Hello and thanks for joining our webinar featuring two of Orion's super users. We have Samantha Pickering and John Hayes from Longview Wealth Management. My name is Mike Wilson and I'm the EVP Orion Technology Suite. Today I'll be interviewing Samantha and John about their experience with Orion. And how the technology has supported them through a year of a lot of change and a lot of growth. A little bit of housekeeping, this presentation is being recorded and the replay will be available shortly after we conclude. If you have any questions for our speakers, please use the Q&A box at the bottom of the screen at any point of the of the presentation, whether you're watching the recording or watching this live. We'll get back to you as soon as possible via the chat functionality. If we don't have time to get to all the questions, we'll follow up with you individually. All right, Samantha and and John, First off, I want to say thank you so much. Thank you for your partnership for your business. Congratulations on this, this awesome journey you've had over the past several years. And and today I want to focus specifically over the past year or so, you've had a lot of change and you've experienced a lot of growth and. And love to understand how Orion and our technology has helped you with the change specifically around well shoot you you broke away from a broker dealer you change custodians what what have what have we done to help you you know with that migration kind of 1. And and two as you as you made these significant changes to your business what what did technology you know how did technology come into play. And and what concerns might might you have had as you as you left. Yeah Mike as you alluded to we left broker dealer a long time relationship, we had a great relationship with them just kind of grew apart. So we were diverging and some of the policies that the broker dealer was was doing was good for their bottom line not so good for our clients or our advisors so. As you alluded to, the biggest piece was the technology that the broker dealer was able to provide for us. So when we were making the decision and it was a hard one, you know it was, it was hard and then all of a sudden it became very clear we needed to replace all that technology. And and you know we looked at a bunch of different options and ultimately we decided on Orion because it fit the bill of kind of replacing all of those different options that we were getting from the broker dealer. We were going to have to repaper all of our clients anyway because of the change. So we started looking at custodians and decided a custodian change was appropriate as well. So we were really looking, we felt like a lot of change in a short period of time would be less disruptive to our clients than just making this change and then a year or two later making another change. So, and it's it's really going well. It was a lot of hard work, but it's going well. So so you you rip the Band-Aid off so to speak and so let's let's go for it and and and and the rest is history and I I I believe it's you know my understanding is from from speaking with you all in the past is you also changed the technology vendor and and leaving Morningstar and Morningstar office what what was some of the reasoning for that. That was the main reason why we started investigating other options was the relationship which was a long time with Morningstar just wasn't working for us anymore. They over the last couple years were kind of pushing you towards different new implementations but just doesn't didn't seem to be keeping up with the industry. And meeting our needs. So that was a big reason why we started investigating these other options and we finally ended on Orion and and so thank you, thank you for that Samantha. And and as you know as we look at our technology, we're constantly iterating, constantly advancing our tech and listening to our clients and prospective clients as well to advance things. You know from from your side of the table, how do you draw the line between. Technology moving too fast and and being too stagnant. If if we could, you know kind of take a quick dive into that. Yeah. I would say when the technology is not meeting your needs or they're taking away things that were you know important to our employees and helping us to do a better job for our clients. And then also when you know maybe they're like something is offered but. It's not in a timely manner to keep promising something and then it never comes to a fruition. I feel like that's probably when things are going too fast or too slow or, you know, not meeting the needs of what we need. Thanks and and you know one thing we pride ourselves on and Ryan. As well as is at communicating with our clients and providing onboarding support and and training and release notes and so forth. Can you can you take a quick second and and comment on your experience with that as you were you'll going through all this, you know leaving your your beauty changing custodians moving technology matters How did how do we help facilitate that effort through our our onboarding processes. I think it's been clear that. Orion is very, it's a very important goal for Y'all to stay on top of the technology. And we just went to the Orion Conference a couple months ago and you know that was a big part of how Y'all are making these changes and keep improving and focusing. So we've we've only been with Y'all for a year and we've already seen all the changes and we've appreciated all of them and know that Y'all are constantly working to make it better. Thank you. Thank you. So I I know that that you both are familiar with what we refer to as the fiduciary flywheel. For those of you who are watching this, this, this webinar, this, this video on delay or or currently and are familiar with the fiduciary flywheel, we at Orion believe that the key to growth for an advisor for a firm like Longview of course. Is enhancing the advisor client relationship and and to that end we we designed this this framework the fiduciary flywheel which steps through the process of prospecting for new clients moving those prospects across to to planning where we establish a financial plan learn about the risk sensitivity of a given investment. From planning, we move into investing, of course, taking the information that we've gathered on a investor's goals, on their risk sensitivity, on their tolerance and creating and curating an investment allocation for them. And then of course, achieve is the last, but definitely not the least of these pillars where we we go and we actually have a