Today’s growth-oriented enterprise firms are facing a paradox: unprecedented access to sophisticated technology combined with mounting pressure to deliver increasingly complex, personalized portfolio solutions at institutional speed and scale. While the average wealth management firm now spends over 15% of operating costs on technology, many find themselves trapped in rigid ecosystems that stifle innovation and limit growth.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Digitally empowered firms are growing at more than double the rate of their peers, capturing greater wallet share and attracting top talent. But as settlement periods shrink and portfolio complexity expands, legacy systems aren’t just holding firms back—they’re creating operational vulnerabilities that could prove catastrophic.
For enterprise RIAs and broker-dealers aspiring to break free from these constraints, the solution lies in finding technology that’s both sophisticated enough to handle modern portfolio demands and adaptable enough to evolve with their business. It’s about having the power to execute complex trades across multiple custodians and asset classes without sacrificing speed or precision, while maintaining complete technological control.
This report explores how forward-thinking firms are solving these challenges, breaking free from legacy constraints, and positioning themselves to fly at their own speed.
Growth-oriented advisory firms have more technology options than ever before. As independent businesses, they enjoy the privileges of selecting the most sophisticated, dependable, and high-performing technology. However, in order to best compete with institutions and powerfully equipped competitors, these growing enterprise firms require scale, staff, and resources that are free from legacy overhead.
The best firms, staffed with the best advisors, leverage the best systems. They’re empowered with software that supports their workflows and moves at the speed they do. These growth-oriented advisors aren’t satisfied with good enough; they need powerful customizations and unparalleled client service. In short, they need a complete, yet adaptable, portfolio management solution.
Firms that invest in technological capabilities grow faster than their peers. The mean client growth rate of a firm that’s investing in its tech is more than double one that’s not, according to Fidelity. Advisors working at these “digitally empowered” firms capture more wallet share and see their AUM grow faster than their competitors.
As clients insist on a wider range of investment opportunities, firms are facing a daunting mix of unique operational complexities. Settlement periods are shorter, clients expect everything from cash holdings to risk preferences to be managed optimally, and markets are more dynamic and volatile than ever. Meanwhile, portfolio solutions have become increasingly complex and more deeply linked to specific client needs. Even the smallest human error can have devastating consequences, as firms work to outpace institutional competitors and leverage even the slightest advantage.
For enterprise RIAs and broker-dealer leaders responsible for selecting the software used by top advisors, getting the right systems and workflows in place is paramount. Competitors aren’t slowing down, so playing catch-up gets all the more difficult for firms with big aspirations.
Going forward financial advisors are going to have to serve more clients – that is just reality.
– Scott Hanson
Vice Chairman, Allworth Financial
Firms that lean into and adopt the latest capabilities are beating the competition by winning more clients and assets, as well as attracting top advisors and retaining them for longer.
The biggest companies in our industry are well aware of the stakes. Fidelity recently made a $4 billion investment in technology, while competitor Charles Schwab invests more than $2 billion into its tech every year. Even firms considered smaller by comparison, with $1 billion AUM, report spending over $5 million per year on technology (with 73% planning to continue increasing that investment.)
Being the best comes at a price. Technology budgets at leading wealth management firms account for a sizable portion of operating expenses. While no one aims to be middle-of-the-pack, the average total technology spend among wealth and asset managers weighs in at more than 15% of operating costs.
With technology investments reaching unprecedented levels, choosing the right systems and capabilities has never been more critical. The wrong choice doesn’t just impact the bottom line; it can lock firms into inflexible ecosystems that hinder growth and innovation for years to come.
Getting trading technology right is imperative. Even as firms are making sizable investments in their tech intensity, including extensive due diligence and testing of new tools prior to their implementation, many are still getting stuck in ecosystems where technology decisions are dictated by a broader platform.
In scenarios like these, everyone from CIOs to advisors making quick portfolio adjustments are wrapped up in workflows that limit flexibility and stifle innovation, tethering teams to tools that keep them from expanding at the right pace and tripping them up when they need to be agile.
Firms need to stay nimble and in control of their own technological capabilities and operations’ experience. Retooling the wrong tech stack is an expensive exercise in lost revenue, time, and opportunities.
Advisors depend on normalized and current data when they make decisions. With so many inputs and outflows across custodians, asset classes, and exchanges, it’s a herculean task to cross-check and back-reference. That’s why our technology stays connected and working in the background, giving advisors, traders, and executives the confidence they need to make decisions on the spot, with authority.
Top advisors need transparency. They need trading technology with powerful APIs and all but limitless composability, that will gather the right data points into a single interface and enable the right audits for ensuring data reliability. And they need those tools to execute in the right way, every time, without fail.
While many competitors tie their value to being part of a bigger ecosystem, Flyer’s independence allows firms to choose solutions based on needs and fit, not vendor ecosystems. Whether turnkey, modular, or somewhere in between, our open architecture and focus on integrations ensures flexibility and functionality.
