Apex Fintech Solutions has launched a new user interface for advisors, called Astra, the company announced on the first day of the annual T3 technology conference in Las Vegas.
It is currently being used in production and has been rolled out to some of Apex’s firms.
The interface is meant to provide far more efficient, intuitive and responsive access to Apex’s processes and services, and more seamless integration and connectivity to the custodian’s 15 third-party applications, including AdvisorArch, Orion, Panoramix, and Zoe Financial.
It was built using React, which, in simplest terms, is not a programming language but a very popular JavaScript library specifically for building web applications.
One of the many advantages of creating interfaces with React is the ease and flexibility with which developers can provide features on a cloud-based application that make it feel as though it is a program running locally on a laptop or desktop computer.
In other words, the new interface can feel as simple to use as a Microsoft or Google spreadsheet, with the ability to drag and resize columns, filter data, and drill down to additional data easily.
“This is super refreshing,” said Jon Patullo, chief product officer for Apex Fintech Solutions, who ran advisor technology development for more than 16 years at TD Ameritrade Institutional, including rollouts of the popular Veo and Veo Open Access platforms.
“It is a much more modern interface than anything else on the market right now,” he said of Astra during an interview and online demo with WealthManagement.com.
With it advisory firms can access everything from straight through processing for new account opening, to trading, and rebalancing. The rebalancer, which is provided through a partnership with AdvisorArch, can perform security level or asset class rebalancing as well as tax loss harvesting.
“AdvisorArch ties into our robust fractional share trading, allowing our advisors the flexibility to work with accounts of all sizes,” said Olivia Eisinger, general manager of advisory at Apex Fintech Solutions.
The two also said the new interface aims to bake in as much automation for advisory firms—whether that’s the advisors, administrative or operations staff—as possible.
The last thing an advisor wants to do is pick up the phone and call their custodian for something he said.
“Advisors may sometimes want to see, say all those accounts [in their book of business] with RMDs coming up; where today they may need to go to their custodian to ask for that, we are bringing that right to the interface,” said Patullo. That’s one example of the new do-it-yourself features.
On the main “My Apex” page an advisor would see menus labeled Accounts, Client View, Trading, Move Money, Tools, each with an additional level of submenus that are easily accessible and intuitive. And thanks to the use of React, hovering over certain fields within an account can bring up other relevant data automatically. It is also easy for advisors to drill down or filter based on account level views or that of a household.
New features and third-party applications will be added on an ongoing basis, according to Patullo and Eisinger.