Thomson, Merrill Lynch Team on Wealth Management Platform

This week Merrill Lynch announced it has finalized a deal began last month with Thomson Financial, an operating unit of the Thomson Corp., to jointly develop and operate a wealth management technology platform. The Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Technology Platform will combine market data, news, and portfolio management tools from Thomson Financial with superior planning risk and client relationship management capabilities from leading providers, the companies say. Thomson says the new platform will be built around open architecture allowing Merrill Lynch Financial Advisors access to best-of-breed financial information and tools. It will also include a redesign of Merrill Lynch's client Web sites to enable greater collaboration between financial advisors and their clients. Lou Eccleston, president of Thomson Financial's sales and trading group, says of the platform: "It will be a totally integrated system, with superior technology and content and greater efficiency of system architecture. We look forward to furthering our relationship with [Merrill Lynch] over the life of this contract and beyond." "Our collaboration with Thomson will result in a world class technology platform that provides a tremendous advantage to our financial advisors, and our clients," James Gorman, president of Merrill Lynch's global private client group, said in a company statement: