Scottrade launches advisor services Web platform

The new platform offers advisors new tools to help them easily manage and organize accounts, trade more efficiently, track gains and losses and quickly produce client reports.

Scottrade Advisor Services is dedicated to providing personalized business, trading and technology support for RIAs. Unlike other custodians, Scottrade does not compete with RIAs through in-house financial advisor offerings. The enhanced platform features industry-leading, back-end technology that enables Scottrade to quickly and easily add new features and functionality. With this ongoing flexibility, Scottrade will make quarterly enhancements to the platform to continue to meet advisors' changing needs and maximize their productivity.

"We designed our new Web platform to make it faster and easier for advisors to manage their clients' accounts," said Doug Talir, director, Scottrade Advisor Services. "We will continue to improve the offering so that advisors have the most up-to-date, effective tools to help them exceed their clients' goals and expectations."

The platform is available to advisors with practices of all sizes who use Scottrade Advisor Services as their custodian. Scottrade Advisor Services is focused on helping new, emerging and established advisors build their practices, ensuring they receive the same great service regardless of the amount of their assets under management (AUM). Scottrade Advisor Services is one of the only major custodians to provide this high level of one-on-one personalized service that only established advisors with large AUM might receive with other custodians.

"Scottrade has always sought to make quality trading tools and customer support easily accessible, and we think it's important to provide advisors the tools they need to achieve success," Talir said. "Given the right resources, advisors can achieve not only their clients' goals, but their own."

Scottrade Advisor Services Advantages

With the new Scottrade Advisor Services Web platform, advisors can:

• Group individual client accounts together for one-click trades across multiple accounts
• Use the new "Power Search" feature to identify clients based on a wide variety of criteria, such as account value, portfolio composition and individual stocks owned
  
• Select pre-allocation and post-allocation options to buy and trade with maximum efficiency
  
• Allocate trades based on percentage of available funds or straight quantity
  
• See real-time allocations of trades and how individual accounts are affected at the time of the trade with the option to print account summaries for clients on the spot
  
• Track gains/losses using Scivantage MaxitTM.

Online and Offline Support

In addition to receiving online trading services and tools, Scottrade Advisor Services assists advisors with their business and trading needs by providing an individualized, dedicated Relationship Team to each advisor. Scottrade Advisor Service's Relationship Teams offer reliable service and support to Scottrade advisors by answering account-related questions, offering technology-related advice, and providing some back-office support functions.

"In this competitive marketplace, it is not enough to simply provide custodial and clearing services," Talir said. "Advisors need personalized support to help them manage complex client relationships."

Other Services and Tools

The introduction of the new Web platform is part of an ongoing effort to enhance the Scottrade Advisor Services offering and part of an overall strategy to continually provide RIAs with the tools they need for success. In 2008, Scottrade introduced the Portfolio Director suite of easy-to-use portfolio management software applications and tools. Additionally, Scottrade Advisor Services hosts an online community to foster advisor collaboration and encourage the exchange of business information and ideas between RIAs. The company also offers an online resource center for RIAs with links to services and tools to help them run successful business practices.