Author: Valuefy

Why Data Reconciliation is Indispensable to Wealth Managers

Posted on by Valuefy

Accurate and reliable data is the backbone of effective wealth management. Effectively reconciling data ensures financial records are complete, consistent, and trustworthy.

Data reconciliation involves comparing and aligning data from various sources, including custodians, banks, brokers, and internal systems, to identify any discrepancies or inconsistencies. It’s a critical process that helps you maintain the integrity of your clients’ portfolios, track performance, assess risk exposure, and comply with regulatory requirements.

Let’s delve deeper into why data reconciliation is indispensable to wealth managers:

1. Accuracy and Reliability: Effective reconciliation ensures the accuracy and reliability of your data. By comparing different data sets, you can identify inconsistencies, such as missing or duplicated transactions, pricing errors, or incorrect position balances. Resolving these discrepancies promptly ensures that reports and analyses are sound and based on correct information.

2. Risk Mitigation: Effective risk management is a key aspect of wealth management. Proper data reconciliation allows you to identify and mitigate risks associated with inaccurate data, unauthorized trading, or fraudulent activities. It helps maintain a robust control environment by detecting anomalies and potential breaches promptly.

3. Compliance and Reporting: Regulatory bodies, such as financial authorities, impose strict reporting requirements on wealth managers. Data reconciliation ensures these obligations are met by providing accurate and complete information for regulatory filings. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in penalties, reputational damage, and potential legal consequences.

4. Client Confidence and Satisfaction: As a wealth manager, you understand the importance of building and maintaining trust with your clients. Proper data reconciliation demonstrates your commitment to accuracy, transparency, and professionalism. It supports the delivery of reliable reports, investment statements, and performance updates to your clients, enhancing their confidence in your services.

Now, let’s consider the adverse effects of improper data reconciliation:

1. Inaccurate Reporting: Without proper reconciliation, your reports may contain errors and inconsistencies. This can lead to incorrect valuation of portfolios, inaccurate performance calculations, and misguided investment decisions. Inaccurate reporting not only affects internal decision-making but also undermines the trust and confidence clients place in their wealth managers.

2. Operational Inefficiencies: Incomplete or inconsistent data can lead to operational inefficiencies. Without proper reconciliation, it may be challenging to  track transactions, identify cash flows, or reconcile trades. These inefficiencies can result in delays, increased operational costs, and suboptimal investment strategies.

3. Increased Risk Exposure: Inadequate data reconciliation increases the risk of unidentified errors, fraud, or unauthorized activities. Without a clear view of positions, transactions, and cash balances, wealth managers may inadvertently expose clients’ portfolios to risks that go undetected. This can have severe financial and reputational consequences for both advisors and clients.

4. Regulatory Non-Compliance: Improper reconciliation can also result in non-compliance with regulatory requirements. Failure to meet reporting obligations accurately and on time can result in penalties, regulatory scrutiny, and reputational damage. Non-compliance can also hinder an advisor’s ability to attract new clients and retain existing ones.

Wealth Tech Solutions

Modern technology solutions introduce various checks to reconcile the data from both a quality and quantity basis. Your chosen software must perform three types of reconciliations:

1. Holdings and transactions.

2. Reconcile cash accounts with cash flows.

3. Reconcile non unitised products where you need to pre-set percentage threshold and any deviation beyond the threshold should prompt a breach.

Apart from the system checks, software vendors also offer “Data as a Service” where professional data managers from the vendor’s office manage data for their clients for a fee.

Data reconciliation is a vital process for wealth managers. It ensures the accuracy and reliability of financial records, mitigates risks, facilitates compliance, and strengthens client relationships. Neglecting or mishandling this process can have severe repercussions, including inaccurate reporting, operational inefficiencies, increased risk exposure, and regulatory non-compliance.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

Is your Data Secure on the Cloud?

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With organizations increasingly reliant on cloud services, and vendors from multiple locations, to store and manage their data, it is essential to address concerns regarding the security of data stored in the cloud and the risks associated with outsourcing data services to vendors in different locations.

Storing data on the cloud can provide numerous benefits for wealth managers, such as improved accessibility, scalability, and cost-efficiency. However, ensuring the security of the data is of paramount importance for wealth managers who handle sensitive financial information.

Here are some key considerations regarding the security of storing data on the cloud for wealth managers:

1. Data Encryption:

Cloud service providers (CSPs) typically offer robust encryption mechanisms to protect data stored in the cloud. Wealth managers should ensure that sensitive data, such as client financial information and personal details, are encrypted both at rest and in transit. Strong encryption algorithms and protocols should be employed to prevent unauthorized access to the data.

2. Access Controls and Authentication:

Wealth managers should work with CSPs that implement strong access control mechanisms and multi-factor authentication (MFA). This ensures that only authorized individuals can access the data and perform administrative tasks. Implementing strong password policies, user role-based access controls, and regular access reviews is essential for maintaining data security.

