Tag: Investment Technology

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.

Maximizing Efficiency and Cost Management in Regulatory Compliance

Posted on by Valuefy

Wealth management is under intense regulatory scrutiny. The industry is seeing mounting efforts by regulators to improve competition and investor protection, strengthen firm’s governance and accountability, and enhance sustainability reporting and disclosures.

However, regulation can be a significant roadblock for expansion in wealth management. It puts enormous pressure on overhead costs when scaling a business across multiple geographies.

Leveraging technology is the only way to effectively manage the complexity and cost of regulation while maintaining competitive performance.

Regulatory Obligations Proliferate

Regulators continue to strengthen frameworks and requirements related to investor protection and choice, governance and accountability of advisors, and reporting and disclosures related to environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing and company sustainability efforts.

Though jurisdictions are at different stages of implementation, most regulators are focusing their attention on the increasingly digital nature of distribution, the quality of outcomes and value for money for investors, and product governance for the target market of end clients and related distribution strategies. But at the same time, regulators are increasingly promoting their jurisdictions as asset management domiciles. This widens choice for clients, especially sophisticated or semi-professional investors, and creates new opportunities for wealth managers.

Recent years have seen regulators step up accountability arrangements related to the resources, capabilities and expertise of wealth management technology firms. For example, they are implementing mandates for combating financial crime, sanctions compliance, operational and cyber resilience, and achieving diversity and inclusion targets.

There has been a whirlwind of regulation about sustainable finance, some of which is particularly complex. This encompasses a myriad of topics with limited common definitions related to the breadth and depth of disclosures. Additionally, sustainability regulation is not harmonised across jurisdictions. For example, mandatory reporting requirements for climate change in different jurisdictions are progressing along different trajectories, especially with regard to implementation timeframes and the sizes and types of companies impacted. It’s increasingly difficult and costly for wealth managers to gather the data they need regarding their investments for the purposes of their own disclosures.

Wealth Management Technology Solutions for Effective Regulatory Compliance

Staying on top of regulation, and implementing effective compliance processes, can be a significant challenge. Wealth platforms are spending more time than ever on regulatory compliance, as regulatory obligations continue to increase across all jurisdictions.

Advisors must implement effective processes that ensure adherence to regulations for anti-money laundering, know-your-customer and data privacy. This requires staying current with regulatory changes, conducting regular compliance reviews, and implementing robust data security measures.

The solution lies in implementing strong, integrated and scalable operational workflows for regulatory compliance. The workflow must be able to manage quality checks, for both clients and investments, and provide the flexibility to accommodate for changing regulatory agendas and requirements across jurisdictions.

Because regulation touches all parts of wealth management, the solution should be embedded throughout the wealth platform across front, middle and back office operations. It should be built to ensure risk monitoring and compliance management functionality, including customer suitability and investment risk analysis, customisable pre- and post- trade rules, regulatory reporting for different regimes, provision of audit trails, and client classification and risk categorisation.

As regulatory pressures continue to rise, leveraging wealth management technology and digitising workflows is the only way to ensure robust regulatory compliance while managing costs in an appropriate way.

No matter their size, wealth platforms should be implementing wealth management technology solutions to enhance regulatory compliance, improve operational efficiency, and future proof their business.

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.

Simplifying Portfolio Performance Analytics with Investment Management Solutions

Posted on by Valuefy

Portfolio analytics is a key component in investment management. It helps managers analyze returns and investment risk for their clients and helps them make informed decisions about their investments. But analyzing portfolios is no small task. It involves a lot of processes like attribution, performance benchmarking, risk management, portfolio slice and dice, and more.

To make their job easier, these investment managers need intelligent and reliable technology solutions that not only take the burden off their shoulders but also get the portfolio analytics done faster. These solutions help reduce human error by automating the whole process of analysis and leveraging the ability of artificial intelligence to find in-depth insights for more informed recommendations.

Wealth in a Box is one such Investment Management Software. It is an agile modern architecture which brings together front, middle and back-office wealth technology solutions to reduce costs and increase efficiency of wealth managers.

Designed for the ease of managers and their clients, Wealth in a Box makes portfolio analytics more accessible and comprehensible.

Below are a few other ways Wealth in a Box simplifies portfolio analytics:

Simplified Data Results

It analyzes complex data, both real-time and historical, and presents it to the clients on their user dashboards with enriched visualization and simplified attraction. This makes it easier for investment managers to inform clients about the possible investment risks and returns.

Saves Time

It takes only seconds to analyze data and present recommendations. It takes up to weeks for a human to do that because of the sheer amount of work that it is. It saves time and helps capitalize on the opportunities that open in the market.

