For advisors considering a move to Altruist, these are the most common questions we receive.
If you’re an RIA considering a switch and have questions you don’t see answered here, please reach out to our sales team by clicking the Talk to Us button above.
Transition
“What can advisors expect from a transition to Altruist?”
The primary differentiator that an advisor transitioning to Altruist can expect is the sheer dedication you’ll get from our team before, during, and after the move. Every implementation is unique and is treated as such.
It’s the prerogative of our Sales organization to learn the ins and outs of your business — if you jointly determine that Altruist is a good long-term fit, that research is seamlessly passed to our Onboarding team, who will partner with you to develop a highly tailored transition plan.
The Onboarding team will walk you through the process of drafting bulk transfers, provide hands-on training to help you adopt best practices, provide end clients with onboarding videos that familiarize them with the client portal, and help project manage the transition with a detailed implementation checklist. With an extensive range of firm migrations under their belt, the team will advise you on the best approach (whether that be in bulk or in tranches) and quickly ramp you up to the benefits of Altruist’s digital-first experience.
Once your transition is complete, you’ll have access to our expert Support team through live chat (we’ve got an entire section dedicated to our service experience below). Altruist’s support is another huge differentiator — with an SLA of 5 mins (average response time is less than 40 seconds) and real people with extensive knowledge of the platform, you can expect to get trustworthy answers, fast.
“When is the best time to make a move?”
We’re forecasting a significant rise in transition activity as the Schwab deadline approaches (late 2023). We recommend advisors fight the urge to wait until they’re backed up against a wall — at the very least, take the steps to assess what's appropriate for your firm sooner than later. If you see Altruist as a good fit, it would be wise to beat the rush.
“What size firm should be considering Altruist?”
Altruist serves firms of all sizes. We have no AUM minimums, industry low fees, and offer commission-free fractional share trading on ETFs, individual securities, and warrants. Every advisor gets their first 100 accounts free, then it’s $1 per account per month thereafter. There are no additional costs for the billing, reporting, or account management software — although additional brokerage fees may apply. For details, please see our fee schedule by visiting altruist.com/legal.
Service
“Can you explain the Altruist service model?”
As mentioned above, our customer service sets us apart from legacy custodians. The team has received high praise from advisors on the platform (you can see examples here, here, here, and here – this list is not exhaustive).
When setting out to build a service model that offered world-class support at scale, we were acutely aware of the shortcomings of traditional phone support. Phone support works really well when the customer base is small. But as the number of advisors requiring support grows, wait times get longer, the most highly trained agents aren’t as available, and the quality of the service diminishes. To overcome the traditional challenges inherent to the phone support model, we opted to take a different approach: live chat.
Our chat response time SLA is 5 minutes, with an average response time of under 40 seconds. You’re immediately chatting with a real person — no chat bots or canned knowledge-base answers. When the situation is too complex to resolve via chat, you’re able to schedule a conversation, which means no time wasted on hold.
There’s something very green-eggs-and-ham about live chat support. It’s far from traditional, but advisors (the ones who have tried it) tend to love it.
Client Experience
“Digital is great, but what about my older, non-tech-savvy clients?”
It’s our mission at Altruist to make great financial advice more accessible. That means making it accessible to everyone. And tech isn’t necessarily for everyone. While a digital experience is a major pillar of our solution, we’ll be adding paper account opening for clients who want it in 2023. If you have clients who are apprehensive about adopting new tech, our onboarding team has a proven playbook for overcoming those hesitations.
“My clients have never heard of Altruist… they can’t pronounce the name.”
As an emerging brand in the financial services industry, we hear this a lot. Fortunately, there are a lot of highly successful players in the financial services space (Pershing has $2T* in assets, LPL has $1T** in assets) that never became household names. Your clients trust you. If you can articulate the rationale for switching to Altruist, they will understand.
* Source
** Source
Altruist’s Future
“Is Altruist going to be around long term?”
If you tuned into our recent webinar for TD advisors facing down the Schwab merger, you heard Altruist’s founder and CEO, Jason Wenk, say, “I have zero intention of ever selling the company.” Having previously founded two multi-billion dollar RIAs, and having experienced the unavoidable pains that trace directly back to legacy custodians, Altruist’s aim is to create a new industry standard. Like Vanguard’s impact on ETFs and mutual funds, a similar sea change is needed in the custody space.
“Are there limitations around current product capabilities?”
With feature and product releases happening every 2 weeks, Altruist delivers frequent improvements to the technology and practice management workflows that are most impactful to RIAs. Some capabilities aren’t currently available, but a number of highly anticipated enhancements are coming in the first half of 2023. For a more detailed look at our product roadmap, we encourage you to reach out to our sales team. Better yet, join the discussion! Advisors on the platform have tremendous influence over our product roadmap through our idea portal.
Conclusion
You’re going to be changing 100% of your business. You can choose your new home or have that choice made for you. By choosing Altruist, you can expect a smooth, efficient transition that doesn’t burden your clients, you’ll have access to intuitive software for account management, trading, reporting, and billing in one streamlined solution, and you’ll never have to compete for your own clients.
These testimonials were given by current clients or investors. Neither Altruist nor its affiliates paid for these testimonials, but we do earn revenue from financial advisors who use our software, from assets invested through our broker-dealer (Altruist Financial LLC) and assets invested in models made available by our registered investment adviser (Altruist LLC). As of the date of these testimonials, the promoting advisors (M. Pashman, T. Purcell) received compensation or other benefits from Altruist through the promoting advisor’s participation in one or more of Altruist’s various programs, which created a conflict of interest on the promoting advisor’s part and may have influenced the view(s) expressed by the promoting advisor. For more details on program compensation and benefits and related conflicts of interest, please visit altruist.com/RIA-testimonial. For additional information about the promoting advisor’s conflicts of interest when expressing its views about Altruist or Altruist’s affiliates, please see the promoting advisor’s advisory program brochures, available at https://adviserinfo.sec.gov/.
These testimonials may not represent the experience of others and it is not a guarantee of results.