3. Data Residency and Compliance:

Wealth managers often have legal and regulatory obligations regarding the storage and handling of client data. When selecting a cloud provider, it is important to consider data residency requirements and ensure that the data is stored in compliance with applicable regulations, such as GDPR, HIPAA, or industry-specific standards. Organizations should verify that the cloud provider can meet the necessary compliance requirements and obtain any required certifications or attestations.

4. Security Monitoring and Incident Response:

Wealth managers should choose cloud providers with robust security monitoring systems in place. Continuous monitoring helps detect suspicious activity or potential security breaches. Additionally, it is important to establish a well-defined incident response plan that outlines the steps to be taken in case of a security incident. This includes prompt notification of the wealth manager and appropriate authorities, as well as remediation procedures.

5. Vendor Due Diligence:

Performing due diligence on the cloud service provider is crucial. Wealth managers should assess the provider’s reputation, financial stability, security practices, and track record of maintaining data security. They should evaluate the vendor’s security certifications, audits, and compliance reports to gain confidence in their security measures. Businesses should consider engaging legal and compliance teams to review vendor contracts and ensure that appropriate security and data protection provisions are included.

6. Data Backup and Disaster Recovery:

Wealth managers should verify that the cloud provider has robust backup and disaster recovery mechanisms in place. This ensures that data can be recovered in the event of accidental loss, system failures, or natural disasters. Regular testing and validation of data backups and disaster recovery plans are essential to ensure the availability and integrity of stored data.

7. Employee Training and Awareness:

Wealth management firms should invest in employee training programs that raise awareness about data security best practices, including the proper handling and protection of sensitive client information. Educating employees on recognizing and mitigating security risks, such as phishing attacks or social engineering attempts, is vital for maintaining data security in a cloud environment.

Data stored on the cloud can be kept secure by wealth managers if the appropriate security measures are implemented. By selecting reputable cloud service providers, implementing strong encryption and access controls, ensuring compliance with regulations, conducting due diligence, and fostering a culture of data security, wealth managers can protect sensitive client data and mitigate potential risks associated with cloud storage. Regular monitoring, risk assessments, and staying updated with evolving security practices are also essential for maintaining data security on the cloud.

8 Checkpoints for Selecting your Wealth Tech Provider

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A traditional approach to wealth management may not attract empowered investors to collaborate with you. The pandemic has changed investor perspectives, relationships and behaviours. To be taken seriously as a preferred wealth manager, your platform must provide investors with insightful information about their investments via AI (Artificial Intelligence) and APIs (Application Programme Interface).

Low fees, better performance, personalised service, broader product ranges, lower and transparent fee structures, and regulatory pressures, to name a few factors, have made the industry extremely challenging and competitive. The ability to mitigate challenges and provide a unique digital experience to clients is the key to success and growth.

Regulators such as FINMA in Switzerland, FSRA in the Middle East, MAS in Singapore and CSSF in Luxembourg recognise the value of digitising investment management practises in achieving their goal of investor protection. As a result, they require financial intermediaries to conduct pre-trade checks on the client’s knowledge, experience, and risk-taking abilities based on prior classification and profiling. While these pre-trade checks can be performed without the use of technology, they would be impossible to manage efficiently as the size of the business and the number of new clients onboarded expands. Regulations like these, combined with the need to improve operational efficiency, have prompted wealth managers, private banks, and external/independent asset managers to consider large investments in IT tools.

What are the questions you should be asking to make an informed decision prior to engaging a solution provider? Here’s a helpful checklist to use to support this crucial strategic investment:

1. How experienced is your business and who are your backers?

  • Are you a young start up? These businesses may be risky, immature, unprofitable and provide less functionality.
  • Are you an established company?  These organizations will have mature functionalities, profitable operations, legacy systems and less flexibility to adapt to new technologies.
  • New companies may be more attractive in their “Look and Feel” while older companies may have powerful engines and systems.
  • Knowledge coming from years of solution development, number of full-time employees, shareholders backing them and financial infusions may provide useful information in comparing with competitors.

2. Which markets do you operate in and how many relevant clients do you serve?

  • Solutions providers may have thousands of users within hundreds of clients in multiple locations. This information may be interesting but what is more important is how many clients such as yours are being serviced by these solutions providers and where.
  • This will help establish if you are in the solution vendor’s core business and market.
  • Hence ask for references to ascertain the vendor before committing for long term
  • System migration can be painful, and you would want to avoid doing that frequently.

3. How profitable are you?

  • Most wealth tech companies are not profitable. Developing new solutions is capital intensive, and can take years, before achieving the onboarding of client business sufficient to break even.
  • Some companies may not have business plans to be profitable as they operate in the low fee game to gain higher market share before cashing out either by selling to a bigger player (clients then shifting to the latter’s platform) or to a private equity firm (increase prices to optimise profitability).

