About Portfolio Management Software.

We get calls and e-mails asking for portfolio management software and customer relationship software. So this page will help you figure out what this is, who has it, what it does, and what it costs.

Please note that we do not sell any of the portfolio management or CRM software listed below

You're probably looking for magical investment software that does all, or most, of the following:

• Keeps track of basic client data like, names, address, and phone numbers. AKA client database software (CRM).

• Will allow you to make trades through their investment software interface.

• Reminds you when it's time for appointments, to send out correspondence (like birthday or anniversary cards), and when it's time to make required minimum distributions from IRAs.

• Has a database of pre-approved marketing text and similar materials. AKA Text Library Systems.

• Keeps track of client portfolios, and has online download features to keep everything current with daily prices and all transactions.

• Will allow you to print a report in seconds that will answer the client's question if they call or show up in your office without an appointment, asking how much the portfolio is up since the account opened two years two months and two days ago.

• Will allow to you print out statements with all of their accounts combined (and tons of other things clients want to see).

• Will display portfolio statistics like correlation coefficients, average / median / minimum / maximum rates of return over the selected time frame, along with standard deviation of monthly returns, Beta, Alpha (Jensen), R-squared, Treynor Ratio, and Sharpe Ratio, and all of that.

• And other similar features.

You're in Luck! Such Software Exists from Several Vendors

But you still can't get it all from just one vendor.

Software that performs the functions below is called Customer Relationship Management software (or CRM software, AKA client contact software). It:

• Keeps track of basic client data like, names, address, phone numbers. AKA client database software.

• Reminds you when it's time call or send out correspondence regarding meetings, events, and birthday cards.

• Maintains a history of client contacts.

• Tracks someone's progress as they go from suspect to prospect to client.

• Has a database of pre-approved marketing text and similar materials. AKA Text Library Systems.

• In theory, CRM ensures you know what you need to know about each client, and you're staying in contact.

• It can automate tasks and analyze how much work is being done, by whom, for whom, and at what cost. This will help determine if the client is worth their fees.

• Service and marketing programs.

• Compliance and suitability.

There's about a dozen vendors that specialize in CRM software.

About 35% of planners just use MS Outlook (even though it lacks workflow tracking, client contact histories, business analysis, and client segmentation capabilities).

The other popular vendors are Junxure, ACT!, EZ-Data, Redtail, ACT4 Advisors, Goldmine, SalesForce, Advisors Assistant, Lotus Notes, MS CRM, ProTracker, and SalesLogix.

Portfolio Management Software

Software that does the rest is called Portfolio Management Software (PMS). This type of investment software:

• Will sometimes allow you to make trades through their interface with your custodian (e.g., Pershing, Schwab, Bear, TD Ameritrade, etc.).

• Will allow you to print a report in seconds that will answer the client's question if they show up in your office without an appointment, asking how much the portfolio is up since the account opened two years two months and two days ago.

• Will allow to you print out statements with all of their accounts combined (and tons of other things clients want to see).

There are only a few vendors that sell portfolio management software.

The good news is that Morningstar bought dbCAMS+ in Sept '09, and integrated it into Principia. So you definitely want to look at that, as it probably solves this dilemma. In the 90's the main man at dbCAMS died, and the biz passed to his son, who was overwhelmed and was unable to do much with it.

Axys Advent sells for about $10,000 initially, and then ~$5,000 every year after that for a single-user system. Add more users, and the price escalates from there.

They're infamous for being arrogant, think they know it all, are better than you, make no apologies for charging twice as much as the software is worth, and all of that.

Advisers stay with them, and have no choice but to tolerate them (and their almost non-existent support), because they were "the only game in town." Try to get a hold of one their sales reps and start asking questions about the details of their software, and see for yourself. Your experience will be the tip of the iceberg once you buy it and then want help. We did this once, and now we wouldn't use Advent even if it cost less than the competition. Hopefully the advent of competitors has changed that, as it was years ago.

