Mag Black-Scott partners with Intel and brings aboard serious MSSB talent in quest to "disrupt"

Brooke’s Note: The jury is still out on whether breakaway executives can be as effective as breakaway brokers in the RIA realm. Mag Black-Scott advanced to the rank of vice chairman of global wealth management in her 30-year career at Morgan Stanley. Later she married an astronaut. Now she’s shooting for the moon in trying to “disrupt” advisor technology in an impressive partnership with Intel.

RIA industry eyes have been on Mag Black-Scott since 2010 when the 30-year Morgan Stanley veteran came out of semi-retirement to found Beverly Hills Wealth Management LLC, promising tremendous growth as a roll-up despite the firm’s modest assets under management. See: Advisor spotlight: A trailblazer at Morgan Stanley, Mag Black-Scott has a new RIA and an ambitious plan.

Last week, BHWM unveiled a business tool it hopes will speed the firm on its way: In partnership with microchip giant Intel Corp., the firm has created a cloud-based tool that will allow RIAs to consolidate customer relationship management and compliance tools, as well as software of sales, onto one dashboard — and using only one password.

Beverly Hills Wealth Management Maestro, as it is called, “gives an RIA a healthy injection of financial advisory adrenaline so that the advisor can concentrate on their core competency — wealth management,” says the firm’s chief information officer, John Stuart, who previously worked with Black-Scott at Morgan Stanley.

Maestro creates an internal process and work flow by offering consolidated cloud-to-cloud credentials and third-party integrations to give advisors a single point of entry. The tool allows RIAs to access a dozen or so systems without having to manage multiple credentials, views and passwords, thus cutting down on the time and costs.

John Stuart: We needed an internal
portal to manage all of our
external partners.

Password pain

“We were handcuffed by our partners who were managing user credentials, and the advisor would sit at their desk and manually
have to access all of these places,” Stuart says. “We needed an internal portal to manage all of our external partners. We wanted to create a single branded experience that allows advisors to access all of these systems without the user ID headaches.”

Intel, based in Santa Clara, Calif., and Beverly Hills Wealth Management spent six months integrating and fine-tuning the tool. BHWM declined to disclose the total cost of the project — which it bore alone — other than acknowledging that it ran into the “six figures.”

Big dreams

Black-Scott has said that she hopes to establish 20 to 30 branches of BHWM in a half-dozen states by positioning the firm as an ideal home for breakaway brokers. The firm has assets under management of $200 million.

BHWM took a step toward that goal in June when Black-Scott recruited 24-year industry veteran Bart Albrigo away from MSSB to open the firm’s Phoenix branch — the firm’s first office outside Beverly Hills. See: RIA items of interest: Mag Black-Scott expands beyond Beverly Hills and BAM adds an advisor who contributes to The New York Times.

The Maestro project has three aspects: an intranet for advisors, extranet tools for end-client access and Internet sites for public consumption.

“Our strategy is to lead the market, not follow. We are disruption evangelists and Maestro is only the beginning,” says Stuart.

CIO, superstar

John Simmons: I would triple-check crossing
swords with him.

Others in the industry are impressed by Beverly Hills’ initiative and by Stuart, whom John Simmons, president of Washington Wealth Management LLC, calls a “superstar.”

Washington Wealth created its own system a year ago, and advisors have access to an open-source wealth management platform. See: How Washington Wealth is using a million-dollar carrot to lure centers of massive wirehouse influence.

But even Simmons, who worked with Stuart at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, admits he’s in awe of him and declines to knock the new project.

“He was on our regional team at MSSB and we all love him,” Simmons says. “I would triple-check crossing swords with him. He really knows his stuff. He is very bright, very cool and very good at what he does.”

Why Intel?

This is Intel’s first venture into the RIA arena.

“The fact that they are not a known quantity in the RIA space is exactly why we wanted to partner with them — obviously their reputation in other arenas is outstanding, and we felt that they would bring the bandwidth and expertise to commit the right resources at the right time,” Stuart says. “BHWM strives to work with innovative and reliable companies in all industries. We felt our relationship was close enough to the core competencies of Intel to customize a unique vertical solution for RIAs.”

For its part, Intel believes its identity products, which are aimed at allowing users to access multiple types of information safely with as few passwords as possible, can easily be adapted for use by RIAs.

Girish Juneja: I’m sure there will
be other RIAs, but for us
Beverly Hills was a pioneer.

Girish Juneja, director of application security and identity products at Intel, says that Beverly Hills is the perfect type of customer because it had a clear idea of what it wanted to accomplish. He is hopeful that his firm can create similar products for other RIAs.

“I’m sure there will be other RIAs, but for us Beverly Hills was a pioneer,” Juneja says. “They wanted to provide an integrated access portal for RIAs and they were disrupting the market, and it was a perfect fit.”

Why not Wealth Central?

BHWM keeps its assets under custody with Fidelity Institutional Wealth Services, and while Stuart feels Fidelity’s WealthCentral is a solid platform, his firm wanted more customization. See: Technology review: Fidelity’s WealthCentral is solid and smart but still has seams.

“Comprehensive wealth management and high-net-worth solutions reach far beyond a custodial offering or all-in-one portfolio accounting/wealth management system,” he says. “Maestro is nimble and built to scale with the advisory practice. Maestro powers a public and extranet portal making available internal tools and content to public and client end-users. It is a true RIA enterprise content management system.”

Black-Scott comments: “One of our core competencies at Beverly Hills Wealth Management is innovation, and BHWM Maestro is a great example of this,” she says. “We are a growing business and tools like BHWM Maestro allow our firm to harness the partners and services in the financial industry that provide us with the best opportunities to help our clients achieve their financial goals.”