4. Where are your development and support centre(s) located?

  • The wealth management industry requires extensive knowledge of banking operations. Hence, offshoring of development and support to countries with a lack of European banking knowledge and communication (English as a basic) can be detrimental to the selection of vendors in other geographies.
  • Therefore, knowledge of banking operations helps in developing functionalities related to your core business.


5. How strong is your connectivity and functional scope?

  • Connectivity is the key decision parameter in selection of a solution provider.
  • The more custodial connections and/or connections to data aggregators, to ensure most or all of the client’s portfolios in multiple custody banks are captured, will help in shortlisting the vendor for further engagements.
  • The latest trend in the EAM segment, which used to automate the download of data from banks to their PMS system, now automates the uploading of trading instructions from their PMS system to the bank mainly using FIX protocol.
  • Studying the functional scope of the project with the Wealth Tech company is paramount. As businesses evolve, complex solutions may be required to support new functions. The platform’s ability to be flexible in accommodating those scopes, rather than looking for newer systems and vendors, will ensure long term association.

6. How do you calculate performance – position/transaction based?

  • Core banking systems use transactions to calculate performance and position of a portfolio. Solutions for EAMs offer simple steps – replicating one to one the custody bank positions in their portfolio management systems and offer a picture that is exactly the same. This method is cheaper to implement.
  • This method has limitations in calculating performance contribution (TW + MW) and offers less flexibility on past modifications of portfolios.
  • It is therefore important to know the answers to these questions to take an informed decision on its implications.

7. Where do you host the client’s data?

  • Older Wealth Tech solutions still have physical onsite servers that generate high costs and security risk. Most Wealth Techs offer a Software as a Service (SaaS) solution by hosting on a public or private cloud.
  • Regulators in Switzerland in particular require data to be stored in the country and not elsewhere. Hence, the following needs to be verified before selecting a vendor: Evidence certificate, back up architecture and disaster recovery tests and location of the data (if the vendor is operating in multiple geographies).

8. How do you price?

  • Each Wealth Tech company has its own pricing modules which makes comparison difficult. Some charge based on AUM (Assets under Management) and some charge based on user licences.
  • It is therefore important to receive the complete cost structure (one time set up plus recurring costs) to analyse whether there are limitations which may increase the overall costs later. Therefore, a careful study needs to be done before taking the decision.

This eight point checklist will allow you to make informed decisions before contracting with a solution provider who you will be married to for many years.

Enhancing Client Engagement and Business Growth with a Wealth Advisor Workbench

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Wealth managers can leverage an advisor workbench solution to increase efficiency and productivity, improve the quality of their advice and client service, and act more quickly and effectively on high-quality data. This will help advisors engage more successfully with clients and serve their needs better, ultimately benefiting both advisors and their clients.

What is an Advisor Workbench?

An automated and modular advisor workbench provides an entire wealth technology solutions and business operating system for a wealth manager. It helps advisors drive enhanced client relationships by automating and simplifying the workflow across various stages of client servicing. It empowers wealth managers to seamlessly and easily perform tasks that span customer onboarding, transaction execution, data aggregation and internal and client reporting.

Benefits for Wealth Managers

By using an automated and modular client management system, wealth advisors can minimise manual administration, deliver intelligent insights, drive hyper-personalisation and offer premium client service. Automation driven by technology helps firms reduce cost, increase operational efficiency and compliance, and ultimately ensures relationship managers are more productive and impactful.

For example, an advisor workbench can help wealth managers aggregate data right from the outset and present clients with relevant insights about their portfolios. This results in greater client interest and faster engagement in the relationship manager’s proposition, and at a greater scale than might previously have been possible. Integrated modules for advisory, data aggregation, onboarding and analytics can drive deeper engagement and enable better client service at all touchpoints, which results in incremental business achieved at a lower cost.

This approach helps advisors serve clients effectively at a time of high cost and rising pressures on wealth management technology models. Rather than continuing with a traditional product-focused model, advisors can leverage wealth technology solutions to offer pricing flexibility to cater for client needs at every stage of the wealth management journey. Typically, clients pay a flat fee based on the value of their investments. To maintain revenues under this pricing model, wealth managers must create new efficiencies and ensure relationship managers are more productive and spending more time with clients.

What’s Holding Relationship Managers Back?

In reality, most relationship managers spend the bulk of their time on non-revenue-generating activities. This is a widespread problem given the use of inefficient legacy IT systems, or even spreadsheets, and the rising demands of regulation and compliance.

The major obstacles to reducing non-advisory time include fragmented technology solutions for the post-advisory period due to multiple systems for client data and analytics; a high degree of manual data processing for product-level paperwork and manual trade and system entries; no integrated research platform for recommendations across asset classes; and a lack of pre-advisory client risk analytics resulting in legal and compliance issues.