Customization

With its goal-based approach to the advisory, all recommendations made by Wealth in a Box are customized for the goals set by the clients. Since every individual or entity has their own set of goals to achieve, no two clients have the same recommendations. It is programmed this way to provide highly accurate and relevant recommendations to the clients and support their investment goals.

Automation

Wealth in a Box automates complex research, investment planning, and portfolio monitoring to enable investment managers, fund managers, performance analysts, risk analysts, and compliance managers to provide an uberized user experience to their clients. It has different formats of the portfolio for Analysts, Fund Managers, and CXOs with different approaches for each individual.

Always Ready

The Wealth in a Box system is always ready, which helps avoid delays and dependencies.

Flexibility

Flexibility helps Wealth in a Box support different models for asset classes and styles, enabling it to easily handle multi-currency and multi-asset portfolios.

If you are an investment manager looking for a technology solution, you can find out more about Wealth in a Box here: Software for wealth managers.

About Valuefy:

Valuefy is a premier investment technology lab with cutting-edge solutions serving the leading financial institutions across the globe. Its Wealth Management Solutions has enabled Wealth Managers globally by providing production-grade investment technology for an uberized customer experience. Reach out to us today and get a solution that best suits your needs.

How analytics makes wealth management unbiased?

Posted on by Valuefy

Investment managers of today are out chasing the alpha. They are expected now, more than ever, to justify their management fees by giving a superior return on investment. This is especially the case when there are so many free and cheap passive investment avenues out there for investors to invest in. Only a market-beating return will satisfy customers of today and investors are looking at analytics aided improvements to achieve these performance improvements especially through the debiasing of investments.

Through advanced analytics, investment managers are able to rely less on instinct and more on data, thereby reducing the chances of making sub-optimal trading decisions. The ‘debiasing’ effect that analytics is playing can help bring about a lot of positive change, in the highly competitive and sometimes opaque industry.

Analytics increasingly becomes popular as wealth managers are recognizing the risk of relying purely on instinct for their decision making. It has come to the fore that human beings are incapable of being purely rational. Behavioral economics has proved that biases and irrational considerations based on our lived experience affect all of our decisions including those such as investments. Hence it is essential for us to rely on ‘Artificial intelligence’ that is sophisticated and data-driven as a way to counteract bias.

How does bias affect decision making?

In a study conducted by McKinsey, it was observed that traders were overcommitted to the positions they held and tended to hold on to them even when contrary evidence was presented. This was due to endowment effects and confirmation bias. The ‘endowment effect’ referred to the cases in which owners of a certain asset held on to it, despite any change in conditions and ‘confirmation bias’ refers to how our stereotypes lead us to discount beliefs that go contrary to our own.

How can Analytics help?

Using a digitized wealth management platform with Robo advisory and actionable analytics, that uses pure data to drive conclusions, can help temper the bias in investment management. Machine learning algorithms that learn from swathes of historical data and investment patterns help decision-makers get better and more scientific. The consistent biases and the emotions that made investment managers hold on to bad investments and stay away from certain industries due to ‘lived experiences’ could be neutralized by the power of Analytics and Robo/AI based investing.

What gives investment managers using analytics an edge?

When investment managers are using a digitized wealth management platform, they benefit from the huge data sets and patterns that the AI has been able to analyze over time. Big data is compiled about the investment performances and patterns of millions of users over millions of trades. This factors into the recommendations that the AI-driven Robo advisor makes.

It also factors in a number of variables such as the investment horizon, risk tolerance, preferred investment types and more to help arrive at the perfect investment strategy for you. Biases such as overconfidence, loss aversion, endowment effect are all erased as the AI relies purely on performance data collected from thousands of variables.

Looking ahead

Analytics will definitely impact the decision making of wealth managers for the better. This will help wealth managers make more profitable decisions for their clients and increase the value of their portfolios. A study conducted by Mckinsey revealed that debiasing using analytics helped fund managers gain potential improvements between 100 and 300 basis points.

Wealth management firms that leverage this cutting-edge technology will consistently outperform others in the market. They will create a lot of value for their investors and will fare much better than traditional firms without the analytics edge. It has become evident that only the firms that are willing to change with the times and adopt technology will capture the major share of the market, especially the tech-savvy and millennial one.

 Looking to leverage analytics for your wealth management practice – Contact Us

The Science and Art of Choosing the Right Investment Management Solution

Posted on by Valuefy

Choosing an investment management solution is a rather difficult task, especially when there are many options to choose from. You want to make the most of it, making it easier for your investment managers to be more productive and efficient. Something that will also provide your clients with easy to understand insights to help them with their decision making.

