Aside from the recent surge in artificial intelligence developments, I’d argue that the biggest tech story confronting financial advisors in 2023 is the ongoing merger of TD Ameritrade and Charles Schwab.
Beyond providing custody and clearing services to a large population of financial advisors, both companies are significant providers of technology. TD platforms like iRebal and Veo were especially popular in the advisor fintech ecosystem and are a major focus of the ongoing integration efforts.
Schwab named Sept. 5 as the date when everything from the Schwab platform will transfer over and says it’s on track to reach the goal. But the amount of data that has to be transferred will be huge, and there will undoubtedly be technology hiccups along the way.
What that means for the greater ecosystem will be a defining trend for advisor fintech for the rest of the year. What will it mean for tools that pull data from Schwab or TD’s systems? What about account aggregation? Will competing custodians, TAMPs, fintech companies or aggregators be able to offer a compelling…