SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 21, 2015) - BrightScope (www.brightscope.com), a leading provider of independent financial information and research, today launches AdviceMatch™, a free online service that gives personalized, objective recommendations for investors looking to engage a financial advisor or automated investment service. BrightScope developed AdviceMatch™ to meet the rapidly emerging shift toward online client acquisition and service delivery in the money management marketplace.
"AdviceMatch™ is the next evolution of BrightScope's Advisor Pages offering, which was created to help investors research and make a well-informed decision when it comes to choosing who manages their money," said Mike Alfred, CEO and co-founder of BrightScope. "This platform makes it even easier to choose the most appropriate financial advisor by delivering personalized recommendations that also take the how into account, revealing if an online advisory service should be considered."
AdviceMatch™ leverages BrightScope's database of more than 680,000 advisors nationwide to create a first-of-its-kind platform that guides investors through the process of discovering and evaluating their financial advice options. Using responses from a brief questionnaire, BrightScope's proprietary algorithm creates a Match Score that individually ranks advisors and online services based on how well their service offering and practice characteristics align with the investors unique needs and preferences.
"In the last few years people have become increasingly dependent on researching and finding advisors online, and that trend is growing very fast. As a result, there is a new generation of online-enabled 'financial advisors' that are growing businesses entirely online," said Ryan Alfred, president, COO and co-founder of BrightScope. "BrightScope sees this as a tectonic shift in the market for managing money, and through our data and industry knowledge we're in a unique position to use the power of the Internet to help direct investors to the best financial service provider for their specific needs."
BrightScope takes the privacy and security of its users seriously, so providers only receive anonymized profile information about investors with an offer to send them a personal introduction through the AdviceMatch™ platform. Advisors are pre-screened by BrightScope and held to strict standards of conduct once granted access to the platform. This ensures investors are only receiving communication from relevant, trusted financial professionals while giving advisors a new channel to source clients that are ideal matches for their expertise.
About BrightScope
BrightScope is a financial information company that brings transparency to opaque markets through independent research and analysis. Delivered through cloud-based software, BrightScope data drives better decision-making for individual investors, corporate plan sponsors, asset managers, broker-dealers, and financial advisors. The BrightScope Rating, developed in partnership with leading independent 401k fiduciaries, reviews more than 200 unique data inputs per plan and calculates a single numerical score which defines plan quality at the company level. In April 2011, the company launched BrightScope Advisor Pages™, the first comprehensive and publicly available directory of financial advisors designed to help consumers discover information and conduct due diligence on wealth management professionals. BrightScope also markets a suite of data analytics software products to Fortune 1000 companies, asset managers, broker-dealers, financial advisors, and other market participants. Public ratings for nearly 50,000 retirement plans as well as rating definitions, criteria and methodologies, and information on more than 680,000 financial advisors and nearly 33,000 active advisory firms are available for free at www.brightscope.com.
