Legg Mason Signs Up with Thomson for Wealth Management

Baltimore-based Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc. has signed a multi-year agreement with Thomson Financial to use the Thomson One Advisor workstation for its 1,400 financial advisers and other private-client employees.

Under terms of the agreement, Legg Mason is replacing three previous providers of wealth-management tools, market data and Web content, states the news release.

According to Chris Perry, Thomson Financial's executive vice president, Banking and Brokerage, ThomsonOne Advisor is replacing a SunGard market-data service (acquired from ADP) and the ILX Classic market-data service with Thomson One market data. Even though Legg Mason uses the netDecide Corporation's financial-planning program, the firm plans to use Thomson One Advisor's wealth tools, notes Perry.

However, a source at Legg Mason, who is close to the financial-planning area, says the brokerage firm will continue to use the netDecide Advisor Decide program and is planning to upgrade to the next version. The source says that Thomson is building a "wrapper" around the netDecide tools.

Thomson is customizing the workstation to Legg Mason's specifications so that it seamlessly incorporates wealth-management tools, real-time market data, back-office processing and the company's proprietary applications, states the release.

Legg Mason has over 20 proprietary applications that advisers will be able to access through the Thomson One shell. In addition, Thomson is completing a link between its wealth tools and the ADP back office that Legg Mason utilizes. "You'll also be able to link directly into client information through the wealth-management tools," says Perry.

According to Perry, the vendor expects to roll out the market-data capabilities and new hardware in the December to January time frame and it plans to finish implementation of the wealth tools by the end of the first quarter, 2004. Ivy is Editor-at-Large for Advanced Trading and Wall Street & Technology. Ivy is responsible for writing in-depth feature articles, daily blogs and news articles with a focus on automated trading in the capital markets. As an industry expert, Ivy has reported on a myriad ... View Full Bio