This year, all three of our advisors attended the “LPL Financial Focus” Conference in Boston. Many of you may think, “Ahh, you’re calling your vacation a conference now. I get it!” While that may be true for many advisors, I assure you it is not true of our firm. We speak with other advisors, LPL Financial home office staff and executives, technology partners, and market researchers with the goal of analyzing how we run our business to provide better service to you. We are excited about these enhancements and excited about our partnership with LPL Financial. A few highlights of what we learned:
1. Mobile App – LPL is working on a Mobile app that will allow to quickly and easily access your accounts, documents, and goals from the palm of your hand. While this is available via AccountView now, it is more cumbersome than it should be and LPL is making progress to change that. We did a demo of the application, and it looks fantastic. It is currently in a pilot testing phase, and we expect it to be available in the first half of 2019!
2. AccountView – While we don’t dislike it as much as many others do, it could use a refresh, and a refresh is what it is getting. The new Accountview online web portal will be more intuitive and modern, using the same playbook that is being used to create the mobile app. Accountview should also be rolled out in the first half of 2019.
3. Move Money – LPL is enhancing the system for moving money. Currently, we need a voided check to set up distributions from your LPL account back to your bank. However, there is one problem with that…many of you do not use checks anymore. Over the coming weeks, we will no longer require a voided check to set up the ACH electronic funds transfer to your bank!
4. Experience – LPL Financial’s commitment this year has been “Making it easier to do business with us.” They have rolled out hundreds of updates this year designed to make it easier for our clients to do business with us. Some small and some large, but all of them (like the ones mentioned above) are designed to improve your experience and “Easier to do business with us!”
There were many other conversations we had, and we will use those to evaluate our practice with the goal of delivering an excellent client service experience. Thank you for the trust and confidence you place in us.