Morningstar Office the most popular, followed by Schwab PortfolioCenter, Allbridge, Advent, Black Diamond, Investigo, Adhesion, AssetBook, Bridge Portfolio, CapTools, IAS, Orion, Portfolio Director, Power Advisor, and others. They sell for around $5,000 initially and then $2,000 every year after that to keep it running.

No matter how you look at it, if you want this kind of functionality, you have to pay up. Not only that, you'll have to spend so much time maintaining the download process that you'll almost need to hire a person full-time to keep everything working right.

We've never seen a financial planning / investment management office that maintains real portfolio management software, and keeps it updated with daily downloads, that did not have an assistant of some kind spending most of their time keeping it running.

As time goes on, the Mom and Pop office just goes without. Some Broker Dealers have contracts with Axys and offer their reps a shared "lite" version with limited functionality. This turns out to work okay, but as you would expect, the BD is going to charge you a lot for it.

Only firms that can afford to spend $25,000 - $75,000 annually (for the software and people to maintain it) have real fully-functional portfolio management software that's updated and maintained correctly on a daily basis.

So to help, we made a lame way to get some of this information for a very low price on several sheets of the Asset Allocation Software. We don't intend to make anything that competes with people that are already doing this.

There was really nothing in between what we did and CapTools / Centerpiece for a reasonable price. Why? Because every time someone makes something better, and charges less than CapTools / dbCams / Centerpiece, Axys buys them out so there won't be any reasonably-priced competition. Let's hope the Morningstar acquisition of dbCAMS+ will change this.

Examples of this are Blue Streak in the late '90s and TechFi in the early 21^st century. Both had portfolio management software that was both better and cheaper than Axys Advent, and ended up getting gobbled up by Axys. This is where your money goes if and when you decide to pay up for Axys Advent. The anti-trust regulators are either asleep at the wheel or have been paid off, so don't expect this to change.

Then to add insult to injury, Axys stopped supporting TechFi, so users can't even pay to import their TechFi data into Advent! So even the most loyal totally with the Axys program user that was willing to pay through the nose to migrate from TechFi to Advent was shut out. Stranding your customers and then not caring is not the way to do business. Obviously this is not the kind of company and software one would want to invest this amount of time learning, and inputting years of data into.

So in our opinion, you'll probably be better off by avoiding Axys if you can. We hope Morningstar's adding dbCAMS+ to their suite will solve this dilemma once and for all. The latest update on this was Sept '10, and the word is "they're still working on it." So that doesn't sound too hopeful!

Here's a late 2010 paste from financial-planning.com

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT

The portfolio management software market is competitive and dynamic. Albridge users certainly came out in force this year, with the firm jumping to first place at 23% vs. just 14% last year.

Morningstar Office came in second with a respectable 19% share. As we've mentioned before, we've been highly suspicious of the Morningstar numbers because we are certain that many respondents were not using a true Morningstar portfolio management product. We now feel fairly confident that this year's result is indicative of Morningstar's growing footprint in the portfolio management software space, even though the Office share dropped a bit from last year.

Schwab's PortfolioCenter ranked third at 16%, down from last year's 19%. PrincipaCAMS, the successor to the old dbCAMS showed surprising strength, at 9%, up from last year's 4%. Perhaps rumors of its demise are a bit premature. Advent scored an 8% share this year, down from last year's 11%.

Below the list of leaders, a number of smaller, newer competitors are starting to demonstrate noticeable strength. Tamarac Advisor, which has only been around for about a year, has already grabbed a 3% share. That's impressive for a new entrant into the space. Black Diamond upped its share from 2% to 3% this year. Investigo held steady at 2%

Other smaller providers like Adhesion, CapTools, Interactive Advisory Software, Orion and PowerAdvisor held steady at 1%. We were perhaps premature to include the FinFolio Workstation in this year's survey since it is just coming out of beta, but we expect it to win over some converts by next year.

Of those who responded that they use some other application for portfolio management, the vast majority were either proprietary B-D offerings or something that did not qualify as portfolio management and reporting software under our definition. The possible exception was Advisors Assistant, which garnered multiple votes

Please note that Tools For Money does not sell any of the types of software mentioned on this page