relationship now. The client, the prospect has become a client of a firm like Longviews. Then you're you're fostering that relationship through reporting and of course billing and and ongoing maintenance of the of the clients and accounts and so forth. But you know what I'd like to do now if it's okay with you Samantha and John is, is take a take a look on how Orion technology is being used and implemented in each of those four pillars at Longview. Let's start of course on prospecting and and we would look at the CRM as being the you know the the hub of of that specific prospecting pillar and I I know you all use Redtail. How are you using Redtail as you go ahead and and prospect for new clients and are there any specific work flows that that you all are are embedding and and ingrained? In in your prospecting workflow, yeah, I would say like you said, retail is our hub of all of our data. So that's like the starting point for the relationship. It's where all the data's entered, it's where all the notes and history for the relationship is stored and it's also where we take that information and it allows us to facilitate our marketing so. We use blogs and emails to kind of drip on clients to let them know, to reach out to us when they need to on different topics. For workflows and retail, we don't use that feature specifically. We use the activities a lot more. So each advisor and their team has a process for how they like the relationship to happen with new prospects and ongoing clients. So they use those activity templates. But we are trying to also work on a firm level templates for everybody to use especially new advisors coming into the industry excellent and and so you gather prospect information in Redtail that starts into these activities. I would assume that you know those activities would be stepping into the planning phase, right and part of the planning is. But learning about the risk tolerance of a given investor, how are you using Orion technology to to establish the risk tolerance or how are your advisors doing that? Yeah, so we use the Orion Risk Intelligence in order to generate a questionnaire. The questionnaire is e-mail based, so we just put in the clients prospects information, It sends them an e-mail. There's a couple of questions ahead of time. We use that purely from a prospecting standpoint where they fill that in before we even meet with them. And then as we meet with the client in our first client meeting, our first prospect meeting, you know we take that information and we can. You know kind of know exactly where we need, where the meeting needs to adjust. You know is is it going to be you know a a super young client that rated really conservative then we can address those concerns or a an older client that rated you know really aggressive then we can adjust those concerns. But the greatest thing about the survey is it actually takes those things into consideration where other. Type investment policy statements, don't you know it'll take the age of the client into consideration when it does that risk report for us. So but that's how we're currently doing it that that's excellent. And So what I'm what I'm hearing here John is that as you know through through the technology and through this digital interaction, you're learning a lot more about this person. Before that, even you know your first meeting with the necessarily, and by the time you have that first meeting, you know a lot about this person, especially their risk, comfort, and you can start to really curate a suggested allocation for them and, you know, potentially point out flaws in their existing allocation. That's right. Awesome And you know on on that sounds what I just said sounds a lot to me like a proposal right. You're starting to you know you're learning about this person let me point out everything that's wrong with your existing or potentially you know what's wrong with your existing allocation. Let me suggest a you know an allocation for you that we have over here at Longview. My understanding is that you all are starting to use the proposal tool within within Orion technology you you haven't you know it's. To deliver that kind of widespread yet throughout your firm, but can you tell me a little bit about how you're planning to use the tool in in your firm? Yeah, I mean I I believe that would be Step 2, right, The the step one, getting the risk tolerance back from the client, Step 2, generating the proposal for us as you've alluded to, we we've definitely started playing around with the reports. There's a lot of customization that you can do. You can add your own cover sheets, your own logos you can. Great market however you want you can, you know I'm in compliant. So the ability to cut things off at a firm level that maybe you decide maybe that does not going to fit for our firm was really important and that's the feature that's available. So yeah we're we're excited to use the proposal tool and we're we're still diving in and and learning as much as we can about it, but it looks like it's going to be a great resource for us. Super. Yeah. We're excited for you to use it as well. I'm sure you'll see a lot of, a lot of growth in your business just just from you know being able to pump out more of those those proposals to potential clients or even to existing clients for that matter. As the the planning pillars name would suggest, there's a financial plan element to this, this pillar and and Orion, we have our own planning solution. But we also have an open architecture. So we will plug in third parties where wherever our clients need them for things like planning or risk, whatever it might be. My understanding is that you all are using a a different planning solution. But can you talk to me, talk to us rather for a second about the importance of Orion's or open architecture, especially in this planning component, why that is? Made your business, made our business easier to work with. Yeah. So as we said, we had a lot of changes last year. So that was something we have a great relationship and history with using Nava plan for our financial planning software. So our advisors are used to that technology. Are familiar with it. We haven't had any issues. So it made sense to keep that relationship going. So there is one last new thing to explore, but we are excited about the opportunity to look into Orion planning and use it when the opportunity arises for different clients so. We've integrated Orion with Nava plans or data is feeding into that system. So that helps our advisors to you know quickly update plans and get prospects into the