Sterling Mutuals is first dealer to partner with Invesco Canada’s advisorDuo
The new robo-advisor platform is available exclusively to advisors and their clients and gives mutual fund-licensed advisors access to ETFs
By Fiona Collie |
Windsor, Ont.-based Sterling Mutuals Inc. has become the first mutual fund dealer to give its financial advisors access to advisorDuo, Toronto-based Invesco Canada Ltd.’s new digital wealth-management platform.
“AdvisorDuo has the potential to be a game changer for us,” says Nelson Cheng, CEO of Sterling Mutuals, in a statement. “It has the capacity to increase the reach and productivity of our advisors while enabling us to benefit from the ever-increasing number of investors who prefer to work with a financial advisor.”
Launched last week, advisorDuo is a robo-advisor platform that’s available exclusively to advisors and their clients. Furthermore, advisors can only access advisorDuo if their dealers have signed an agreement with Invesco Canada.
The platform will help Sterling meet several objectives, says Cheng, in that it will give the dealer’s 250 mutual fund-licensed advisors access to ETFs while also helping them meet all of their regulatory obligations when signing up a new client.
More specifically, advisorDuo provides a digital onboarding process for advisors. As part of the process, new clients enter in the relevant information required for opening an account via a smartphone, tablet or computer either on their own time or with their advisor. As well, the new clients can be guided through some basic goals-based planning via a questionnaire. All the required documents are delivered and signed electronically.
“Anything that helps advisors to get the paperwork done more accurately is always a good thing,” says Cheng in an interview with Investment Executive.
Once all questions are completed, the platform recommends one of five target-risk portfolios. These portfolios, which range from conservative to high growth, consist of ETFs wrapped in a mutual fund structure. Advisors can decide how much of a client’s assets to allocate to the recommended portfolio.
Sterling is currently running a test pilot project of advisorDuo with intentions of rolling out the new platform to its entire advisor force by mid-December.