

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