Unlocking the Power of an Advisor Workbench

Advisors can make use of an automated and modular advisor workbench to tackle these challenges. For example, they can enhance onboarding and transaction execution by digitising the know-your-customer (KYC) process and building a self-service model that allows clients to perform transactions and key investment activities. They can develop reporting and review functionality that provides wealth advisors and clients with ready access to information about valuations and recent transactions. They can also invest in developing systems for servicing, query resolution and communications that are based on predictive models and can flag up potential deficiencies. Similarly, they can develop systems that use communications and service history to enhance the client experience through greater personalisation of service offerings and investment recommendations.

Driving Client Engagement and Business Growth

Wealth advisors and their clients stand to benefit when key front-office, client-facing functions, such as onboarding, analytics, reporting and trading, are automated and delivered through an easy-to-use interface. This frees up time and resources, and generates intelligent insights, helping advisors drive enhanced client relationships, loyalty and lifetime value.

Technology, data and insights are key to the operating strategy of advisors. By deepening client engagement using an advisor workbench, wealth advisors and managers can offer an exceptional digital experience to their clients, deliver enhanced investment decision making based on high-quality data and analysis, and drive their firm’s differentiation and growth in the market.

For more information about Valuefy’s wealth management technology solutions please contact us.

Get in touch to arrange a meeting to explore these themes in more detail and discuss our insights in wealth management technology.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

How Wealth Advisors Can Manage Rising Costs, Digital Transformation and Client Expectations and Achieve Profitability and Growth

Posted on by Valuefy

The wealth management landscape has shifted dramatically in recent years. Wealth managers are facing a new reality of rising costs, accelerating digital transformation and heightened client expectations for quality of service. But what do these challenges really mean for wealth advisors and how can they overcome them?

Rising Costs, Digital Transformation and Client Expectations

A host of factors are disrupting how wealth advisors operate as they grapple with rising threats to their business model and greater costs of doing business. These challenges stem from multiple sources including increased account aggregation, greater passive investment, the decline of fee minimums, cost inflation across technology, salary and other expenses, and a global regulatory push towards transparency, suitability and lower fees.

As costs are rising, so are client expectations. Clients are seeking both, higher returns through alternative investments and sophisticated investment risk mitigation and diversification in a challenging and unpredictable world. They are also demanding a seamless, convenient and personalised client experience. Increasingly, they expect this to be delivered through a hybrid of in-person and virtual engagement, often across multiple jurisdictions and geographies. Additionally, environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing is firmly on the radar of most clients. They are frequently considering ESG factors alongside traditional financial metrics to invest in a sustainable and responsible way.

Consequently, wealth advisors are facing increased client expectations for high-quality service, broader product offerings and sophisticated investment advice at a time when business cost and complexity is rising.

Technology Drives Profitability and Growth

Advisors are leveraging advanced technology to adapt their strategy and operations to this new reality. This can help them deliver the intuitive digital experience investors seek, provide a broad range of sophisticated products and services, and enhance the quality of investment advice. Crucially, it enables them to provide this improved offering while also enhancing operational efficiency and reducing cost.

For example, advisors are investing in enhanced data management to aggregate, standardise and harmonise data across multiple custodian, broker, currency and product data sets. This ensures data is available in the correct place and format for investment analysis, portfolio management, portfolio reporting and client service. They are enhancing the monitoring of portfolio insights, building holistic views of assets across portfolios, implementing advanced attribution and visualisation capabilities, and using open APIs for upward and downward integrations and to scale and expand. With the right technology, they can do all this while maintaining effective oversight, control and cost efficiency.

Achieving Business Results as Pressures Mount

In this challenging environment, the pressure is mounting for wealth managers to improve business performance and competitive advantage and deliver superior digital services and investment outcomes for clients. A technology-driven wealth management approach is crucial for wealth advisors to remain profitable and deliver sustained growth in a fast-changing market.

For more information about Valuefy’s wealth management technology solutions please contact us.


Get in touch to arrange a meeting to explore these themes in more detail and discuss our insights in wealth management technology.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

Wealth Management Technology Solutions Unlock Demand for Private Assets

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Private asset management is an increasingly important part of asset allocation as investors look for new avenues to generate returns and diversify risk. But they present unique challenges for wealth managers with their illiquid nature, complex valuation methodologies and lack of standardised reporting.

Advanced technology can help wealth managers overcome these challenges and unlock new opportunities in alternative investments, ultimately benefiting both wealth managers and their clients.

Shifting Investor Landscape

Investors are facing continued inflationary pressures, diversification challenges and public markets with low returns, fragile liquidity and a lack of listed growth companies. Increasingly, they’re turning to private markets to boost returns and enhance diversification. They are shifting allocations to a range of alternative investments including private equity, private debt, real estate, infrastructure, venture capital, growth capital and natural resources. These assets can also be readily customised to manage liability matching, access ESG and renewable energy investment themes, and target non-financial goals more broadly, including social impact investing.

