Orion’s May 2018 Product Updates Empower Financial Planners, Chief Compliance Officers

Business Wire

In-app billing for financial planning, next-generation compliance automation, and new integrations among highlighted enhancements.

OMAHA, Neb.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Orion Advisor Services, LLC ("Orion"), the premier portfolio management solution provider for registered investment advisors, released several enhancements as part of its May 2018 Software Update to better support firms in their shift to offer more advice-driven services, work more seamlessly between critical applications, and streamline compliance oversight obligations. The most impactful system updates and enhancements include:

Unified Billing for Financial Planning

Orion has enhanced its Bill Pay service, now enabling advisors to generate bills through their Billing Generator app for a variety of one-time and recurring fees beyond traditional investment management fees, including financial planning, tax planning, estate planning, and more. With consolidated billing for both investment management and financial planning services within a single application, advisors can create a consistent process for multiple fee types, streamline reporting, and scale their billing operations. These enhancements complement Orion’s existing capabilities which enable clients to view and pay bills directly online via secure credit card or ACH processing, providing advisors with a complaint fee-billing solution.

“As the trend toward financial planning and advice continues to change the landscape of our industry, technology has become a key differentiator for RIAs,” said Eric Clarke, CEO of Orion. “To better support our clients’ billing activities and their evolving fee structures, the update to our Bill Pay feature simplifies an advisor’s workflow and creates a comprehensive picture of a firm’s revenue all within the Orion platform.”

Click here to register for a webinar on how Orion has expanded its services to better support financial planners.

New and Enhanced Integrations, including Dynamic Retirement Reporting

In line with Orion’s work to support advisors who provide financial planning to clients, Orion adds iRetire by BlackRock to its lineup of existing planning integrations. Powered by client data and BlackRock’s retirement income indexes, iRetire generates dynamic reports to illustrate clients’ different retirement income scenarios. Available at no additional cost to Orion advisors, the tool’s proven ability to jump-start crucial conversations with clients about their retirement strategies is a valuable addition to the arsenal of RIAs who wish to distinguish their services.

The May Software Update also brings the full power of Orion’s portfolio accounting technology to Salesforce’s new and intuitive Lightning interface, providing the 320 partner firms that use Salesforce an additional option beyond Salesforce Classic, Financial Services Cloud, and Salesforce through TD Ameritrade. With the integration, all Salesforce users will now have the ability to view data from Orion’s Insight dashboard within Salesforce on a household or financial account record.

Additionally, integrations with Benzinga, Income Conductor and FinMason have been released.

World-Class Compliance Automation

Since Orion’s March 2018 release of Compass, a comprehensive suite of compliance solutions, enhancements to its functionality have been made with the addition of a new feature, Supervise. With Supervise, a compliance officer can schedule automated exception reports and compliance testing data queries, eliminating cumbersome manual compliance reviews. Orion has also strengthened Compass’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) capabilities in Verify, a LexisNexis® Risk Solutions-integrated screening service.

“With these updates, Compass has become a more robust dashboard providing compliance officers with a holistic view of their firm’s regulatory vulnerabilities and the ability to quickly and proactively address them,” said Kylee Beach, General Counsel of Orion. “The addition of Supervise frees compliance teams from time-intensive, manual data entry so they can concentrate on staying ahead of the ever-shifting regulatory environment and protecting their business from potential threats.”

Orion's May 2018 Software Update meets the demands of RIAs seeking a competitive advantage in the industry, Clarke said. “As robos and cookie-cutter, all-in-one tech stacks drive fee compression and threaten to commoditize financial services, Orion is focused on what we do best: helping advisors stand out and show their value with solutions uniquely tailored to their business models.”

Click here to learn more about the May 2018 Software Update.

About Orion

Orion Advisor Services, LLC (Orion) is the premier portfolio accounting service provider for advisors. Orion frees advisors from back-office tedium so they can enjoy their business again by devoting their time and energy to better serving clients. Orion provides the integrated and fully customizable technology solutions that advisors need to build great advisory firms. Orion's technology solutions empower more than $600 billion in AUA, and over 2 million accounts. For more, please visit www.orionadvisor.com or follow our news and insights via our blog.