TD Ameritrade Adds a Google Assistant Action to its Digital Portfolio
TD Ameritrade announced this morning that it has launched a new Google Assistant Action to complement their existing Alexa skill. “Starting today, once authenticated, TD Ameritrade clients can simply ask their Assistant by saying ‘Hey Google, check my TD Ameritrade portfolio’ to gain insight into their current holdings, hands-free,” according to the announcement. The new Action offers a number of features such as:
- Ask for a market update
- How a sector (such as Technology) is doing
- Balance in account
- How your portfolio is performing
The launch clearly is targeted to existing TD Ameritrade customers but even without an account, you can access some basic information about stock market and sector performance. This is very limited as you cannot find out, for example, the current trading range of NASDAQ or what the S&P 500 closed at yesterday. The current features appear more targeted to an individual’s trading account.
No Stock Trading on Google Assistant Yet
Users also cannot trade stocks by voice in the new Google Assistant Action. TD Ameritrade’s Alexa skill does offer this capability. When TD Ameritrade first launched on Alexa it did not have the voice trading capability but added that later. Similarly, when TD Ameritrade announced integration in July with Apple CarPlay, Android Auto, and Echo Auto, it also left out the stock trading feature and instead focused on information access for its initial automotive launch.
At the time, Sunayna Tuteja, TD Ameritrade’s then head of digital assets and DLT, told Voicebot, “We are excited to explore the possibility of adding trading capabilities to each of the in-vehicle offerings we announced today. [G]iven the nascency of this technology, for this initial phase, we wanted to focus on information and content delivery.”
Voicebot contacted TD Ameritrade for more information on their plans for voice trading features and a spokesperson replied, “We hope to add this functionality in future iterations of the offering, but we don’t have a specific timeline on that yet. This mirrors the phased approach we’ve taken with many of our offerings on emerging tech platforms, including Amazon Alexa.”
Integrating Financial Management into Consumer Lifestyles
TD Ameritrade’s support for Google Assistant is an example of how brands and services will often launch on either Alexa or Google Assistant first and then expand to the other platform. Vociebot data show that supporting Alexa and Google Assistant together offers reach to about 95% of smart speaker owners in North America, Europe, and Australia. Google Assistant support also offers access to more than 1 billion consumers worldwide largely through Android smartphones. TD Ameritrade also offers an Android app for those smartphone users, but that is not currently integrated with Google Assistant for voice interactivity.
Tuteja commented in a panel discussion at the Voice 19 conference in July about the TD Ameritrade’s digital strategy overall saying, “What we wanted to do was to make sure that access to financial markets and financial information is part of your lifestyle, that it’s not chore number 62 on your to-do list. Well, what better way to do it than to bring it to the modalities that you’re using every day as part of your life and lifestyle.” Since many consumers are using Google Assistant through smart speakers, smartphones, and other devices, support for the platform has the potential to integrate TD Ameritrade more deeply into everyday lifestyles.
This article was updated at 9:52 am EDT on September 4th to reflect the TD Ameritrade statement on the status of the voice trading feature for Google Assistant.
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