Broadridge – LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y – Broadridge Financial Solutions, Inc. (NYSE:BR) has expanded Opportunity Hunter, its predictive analytics solution that empowers fund firms to strategically identify their best sales targets. In addition to top registered investment advisors (RIAs), the prospecting platform now includes independent and regional broker-dealers (IBDs), one of the fastest growing distribution investment channels.

According to Broadridge’s Fund Distribution Intelligence, RIAs and IBDs held more than $4.35 trillion in long-term mutual fund and ETF assets at the end of this year’s second quarter. During that period, IBDs increased assets by $79 billion over the prior quarter, the largest increase of any distribution channel.

To address this growing segment, Broadridge integrated IBDs into Opportunity Hunter.  The expanded platform enables fund firms to also identify IBDs based on actual shareholder positions, giving them instant intelligence on location, clients, sales and fund comparisons. Broadridge clients using the platform have reported a more effective and improved sales process, including a client that reduced the number of sales meetings required to close a deal by 25 percent.

“Before Opportunity Hunter, fund firms had been relying on static, broad datasets that provided general industry information about RIAs and IBDs, making targeting extremely inefficient and challenging,” said Dan Cwenar, president, enterprise data and analytics, Broadridge. “Now firms can target the best prospects geographically and help their representatives have a better understanding of how their existing RIA and IBD clients are positioned and engage in more meaningful and informed conversations.”

The Opportunity Hunter solution offers access to more than 13,000 RIAs and more than 1,500 IBDs with geographic searches to filter research to specific target locations. It calculates the sales potential with each RIA and IBD office, based on the total assets and types of assets held by advisors working for those firms. It compares funds against actual investments held by prospects using almost 200 data points provided by Morningstar including performance, rating, expense and risk attributes. Presented in a simple, mobile-enabled user interface, Opportunity Hunter substantively increases the efficiency of a firm’s sales team.

“When sales people are able to position products against the competition, and quickly identify their best opportunities, they are more efficient and effective. Opportunity Hunter can be thought of as a navigation system that points fund sales teams to their best prospects, and then tells them what is most likely to be successfully sold when they get there,” added Cwenar