As the trend for increased private asset allocations sweeps across the investment landscape, wealth managers are scrambling to expand their offerings in private markets. For wealth management advisors, catering to private asset demand is a crucial way to address the evolving needs of their clients. It also enables them to command typically higher fees and tap into an important source of growth and expansion.

With greater investment allocation to private assets, advisors must enhance their analysis and performance reporting of these asset classes to effectively meet the surge of demand and uncover the true value these investments can offer. Luckily, there are a number of ways advisors can leverage technology for this purpose.

Improved Investment Portfolio Management

Advanced technology can provide wealth managers with enhanced investment portfolio management capabilities for private assets. These include portfolio tracking and monitoring tools that enable wealth managers to effectively manage and analyse asset portfolios.

For example, wealth management advisors can leverage solutions to track and update the valuation of private assets in real-time, allowing for more accurate portfolio valuation and performance reporting. They can deploy comprehensive reporting features that allow them to generate customised reports for their clients and showcase the performance and risk characteristics of their alternative asset investments.

These new tools provide wealth managers with a holistic view of their clients’ private asset management portfolios. This can help enhance their investment recommendations and improve how they communicate performance to clients.

Advanced Data Management and Analysis

Wealth management advisors increasingly recognise the need for advanced technology to efficiently manage and analyse the vast amount of data associated with private assets. The asset class often features complex data sets, across financial statements, legal documents and market data, which need to be accurately collected, organised and analysed.

Wealth management technology solutions can automate these processes, reducing the time and effort required for data management and analysis. For example, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning algorithms can automatically extract relevant data from financial documents, standardise the data and store it in a centralised database.

This streamlined data management process allows wealth managers to easily access and analyse data, enabling them to gain insights and make informed investment decisions. It can unlock sophisticated data analytics capabilities, such as risk modelling, scenario analysis and performance attribution. This helps advisors better understand the risk and return characteristics of private asset management and optimise their clients’ portfolios accordingly.

Enhanced Risk Management

With unique liquidity, market and regulatory risk characteristics, private assets often require specialised risk management approaches.

A robust asset management framework for private markets should encompass risk management and analysis, and the associated data requirements, for both top-down and bottom-up approaches. The former approach is most suitable for fund investments and the latter for co-investments and direct investments. Wealth managers can leverage advanced technology to develop superior risk management tools to support these approaches. They can perform risk modelling and simulations to assess the risk profile of their clients’ private asset portfolios, identify potential risk exposures and formulate mitigation solutions. In the case of direct investments, they can identify and analyse the most crucial risks and define risk monitoring indicators to track investment performance during the holding period.

Risk is often perceived to be higher in private markets compared to public markets and is assessed and managed differently. By leveraging technology solutions for risk management, advisors can mitigate risks associated with private assets and protect their clients’ investments as part of a sound, well-informed investment decision-making process.

Next Level Reporting and Transparency

Advanced technology solutions significantly improve the reporting and transparency of private assets. This is often a challenging area for wealth managers due to the lack of standardised reporting in private markets.

Wealth managers can automate and customise reporting features to generate detailed and transparent reports for their clients. Additionally, they can deploy tools for performance attribution, benchmarking and peer group analysis, and compare the performance of private assets against relevant benchmarks and industry peers. This enhanced reporting and transparency can foster trust and confidence between wealth managers and their clients.

Technology Harnesses Private Market Demand

As demand for private asset management continues to surge, wealth managers are racing to address and exploit this trend. Their efforts are crucial if they are to effectively cater for investors’ changing needs and future proof the growth of their own business.

Traditional technology solutions are not sufficient for wealth managers to reap the rewards of private markets and create value for their clients and their own businesses. They must harness advanced technology to better manage, analyse and report on alternative investments. This will enable advisors to deliver the benefits associated with private assets including higher returns, portfolio diversification and resilience throughout recession periods.

For more information about Valuefy’s wealth management technology solutions please contact us.

Get in touch to arrange a meeting to explore these themes in more detail and discuss our insights in wealth management technology.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

The Open API Opportunity for Wealth Managers and Family Offices

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The open banking movement, and the use of open APIs, has the potential to revolutionise the way businesses operate in the wealth management industry. Wealth managers can leverage open APIs to unlock a myriad of opportunities. These include expanding their service offerings, streamlining operations and driving growth.

Advisors that become early adopters of open banking practices, and invest in the commercial opportunities of open APIs, will play an integral role in the future of wealth management technology.

Enhanced Connectivity

With wealth increasingly spread across multiple banking relationships, custodians and jurisdictions, enhanced connectivity is essential to success, for both advisors and their clients. Open APIs enable wealth managers to connect their systems with external platforms, such as banks, custodian data centres and other financial institutions, in a seamless and secure manner.

Enhanced connectivity allows for real-time data exchange, enabling wealth managers to access and analyse financial data more efficiently. For example, advisors can leverage open APIs to retrieve data on clients’ financial accounts, transactions and holdings directly from a custodian’s system, eliminating the need for manual data entry and reducing the risk of errors.

