Cetera Financial Group (“Cetera” or “the Company”)*, a leading network of independent broker/dealer firms, announced its strategic vision to redefine the delivery of “best interest” retail financial advice in a post-DOL industry with the launch of a new technology ecosystem aimed at driving significantly closer connections among its broker/-dealers, financial advisors and retail investor clients.  Cetera has commenced this initiative with the establishment of a new strategic alliance with PIEtech, Inc., which will provide MoneyGuidePro®, myMoneyGuide® and Best Interest Scout^SM to the Company’s financial advisors and financial institutions.  These tools work together to gather client data on a scalable basis, evaluate each client’s financial situation to better understand the client’s goals and overall financial wellbeing, and align advice recommendations in a manner that complies with the new DOL regulations.

Specifically, PIEtech’s tools provide the following:

• Best Interest Scout^SMis a stand-alone discovery tool that gathers client data to help advisors evaluate their clients’ full financial circumstances and determine whether they are invested in accordance with their best interests.
• myMoneyGuide® is a guided online planning experience which enables clients to build their own personalized plan for retirement.
• MoneyGuidePro®, recognized as the leading financial planning software, gathers client information directly into a financial plan and enables professional advisors to engage with their clients to explore the full range of their expectations, concerns and goals, and to drive advice and document the process that leads to each account action and recommendation.

EDMOND WALTERS PLAYS A ROLE

Cetera has received support and guidance in the process of developing its vision for a new technology ecosystem from Edmond Walters, the founder of eMoney who now serves on the Board of Directors of Cetera’s parent company, Aretec. The Company has leveraged Mr. Walters’ expertise in working with financial services technology solutions to formulate strategy, as well as to identify and form relationships with best-of-breed financial technology providers. The Company’s leadership team has also worked closely with Mr. Walters to ensure a smooth and seamless launch of the new technology ecosystem.

Robert Moore, Chief Executive Officer of Cetera Financial Group, said, “This alliance is the first in a series that will come together to form a technology ecosystem capable of placing Cetera, its advisors and its institutions on the winning side of the demographic, technological and regulatory changes that are transforming our industry. Our efforts in this area have been accelerated tremendously through the strategic guidance provided by Edmond Walters – a widely recognized pioneer in the financial technology space – working in conjunction with our deep and talented internal technology leadership team. This new ecosystem is a key ingredient on the road to positioning Cetera to be the industry leader that is fully prepared to answer the most important question in our space today: ‘What does it truly mean to deliver financial advice – beyond just DOL preparedness – for the future?'”

NEW TECH ECOSYSTEM

Key features of Cetera’s new technology ecosystem include the following:

• The new relationship with PIEtech is the first of a series of strategic alliances Cetera is building with top technology providers across the industry.
• Through these new strategic technology alliances, Cetera will adopt a wide array of industry-leading technology solutions that will be fully integrated with one another in a consolidated technology platform for use by financial advisors and financial institutions across all of Cetera’s member broker/dealers.
• Beyond DOL discovery and evaluation tools, Cetera’s new technology ecosystem approach will encompass data integration at every stage of the client’s relationship with the advisor, tools to help assess how clients’ emotions should factor into advisors’ financial advice and digital financial planning platforms that are both advisor-directed as well as client-directed.
• The new PIEtech tools, together with other technology solutions and services in this new platform, will be rolled out starting in early 2017, and throughout the first half of next year.

ABOUT CETERA FINANCIAL GROUP

Cetera Financial Group^® (“Cetera”) is a leading network of independent retail broker/dealers empowering the delivery of objective financial advice to individuals, families and company retirement plans across the country through trusted financial advisors and financial institutions.  Cetera is the second-largest independent financial advisor network in the nation by number of advisors, as well as a leading provider of retail services to the investment programs of banks and credit unions. For more information visit www.ceterafinancialgroup.com.

ABOUT PIETECH^SM, Inc.

PIEtech^SM, Inc.’s vision is that everyone needs and deserves a quality financial plan. PIEtech^SM is the creator of MoneyGuidePro®, the industry’s leading financial planning software; myMoneyGuide®, an online guided planning solution that allows firms to broadly offer financial planning; and Best Interest Scout^SM, a standalone, scalable discovery solution to help firms of all types obtain necessary client information. For more information visit http://www.moneyguidepro.com.