Over the past decade, wealth management as we know it has undergone a digital transformation. Wealth Management firms, family offices are increasingly recognizing that in the digital now, the legacy systems of the past just cannot keep pace with customer demands and expectations. Clients are now looking for complete transparency on how their money is being invested, they also want to access this data at all times. They also expect their wealth managers to give their hard proof and data backing every single financial decision. It is no longer a ‘seller’s market’ and investors are asking for maximum bang for their buck, especially when they are going for professional wealth management services.
In this challenging environment, wealth management software has come to the aide of wealth managers. The firms that are embracing innovation are increasingly looking to the tech industry to build solutions that help them scale and meet customer expectations. Undergoing a digital transformation is one of the most critical business decisions that a wealth management firm will ever make in its course of business, hence it’s essential to evaluate the platforms comprehensively to every minute feature before adopting it.
We’ve developed this guide as a quick primer of what to look for when on the market for a Wealth Management platform. This checklist will help guide your search and help you zero in on exactly the kind of features and tech capabilities that your firm needs.
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Is it Mobile friendly with anywhere, anytime access?
This is one of the most crucial considerations for both your wealth management clients and your time-pressed advisors. The platform should have a client-facing and advisor facing app or mobile presence that allows both advisors and clients to access and control their portfolio from a mobile phone. This unfettered access can be a key variable in whether tech-savvy millennial investors choose to invest with your firm.
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Does it help the synergy between the front office and back office?
The system you adopt must be able to integrate with all the disparate tools your wealth management team uses in front and back-office operations. The advisor must be able to quickly source the data that he wants from the system in seconds and show the client their real-time account data. It should also allow for a full API system that allows third-party applications to function seamlessly on the platform.
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Does it save your advisor’s time?
The number one reason why wealth management firms are going for digital transformation is that advisors are increasingly under pressure. As a single advisor caters to 10s, the 20s or even 100 clients, every second of the advisor becomes valuable. If the advisor has to spend hours reconciling portfolio data, the investor will lose patience and the advisor will be unable to leverage their bandwidth for customer servicing. Wealth management software or platform helps advisors automate mundane tasks and carry out others efficiently such as Client Onboarding, portfolio attribution, rebalancing, compliance, reporting, document management and more.
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Is the system cloud-based?
Legacy systems are cumbersome to maintain and update, it can take months of time to upgrade to the latest technology and can also incur significant costs. A cloud-based SaaS platform, on the other hand, receives regular updates and can be updated in a matter of minutes. Also, as all of the upgrades are done at the Service company end, there are no additional costs involved in hiring talent to make sure the systems are up to date, secure, and running optimally. Cloud-based systems also allow users to access the data from anywhere and with any kind of device, removing the dependence on company owner hardware.
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Is the user experience easy to navigate?
Often, the senior talent at Wealth Management firms may not be very tech-savvy and may prefer to work on their excels and workbooks if they find the technology difficult to adopt. Just rolling out the platform is not sufficient, the advisors must be convinced of the benefit and they must be comfortable with the interface. Otherwise, the platform becomes a liability and leads to parallel processes running within the organization. The UX of the platform must be intuitive and consumer-grade, the advisors must also receive comprehensive training and support in the adoption phase to ensure a smooth transition and avoid costly mistakes.