For wealth managers and family offices, tracking and controlling bankable assets is critical, especially in volatile markets. Better connectivity not only saves time and effort but also provides wealth managers with a holistic view of their clients’ financial information. This enables them to track strategic and tactical asset allocation more effectively and facilitate better investment decisions.

Customised Client Experiences

Open APIs empower wealth managers to deliver customised client experiences by integrating third-party applications and services into their wealth platforms. Wealth managers can use open APIs to provide clients with access to a wide range of financial tools, such as financial planning calculators, risk assessment tools and investment research platforms.

Additionally, wealth managers can leverage open APIs to integrate with other financial service providers, such as tax advisors, estate planners and insurance providers, to offer comprehensive private wealth management solutions to their clients.

By offering these tools within their own platforms, advisors can create a seamless and integrated experience for their clients, enhancing overall client satisfaction and loyalty.

Expanded Investment Opportunities

Open APIs unlock access to a broader range of investment opportunities and enable advisors to connect clients with multiple wealth platforms. These include robo-advisors and alternative investments, such as private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and real estate, which were traditionally only available to institutional investors.

This expanded access allows wealth managers to offer a more diverse and sophisticated investment service. Not only does this enable advisors to enhance the diversification of client portfolios and access greater returns, it also provides advisors with additional revenue streams through fees and commissions.

Operational Efficiency

Wealth managers can use open APIs to streamline operational processes, such as client onboarding, portfolio rebalancing and trade execution, which drives improved efficiency and cost savings. For example, open APIs can be used to automate the process of rebalancing clients’ portfolios based on their investment goals and risk tolerance, ensuring that their portfolios are aligned with their financial objectives, and automate trade execution to reduce the time and effort required to place trades manually.

Improved operational efficiency through automation not only reduces manual errors but also frees up wealth managers’ time to focus on more value-added activities, such as client relationship management and investment strategy.

Collaboration and Innovation

Open APIs foster collaboration and innovation among wealth managers, financial technology companies and other stakeholders in the financial ecosystem. Wealth managers can collaborate with fintech companies using open APIs to develop and deploy innovative solutions to enhance their services and meet the evolving needs of their clients.

Collaboration through open banking is gaining traction in the wealth management community. For example, The OpenWealth Association in Switzerland was formed to enable collaboration between custodian banks, wealth management technology providers and API service providers to develop, maintain and distribute standardised APIs for the global wealth management industry. With rapid adoption in Switzerland, OpenWealth’s standardised practices are driving true collaboration in the ecosystem of custodian banks, independent asset managers and wealth tech providers.

Wealth managers and family offices stand to gain from this new wave of collaboration. They can access banking services cost-efficiently, and serve their clients effectively, without a lock-in on custody banks. They can also connect to an ecosystem of wealth management technology providers with offerings that go beyond financial services, for example mobility, healthcare, education, entertainment, concierge services and real estate. This paves the way for the growth of financial super-apps that combine banking, private wealth management and other services in an integrated way and in one place. Collaboration and innovation of this type enables advisors to keep their offerings fresh and relevant, deliver an increasingly comprehensive service and stay ahead of evolving client needs.

An Open Banking Future

The exchange and management of data through openly available APIs has the potential to transform the private wealth management industry. As open banking becomes increasingly mainstream, advisors can harness its opportunities to drive enhanced service, greater operational efficiency and accelerated business growth.

For more information about Valuefy’s wealth management technology solutions please contact us.


Get in touch to arrange a meeting to explore these themes in more detail and discuss our insights in wealth management technology.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

Is Good Advice Enough to Retain a Client?

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Wealth managers are increasingly tasked with delivering holistic solutions that combine meaningful advice and bespoke service, rather than focussing only on advice.

Investors seek to be informed and empowered to make their own decisions, rather than solely relying on their advisor. They also expect more from their advisors than what can be accomplished through digitization alone.

As client expectations, wealth management technologies and market conditions evolve, how should client engagement team advice in a highly dynamic and competitive market?

Achieving Client Goals

The aspiration for all best wealth managers should be to help investors manage their wealth in order to achieve their goals in every area of their life, both now and in the future.

This requires an integrated approach powered by technology to strengthen client relationships, manage data to deliver actionable insights and sage advice, and deliver enhanced client service.

However, providing customised and comprehensive advice blended with first-class service can be challenging, especially as markets, technologies, and client expectations evolve rapidly.

Wealth Management Technology Responses

Client engagement team needs to deploy a hybrid of in-person and digital engagement to foster trusted client relationships and deliver solutions that meet their unique needs, concerns and challenges.

A crucial part of this approach is selecting, implementing and managing digital technology. The advisor’s technology infrastructure must be deployed and integrated at every stage of the client lifecycle across onboarding, account management, analysis, trade and investment mandates, and reporting.

By leveraging effective data management and richer analytics, advisors can uncover actionable insights, act in a more responsive and agile way, and empower clients to make decisions and provide personalised, high-touch service.

