Charles Schwab’s Portfolio Connect user base, across independent financial advisor firms, grew to more than 1,000, the company announced today. The portfolio management platform made its broad market launch in April 2019. The free tool is intended for firms managing less than $100 million in assets custodied at Schwab.
Today, the average firm AUM for Portfolio Connect users is $40 million, according to the announcement. When it was launched, the tool was meant for smaller firms with limited and less complicated books of business; to be “purpose-built and simple,” Schwab said at the time. It was not intended to be fully customizable or multicustodial.
In today’s announcement, Schwab said it was trying to expand its reach to a new segment, by “continu[ing] to enhance Portfolio Connect to increase its appeal to larger firms.”
“The solution is made automatically available to all newly formed RIAs with under $100 million in assets under management who custody with us,” added Lauren Wilkinson, vice president of digital advisor experience at Schwab Advisor Services, in a statement. The firm did not indicate how many of the 1,000 users were automatically enrolled in the service and how many chose to use it.
More recent improvements to Portfolio Connect came by way of adding batch onboarding, in the works since at least 2018, but finished somewhat ahead of the last development timeframe given. Other enhancements, according to the announcement, were an aggregate view of the firm’s assets under management plus stats on projected revenue, performance and transactions and a data export improvement that supports custom calculations and simplifies integration with third-party applications.
Developers are now turning their attention toward building more flexible user permissions, which the firm plans to implement before the end of 2020.