Morgan Deploys Comparison App
June 1, 2009
PriceMetrix recently began rolling out its ValueOne brokerage-comparison application to just under 1,000 of Morgan Stanley's 7,500 advisers. It enables a firm to collect a wide variety of information about its broker practices and compare it to other firms, to identify where its brokers can make improvements. Morgan Stanley can extend the service nationwide and potentially to the brokers of Citigroup, the minority partner in an imminent joint venture to create the largest domestic brokerage.
ValueOne normalizes data from the brokerages that is often formatted differently, and provides brokers and their home offices with monthly reports as well as online access to PriceMetrix's database so they can use online tools for their own queries. Morgan Stanley represents PriceMetrix's biggest client so far. Existing clients include Morgan Keegan, a subsidiary of Regions Financial with 1,400 reps, and Janney Montgomery Scott, a subsidiary of The Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company with a 1,000 reps.
One of its first clients, Scott & Stringfellow, a subsidiary of regional bank BB&T, renewed its contract with PriceMetrix earlier this year. Walter Robertson, CEO of the brokerage, said that ValueOne revealed 38 percent of commissions charged by his full-service brokers were less than discount-broker Charles Schwab's commission for phone-orders.
In the last three years, "That's fallen to 16 percent," Robertson said, adding his firm uses PriceMetrix for other broker comparisons, such as return on assets, types of assets, and the total number of households.