system. I appreciate Samantha what you just pointed out about how you will be you know looking at Orion planning over time and I think you will find you know the the deeply embedded integration you know of significant value to your clients and of course to your advisors and as you're probably aware. The Orion planning technology powers the client portal, but we'll get to that in a little bit. All right. So so you taking an investor you know that you can't they they were prospect of yours. You you set the hook on the you know risk profile questionnaire and and created a proposal for them, generated a plan, you've got them in the boat now, right? And it's time to to invest. They're no longer necessarily a prospect. They've signed some paperwork and their clients, which is great. So, so let's get them invested. To knowledge your firm has created a series of a model allocations. Your advisors can use those models or create their own. And what I'd love to to understand is how that's being managed through Orion, how you guys are are using Orion for this and you know like a Ryan Connect. For, for, for managing the, the models of course and then using Eclipse as well to to trade them and and to create additional models and so forth. So if you could take a take a crack at that that'd be great. Yeah. So our firm has an investment committee that reviews our firm level asset allocations and our recommended investment list each year. So that was a great starting point for us when we were starting to explore Eclipse. We took those asset allocations and built out firm level models for advisors to use. Eclipse has a lot of settings and there's a lot of initial setup, so it can be very overwhelming when you first get in there. So I wanted our advisors to kind of have this starting point to jump from. They had the models in there, they just had to create their security sets and then kind of that allowed them to play around with the features and their portfolios. We don't require our advisors to use Eclipse. We give them the freedom and the independence to use the resources and technology that we provide. So we have some advisors who historically use Morningstar TRX rebalancing software. So they're very excited about Eclipse and love all the new features and capabilities. And then we have some advisors who are just exploring, rebalancing software and testing out the features. So we have a spectrum of what our advisors are doing. And and are your advisors and are you using Orion Risk Intelligence to analyze those models and and build them out? Yep. So we're exploring that right now to see if you know, maybe we need to tweak some of those asset allocations this year based on what Risk Intelligence is telling us about our current models. That's great. Yeah and and. My my guess is that you're you're enjoying how like all these things are coming together, right? Like you don't. You don't need to use risk intelligence on an island of planning. When you're setting the risk profile questionnaire, it's synchronized for the entire Orion Ecosphere, right? So you can use it in the planning bid as well as in the the investment bid as well as in the achieve, right? Like they it hits all the points. Yeah. Like I I would say that was one of the biggest selling features for Orion. Like we we're a pretty lean operational staff. You're looking at most of it in the room right now. So it was really important for us to you know like that hub and spoke model to have the one central database that could where our data would live and then to have all the other different features to be able to plug and play into that data. Was it it, it's been transforming for us that we can only learn one system and learn it well versus trying to learn the multiple systems that we would have if we'd gone somewhere else. Oh, I love that John, that that that's that warms my heart. Thank you. I mean that that's like so core to what we would so, so thank you for for mentioning that and and putting your compliance hat on. For a second, John, like can you talk to us a little bit about in in the invest bucket, right. Like you know you have folks building out models. And can you tell me a little bit about, you know, how in the near future you plan to be using Orion compliance for you know, analyzing the risk of a given model, assume you know, assuring that it's, you know, in alignment with the stated investment objective and so forth? Yeah. I mean and and this is where you were talking about, you know, different technologies being stagnant moving forward. It's my understanding that Orion's putting some things in place that are going to allow us to look at it from a book of business standpoint, which. It would be great for us because you know we're in RIA, but we operate slightly different, you know in terms of we allow our own advisors do their own trading. So we don't do that from a from an operational standpoint, each advisor does their own trading for their portfolios. So from a back office operation standpoint, the ability to look at your book of business and see who's out of bounds who needs to be reallocated. Who hasn't had trades done, you know currently for the year, those things are going to be tremendously important for us and time saving versus having to go through and look at those individual portfolios. We're we're, you know we're, we're excited and happy to be able to help you with that. All right. So this person was a prospect of yours, you got them into the planning component, learned about the risk. Their goals you you built an investment portfolio for them that was aligned with those things and and now on day 366 right they're back for their next year review and this is now when they're they're in the achieve pillar right they're they're a client of yours. Now let's start achieving let's Start learning more about how we can can help you and other avenues and so forth. Please tell us about how you're using the client portal to to strengthen the bond between your clients and yourself. So we aren't using the planning piece, but we are rolling out the client portal to our clients. We just started introducing waves of clients to that over the past month or so and we've had a great response from our clients. They love the simplicity, our branding is on there which looks great. Finishes clean and simple and has a lot of reports and features that our clients aren't used to. We have not historically had a client portal or a document vault which will allow us to securely send documents back and forth. Historically they just used their custodian logins which was limited for us to be able to