Financial Advisor Success Ep 144: The Past, Present, And Future Evolution Of The RIA Custody Model with Tom Bradley
Oct 1, 2019
Tom Bradley, former president of TD Ameritrade Institutional with 25+ years steering RIA custody platforms. He walks through the shift from manual trading to open-access APIs. They discuss how custodians really make money, the role of cash sweep strategies, and why scale and tech investments shape custody’s future.
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From Paper Tickets To Block Trading
- Tom Bradley recounts early RIA trading: advisors called with block orders and staff manually key-punched allocations into back-office systems.
- The initial setup was antiquated, with paper tickets and phone calls driving advisor custody workflows.
Open APIs Beat Proprietary Lock-In
- Veo Open Access succeeded because advisors demanded optionality, not a one-size-fits-all desktop.
- Exposing APIs let third-party vendors build best-of-breed tools instead of forcing a proprietary stack.
Acquiring Rebalancing Tech To Scale Advisors
- Tom describes acquiring iRebal and integrating it to handle billion-dollar advisors' rebalancing needs.
- The buy fixed a scaling problem: quarterly rebalancing for large firms could otherwise take too long.