With Flyer, there are no strings attached. We bring enterprise value to enterprise firms. We’re the right decision when you’re looking for full control over your trading and operations. We’re the trusted partner that won’t impose limitations or burden clients with large, rigid ecosystems.
The reality for advisors… is that they are independent for a reason and want their technology to be as well.
– Oleg Tishkevich
Founder and CEO, Invent
At Flyer, everything we build is designed to be customizable, yet executable, at the scale you need. We invest in APIs, not only because we thrive on connectivity, but because we know that top advisors rely on the latest information.
We normalize multi-source data and make our trading tools accessible wherever you need them. That means you can just as quickly trade from your CRM as you can from your portfolio management system. It means you can confidently rebalance hundreds of accounts immediately after updating clients’ financial plans, before taking the kids to the game, and between client meetings.
In today’s dynamic markets, the firms that win are the ones prioritizing agility and independence. They’re the businesses that are unquestionably in control of their destiny, because they’re in control of their trading, operations, and outcomes.
Clients expect their portfolios to be optimized across the board, from capitalizing on the best money market rates to mitigating risk, to meeting their financial planning goals while minimizing their tax consequences. Highly personalized portfolio strategies, across different time horizons and individual needs, mean that RIAs and broker-dealers must provide unparalleled customization across a large number of accounts. It’s a high bar to meet and one that can strain resources and test traders’ abilities if firms aren’t equipped to operate in modern marketplaces.
It might be tempting to incorporate rack versions of technology, rely on most-in-one solutions, and ping-pong between different custodians, databases, and reference sets. But these solutions are far from sustainable. Even the smallest connectivity mismatch, the shortest system outage, or the most trivial advisor error can trigger a cascade of operational headaches that tie up resources for days. Clients work with top firms because they trust workflows to be optimized, integrated, and reliable.
“The financial resilience strategies of the past may not fit with the dynamic, digital economy of today. IT spending is now more critical than ever to propel a company to growth.”
– Sahana Sarma
Managing Director, Google Cloud
At Flyer, we’re multi-friendly.
We empower advisors who trade, whether it’s a quick one-off rebalance, a big block trade, or a massive hundred-household, multi-strategy, major portfolio rebuild. We support trading across multiple assets — or around assets. We’re known for rebalancing thousands of positions, across thousands of accounts, in seconds.
We’ve built a trading system that handles complex portfolios with ease. We empower firms to meet client personalization expectations, with a flexible platform that allows advisors to tailor portfolios without increasing the time dedicated to trading. In fact, our systems have collectively saved our clients thousands of hours when it comes to trading, settling, rebalancing, and reallocating assets across portfolios, households, and horizons.
Remember the time your team used to dedicate to combing through local databases, just to ensure that the right trade made it to the right custodian at the right time? Those days are gone. Our capabilities, including our Co-Pilot solution, the Flyer Trading Network and our FIX enterprise software, are designed to maximize connectivity and smoothly handle the most complex trades and workflows out there.
At Flyer, we’ve developed the industry’s most cutting-edge systems, designed for the intricacies of today’s portfolios and an ever-increasing demand for agility. It’s technology that’s built for sophisticated trading.
Even as advisors’ trading becomes more complex, their systems don’t need to be. Overly complicated operational infrastructure often leads to breakdowns, outages, and margin-draining overhead. Enterprise firms that are otherwise future-oriented and anticipatory often turn to stopgap solutions or other costly measures to manage their legacy operations.
These counterproductive calculations, all in the name of preserving the functionality of an antiquated system, hamstring advisors’ agility and act as a liability when they’re growing their businesses.
For inspiration, look no further than NASA, the world’s leading space program. It’s an organization that’s undergone regular reconfiguration as technology advances and new missions arise. Over the course of six decades, the agency successfully underwent several radical transformations. Rather than rapidly jump from one change to the next, it reoriented itself with “a series of incremental evolutions that collectively amounted to a transformational change.”
As your enterprise recalibrates and prepares for its next phase of growth, consider the steps necessary to achieve transformational change. Instead of clinging to yesterday’s tools and techniques, adapt to the present and prepare for the future by upgrading your trading capabilities.
With Flyer, you can fly at your speed. Our technology is continually updated, so that you’re equipped with the most advanced core systems, vital to executing complex trades, managing workflows, and acing portfolio management. We provide the tools needed to give advisors back their time, so they can be present for their clients and prospects. We’re here to help advisors grow their businesses.
Our solutions are built for growth. We aren’t just another automated trading tool — we’re adaptable and unmatched in our flexible, operations-boosting capabilities. Prepare for a future that’s long on growth, in an industry that’s short on time, without draining your resources or ceding ground to the competition.
Break free of yesterday’s legacy. Transform complex into commonplace. Contact our team to schedule a demonstration and learn how we’re unlocking growth, enabling sophistication, and helping the industry’s best broker-dealers and RIAs to build for what’s ahead. Get ready to fly at your speed.
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