The Smartest Way to Consolidate Portfolios from Custodian Banks

A technology-driven trend in wealth management is rapidly transforming an industry that usually is more known for conservatism, risk aversion and need of stability.

An increasing number of financial advisors embracing smart technology designed to make their lives easier, and letting go of the antiquated working practices that are strangling their productivity.

By digitally delegating the mundane and repetitive tasks they encounter in their everyday working lives, these forward-thinking professionals are able to redirect all their energy towards performing the truly crucial aspects of their work.

Their business benefits from a faster turnaround of client requests and improved customer service, plus they have more time to focus on client relations, client acquisition, and providing those all-important value-added services that set a company apart.

Freed from the burden of manual work these technically enlightened advisors have more free time to spend connecting with their families and pursuing their personal passions.

One such tedious task that technology has mercifully found a way to complete quickly and painlessly is the management of client portfolios spread at various custodians banks.

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Using Tech to Get the Best Out of Your People

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In Swiss External Asset Managers Industry Report 2017 (by Credit Suisse), wealth management firm manages portfolios on average at 6 various custodian banks.

Traditionally, monotonous and time-intensive portfolio management or compliance tasks were carried out on a daily basis by highly educated and highly paid professionals in what can only be described as a woeful waste of time, money and talent.

Instead of advising existing HNWI clients or attracting new ones, these highly qualified individuals would lose hours every week manually downloading reports in a variety of formats from different banks every day, and then putting all the data into a single format to carry out wealth management data analytics.

Where the old method took up hours of a wealth manager’s working week, today’s micro-chip powered solutions can deliver not just the same, but more data-rich results in minutes with just one click.

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Digital Isn’t Going Away

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A wealth manager may not even personally like this trend towards digital delegation, but to ignore it is to follow in the ill-fated footsteps of former Blockbuster CEO John Antioco who famously turned down an offer to buy Netflix in 2000 because he thought the “very small niche business” was a passing fad.

Old school wealth managers who are tempted to stick with the time-honoured manual way of sourcing data because ‘although it’s much slower, it does work,’ should reconsider.

Going back to our earlier analogy, even if the traditionally-minded advisor doesn’t mind drinking cold coffee, a growing number of their increasingly young and tech-savvy clients will.

Modern investors who can bank, open a car, and adjust their home environment with just a few taps on their mobile device, will naturally choose a wealth management expert or wealth management technology that can offer them the same kind of fast and reliable service.

When you are ready to transform your business with technology and automated data consolidation from custodian banks, there are several paths open to you.

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Your Automated Custodian Consolidation Options

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One option is to hire a team of experts to design and build a unique piece of software that will automatically download all the data you need for you. Although effective, this option will be expensive as on top of the original consultation and creation fees you will need to pay regular maintenance costs. It could also take some time for the build to be completed.

A second option is to use services of outsourcing firm, which will manually scan all transaction recipes and upload into your database. This solution is not only expensive, due to high labor costs, but it is also prone to errors and inaccurate.

The final option is to use a dedicated solution which has already been built by experts. Providing it is SaaS – accessed online via a subscription rather than bought and installed on your computer – your costs will be lower than if you paid a team to create a custom solution specifically for you.

Get a True Picture of Your Business

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Whatever solution you choose to end your reliance on manual data consolidation, you will get daily access to robust Management Information System (MIS) with breakdowns of your company AuM or profitability by custodian banks, relationship managers, currency, strategy, etc.

The most important thing is to free your business from the time-consuming and unnecessary task so you can invest your time more wisely elsewhere.  With quick access to data, you will make informed decisions. There is no point straggling with the late adopters when you could be leading the charge and winning new business.

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Portfolio Consolidation With WealthArc

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WealthArc is a strong new addition to the list of ready-made smart technology solutions and has already proven to be a hit amongst independent asset manager in its native country of Switzerland.

Our attractively designed and easy-to-use automated portfolio management system releases financial advisors from the daily tasks of manually integrating portfolios from various eBanking systems.

WealthArc uses a self-developed engine that integrates data from multiple custodian banks as well as market, risk and compliance data providers via fast and reliable connections, called APIs.

All data is validated via the unique algorithm before being consolidated and presented in a single, user-friendly format for easy comparison.

Updates are completed automatically so all the data you need is synced and ready for you when you log in to the user-friendly portfolio dashboard.  

Market data is freshly sourced and synced every day from an ever-growing number of banks and partners including Refinitiv, Investment Navigator, EdgeLab, Indigita or Apiax.

Custom APIs and encryption ensure that data is always stored and transmitted securely, giving you total peace of mind.

Not every piece of technology is vital or here to stay but with a growing number of automated solutions available for portfolio consolidation a return to the old methods looks as likely as Jeff Bezos ever having to ‘watch the pennies’.

If you want to see how WealthArc can digitally transform data consolidation for you, visit our website where you can also book a product demonstration.