Cover All the Bases

The integrated platform should provide consolidated multi-asset, multi-currency and multi-custodial capabilities.

This will enable client engagement team to deliver a nimble and broadly diversified portfolio with a multi-asset strategy that combines different types of assets, including equity, fixed income, currency, commodity and alternative investments.

It also ensures efficient portfolio construction and management, including proposal generation, modelling, tax rebalancing, reporting and billing, across assets at multiple custodial firms. A robust multi-custodian platform also helps reduce data inconsistencies, regardless of where accounts are held.

In an increasingly interconnected world, the integrated solution should deliver multi-currency portfolio management, tracking and reporting for GIPS composites, bonds, options and futures.

Backed by advanced wealth management technology, an integrated solution can help advisors enhance client service, operational efficiency and competitive advantage in a meaningful, sustainable and valuable way.

Driving Holistic Solutions

By combining technology, data and service, wealth managers can improve client experience, strengthen client trust, and increase efficiency and transparency throughout the entire client lifecycle. This can help unlock the promise of holistic client engagement that blends expert advice with outstanding service to empower clients to achieve their goals.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

How Wealth Managers Can Help Maintain Client Relations

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Maintaing client relations is a crucial component of success in wealth management. It enables wealth management advisors to properly understand and serve their client’s needs, help them achieve their financial goals, and retain their business over the long-term. But the ways in which advisors engage with clients and help in managing client relations is changing.

As digital transformation accelerates and client expectations evolve, traditional approaches must be complemented with an enhanced digital experience.

Wealth management advisors can leverage these new opportunities to create more effective engagement models that help craft solutions tailored to each client’s unique needs, concerns and challenges.

A Changing Market

With digital transformation and shifting client expectations, advisors can struggle to provide customised and comprehensive investment advice based on a deep understanding of client needs. Clients expect advisors to act as true partners and co-create a relationship based on client inputs, rather than advisor assumptions and standardised solutions.

Irrespective of age or wealth, investors expect a combination of breadth of service offerings, expert and timely investment advice, and outstanding client service. But there have been significant shifts in recent years in terms of how clients expect to be served.

Clients increasingly expect digital engagement across onboarding, transaction and advice. Non-digital interaction, through in-person meetings and phone calls, is increasingly complemented, and even replaced, by online engagement using mobile apps, websites, social channels and virtual conferencing.

These changes mean wealth management advisors need to create a client experience based on how investors want to engage, when they want to engage and what channel they prefer to use. They need to nurture the client relationship to ensure collaboration and a mutual understanding of the investor’s needs and goals.

This provides an opportunity for advisors to deploy a hybrid of in-person and digital engagement to create strong relationships, foster client confidence and trust, and deliver personalised, high-touch service.

In this new landscape, wealth managers can leverage multiple technology and data resources to build and strengthen client relationships and deliver enhanced service.

Technology, Data and Service

Digital technology solutions must be deployed and integrated at every stage of the client lifecycle. From the first touch point of the relationship, technology can be used to create a seamless and productive client journey that spans onboarding, account management, analysis, trade and investment mandates, and reporting.

For onboarding, digital solutions can offer configurable, collaborative workflows that provide automated AML, KYC and identity verification, secure document repository and simplified, streamlined client-facing functionality such as auto filled onboarding forms.

Digital solutions are also crucial to deliver robust account management and world-class investor portals and apps, including mobile apps, consolidated reporting, data privacy security, direct order placement, and digital signature, approval and notification functionality. Enhanced transparency and access to performance information can significantly boost trust in maintaining client relations over time.

For client lifecycle management, advisors can deploy technology that supports periodic automated and ad hoc reviews, prospect management and investment proposals, as well as customer relationship management (CRM) functionality.

Delivering Actionable Insights

To build or strengthen client relations, wealth managers can leverage technology to more effectively uncover, understand and act on their client’s long-term goals and purpose for investing.

From initial engagement, onboarding and beyond, a plethora of data must be captured, managed, analysed and interpreted to drive data-driven insights and relevance.

Technology can be leveraged to eliminate data silos, organise client data into a unified system, and ensure that information is managed in a connected way across systems and processes.

This is a key enabler of data analytics. It ensures that meaningful value is extracted from data to generate a complete and holistic picture of client needs. It enables insights about the dynamics of their behaviour, whether that be routine beneficiary changes, shifting attitudes to risk or evolving life goals.

These actionable insights can help wealth management advisors take quick, appropriate and timely action to foster trusted relationships and provide the best service and advice possible. To deliver outstanding client engagement, advisors must consistently strengthen trust and mutual understanding within the relationship and act on insights and feedback to deliver expert advice and continuous improvements in service.

Multiple colleagues who are not co-located can work on a single platform to deliver exceptional client service while maintaining efficiency and scalability.