communicate with them so. We're excited about that feature. We are we have turns the Plaid capability on. So we look forward to using that and seeing what clients do with it and the opportunities available there. Yeah, the, the Plaid aggregation component or any aggregation component for that matter, it it's. It's it's specifically interesting to me it's the ability to start looking at you know how the way assets right be able to potentially advise on them and and that the the the concept of the fiduciary flywheel is that it keeps spinning right. So if you if you can take a look at these how the way assets you can start prospecting for them, planning for them, investing for them are you, are you? Currently doing any analysis on maybe held away 401 KS or or looking at ways to to win that type of business. Yes, we have advisors who would request statements and things like that, but that information is it's not updating. So it's one point in time where they got that information. So this Plaid feature will definitely help to have current information and allow them to have you know a better full picture of the client's finances going forward. Excellent, excellent. And you know part of the achieved component is is you know improving the dialogue and the the conversation between advisors and clients. I've never sat on your side of the table but I assume like the fee discussion comes up in many if not most of your meetings with with investors. First off, like how important is it to be transparent about fees? And then secondly, how, how is Orion helping you with that transparency of of disclosing fees and you know, billing and so forth. Yeah, I would say, you know, our firm's been around a long time. So we've got clients that have been with us for 20 plus years. So as fees have changed over the years, we naturally have a ton of different fee structures. And while we've simplified our fee structure going forward, the ability to allow clients the ability to maintain those original fee structures when they came on was important to a lot of clients. They understood those structures and you know they they felt like you know a change. You know sometimes that's a hard thing that you don't, you don't necessarily know how it's calculated, they just want to make sure that it's been done the same way. So we really appreciate Orion's ability to handle anything that comes at us from a fee standpoint. We have a segment of clients that we build in arrears, even though we build most clients in advance. We use the flat rate, we use tiered rates and we use the linear rates. So we use everything you got to offer except performance fees. That's the only thing that we don't, that we don't do and we're not planning to do, we're not going to do any performance fees. So the ability to household one of the limitations in a previous software was a client would need to be in the same fee structure in order to household those fees together and Orion doesn't have that limitation, it has the ability to do that. So we've been. Really impressed with its ability, its complexity, yet keeping it very simple in terms of the calculations and the reports that are available afterwards. So we thought that was a key selling feature for our Ryan. For us, we weren't previously calculating our fees or doing any of that ourselves. So the simplicity part was important for us to be able to jump in and start using that feature and we think it's been a success so far. That's great to hear. Thank you. And beyond the simplicity, was there some onboarding component to the fees that that you that we've helped you with or was it really self-explanatory? It's pretty self-explanatory. You know when we came on board, we had so many structures that we were able to use a custom import in order to bring all those structures into play. So you know that that was, you know, nice to be able to do that and that's some of what your back office team helped offload for us was the ability to input those structures in all of those various tiers into the system through just a custom import which was just an Excel sheet that was uploaded in. But that was great. Thank you. And you know Longview is is a. Perfect example of of the fiduciary fly wheel and and the growth that you've experienced. So, so thanks for going through that with us as we look to to wrap this up I you know not to be too pitchy or campy or cliche whatever you want to file this under but if there was one thing that that you could wish for in in a integrated wealth technology suite of it if a genie popped out of the Lantern and said. I grant you one one well Technology wish. What? What would it be? Do we need to get one? Sure. Sure. You need to get your own Genie. You want to go first? Sure. I know you guys are already working on this, but probably the better integration of all the different pieces. So I know sometimes. With some of these separate technologies, they're not as integrated and I I know you guys are working on that. So we're excited about that. So just it all in one place. Thank you. Yeah, that's that's something that I mean that's my core mission is to is to get these products as integrated as possible. So, so thank you and I'll get back in my Lantern now and and get busy. Yeah. And I and mine would be along those same lines it would just be. For all the different data feeds, I mean, I think when we first started this, we underestimated how many data feeds there would be to populate. Y'all been great in handling all of that for us. But you know, it'd be great if the industry would just get together and come up with like, hey, let's do, let's format our data the same way so that we can all talk to each other. I don't think that's going to happen, but maybe a genie can get that done for us. Yeah, I'm, I'm all for that one too John. You know that it'd be nice to see some some standards. I always kind of working back to the airline or the travel industry rather and you think about like shoot United, American, Southwest, all these airlines they have you know very common endpoints and API's and ways to describe flying from LAX to JFK and back in their time and so forth. I'd love to see this industry. You know, find a similar way to talk about trading and rebalancing and the like. So listen, Samantha, John, all the folks at at Longview, thank you so much. Thank you again for your partnership for trusting us with your business. Congratulations on this journey you've had and and we look forward to to working with you as you as you take it to the next great milestone. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. _1713835780480