Competitive Edge

Another reason to deploy digital solutions is to gain market intelligence through client engagement. This can help wealth management advisors identify the other disruptive apps that clients are using, learn more about them, and apply that intelligence to improve their propositions, service and operations. This presents a key source of competitive advantage to wealth management firms in a highly dynamic, complex and competitive market.

Digital advances and changing client expectations are re-shaping the wealth management industry. The most successful advisors are those who select, implement and manage advanced technology to drive excellence in client engagement.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

The Role of Technology in Integrated Wealth Management

Posted on by Valuefy

Delivering successful integrated wealth management solutions requires a deep understanding of a client’s financial situation, goals, and risk tolerance and the ability to translate this into holistic, personalised advice that truly meets their needs. But what are the key issues facing wealth managers who adopt an integrated approach and how can they overcome them to succeed in today’s market?

Bespoke Excellence in Wealth Management Solutions

One of the greatest challenges facing integrated wealth managers is delivering a personalised and customised solution to each client. Clients have unique financial goals, risk tolerance, and investment preferences and an integrated wealth manager must be able to adapt to each client’s needs and provide customised solutions.

In order to do so, advisors must build a strong relationship with the client and take the time to get to know them. They should ask questions about their financial goals, family situation, investment preferences, investment risk tolerance, and broader vision for what they are trying to achieve with their wealth. Along with asking lots of questions, advisors must also listen. This ensures they can provide the most appropriate advice based on what’s truly important to the client and what they want to achieve now and in the future.

This approach will help advisors develop fit-for-purpose, personalised investment management solutions that meet their client’s needs. The wealth plan will include advice on the structure through which an investment is held, for example, individual ownership, company, pension, trust, or another tax-efficient wrapper, and the underlying investment elements, for example, stocks, bonds, or alternative investments depending on the client’s investment risk tolerance.

Shifting Client Expectations

As digital transformation accelerates, clients expect a convenient, seamless, and ‘always-on’ experience. With clients often preferring a blend of in-person and virtual engagement, advisors are focussing on improving their digital wealth management across client onboarding, transactions and advice. 

In seeking greater returns, clients are increasingly considering alternative investments. These investments include specialised products, such as IPOs, tax-exempt investments, commodities, derivatives, and structured products, and, in the case of family office solutions, allocations to direct investments.

As always, advisors will talk to their clients about investment risk as well as return. Indeed, risk mitigation and diversification remain front of mind with continued concerns about geopolitics, growth, inflation, climate change, supply chains, and a range of other headwinds.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing remains important to many investors. And asset managers are stepping up their ESG offerings accordingly. While ESG adoption varies across geographies and jurisdictions, it continues apace given continued social, business, and investor awareness of non-financial risk following the pandemic.

Regulatory Challenges

Staying up-to-date with regulations, and implementing effective compliance processes, can be a significant challenge. Asset managers are spending more time than ever on regulatory compliance, as regulatory obligations and reporting requirements continue to mount. In fact, for many wealth managers, regulation can be a roadblock to expansion and present significant challenges for their overhead costs when scaling their business across multiple geographies.

Advisors must implement effective processes that ensure adherence to regulatory requirements across anti-money laundering, know-your-customer, and data privacy regulations. This includes conducting regular compliance reviews, staying abreast of regulatory developments, and implementing robust data security measures.

Wealth Management Technology Solutions and Choices

Wealth management technology solutions are rapidly changing. The use of multiple systems, or a lack of effective systems, leads to operational inefficiencies. With numerous solutions available, selecting the right technology, and integrating it into the business, can be a challenge.

Deploying investment management solutions can ensure that burdensome risk management and reporting workflows are automated. It also helps significantly enhance the reporting experience for clients. With the right technology integrated seamlessly into existing systems, multiple teams can work on a single platform and deliver efficiency, transparency, and scalability. This frees up time and resources for activities that truly drive differentiation and performance, such as portfolio analysis, innovation, and business development.

How to Harness Technology for Integrated Wealth Management Solutions

Wealth managers must build a wealth technology infrastructure that supports an integrated, holistic offering to clients, reduces cost, and increases efficiency. This infrastructure must provide highly reliable data aggregation to connect to banks and brokers, standardise and harmonise data and ensure it’s available in one place for investment analysis and portfolio management. It should enable an Order Management System (OMS) that connects to different counterparties, and manages transaction workflows and compliance, across various asset classes and multiple users within the firm.The wealth platform should support performance reporting, risk analytics, and visualisations of portfolios and help transform data into insights. To help clients make informed decisions, it should enable advisors to perform model portfolio management, conduct rebalancing and produce investment policy statements in a scalable and compliant way. This will enable advisors to engage with customers digitally while maintaining control and oversight.

An integrated wealth management platform, backed by advanced technology, empowers advisors to significantly enhance operational efficiency, digital experience, and business performance – and ultimately exceed client expectations in a changing market.

About Valuefy

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology solutions for an uberized customer experience.

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