From client acquisition and onboarding to compliance and oversight, there are processes that can be easily digitalized and help save time. When your investment managers save time in gaining data analytics and making detailed reports, they can work on putting those reports to good use and help make your clients make the best choices.

But choosing the right investment solution is just like choosing investment options. It is as much an art as it is science, meaning it is just as subjective as it is objective. There are aspects of an investment management solution, like analytics and reports, that will work for all investment managers but there are processes that might not work in a “template” approach and might need customizations for different fund managers and sometimes, for different clients.

All these considerations seem to make choosing an investment management solution more complicated than it is but when we break it down to the basics, it’s quite simple actually. WealthFy makes it easier for you to see a clearer picture and make the right choice when deciding on a solution. It will make your job easier and your client’s decision making faster.

So, here’s a breakdown of the reasons why WealthFy may just be the best investment management solution for you:

Interactive Client Portals

Smart client portals help wealth managers present a holistic view to the rewired investor, on demand. It is built to connect with complex legacy systems and is powered by an optimized data layer. Complex Private Banking portfolio is made interactive and personalized to make wealth management with tailored goal vs investment profiling easier.

Digital Intelligence

Smart Advisory Algorithms empower your sales force with a seamless workflow across mandates, portfolio reviews, portfolio construction, and transactions. This paperless advisory workflow is a close replica of a CIO’s view in each client interaction.

Precise Portfolio Review

Portfolio reviews no longer need to take weeks and can be performed within seconds. WealthFy creates portfolio insights for investment advisors that are delivered through powerful dashboards. And the whole process can be customized and automated as per your client’s needs, creating a truly digital, millennial experience.

Advisor-Client Solution

Today’s investor needs an investment management solution that is made for tomorrow but also adheres to the constantly updating legacy regulations. WealthFY’s Advisor-Client solution arms every Wealth Manager with compliance and smart insights to make the most of the investment.

Cloud-based Solution

Having a cloud-based solution not only increases the efficiency of your solution but also saves costs as there is no hardware involved. And it pretty much takes care of itself with automatic updates to keep the software relevant. These solutions are also available round the clock and have a flexible capacity on storage.

Do you want to take an early lead at being the most preferred investment management firm in the digital age? Contact Valuefy today!

5 Trends Governing the Future of Wealth Management Industry

Posted on by Valuefy

As economies around the world take twists and turns amidst political, geographical, technological, and social transformations, one thing is for sure – Change. Yes, the inevitable that surreptitiously unmasks itself even before you realise its existence.

Considering evolution as the underlying factor for our growth, it would only be fair to consider these up and coming trends, shaping the workstyle of finance and wealth management industry, are here to make matter more interesting than we projected.

The Competition

Needless to say, the competition is now more intensified than ever. Retail banks and financial institutions looking for new growth opportunities are tapping new technology and business models; however, amidst prevailing financial crisis, more firms and more advisors have entered into a fray for the same segment of clients. Adding to the competition is entry of nonfinancial players in the market, which saw a surge of 20% until last year. With business giant like Google planning to make way into the wealth management arena, it’s definitely going to be more cut-throat than ever.

Changing Demography

Close to $58.1 trillion is expected to move from one adult population to the next, over a period of 55 years, from 2007-2061. This huge transition in process is certainly causing paradigm shifts in the wealth management landscape. Assets will change both owners and advisors, hence, bringing about a massive change in existing client/advisor relationships.

As the WM workforce will retire, so will their existing set of clients. Millennials taking over their preceding generation of Baby Boomers will change the demographic equation quite significantly.

Further, with more women taking control of assets by virtue of financial and social independence, will add to the new demography.

New Expectations

Yes, there’s a new wave of expectations on the table. Thanks to new-age millennial thinking that believes in and demands transparency and control over their investment (both long term and short term). Such clarity in expectations is paving way for goal-based financial advice. It’s time, investment advisors shift focus from generic commoditized advising to more holistic consultation. This will reap sustainable benefit for both client and wealth managers. 90% Baby Boomers, 91% Gen X, and 93% Millennials consider fee structure as one of the determining factors in choosing a financial advisor.

This new breed of investors is vocal and non-hesitant about putting forth their desire for goal-based advice. Unfortunately, loyalty is not the only trait that will help the industry sail through.

The Digital Potential

The world is going gaga over digitalization, and there cannot be more emphasis on the need to incorporate the growing prevalence. Enhancing agility and making wealth management practices more efficient are few more reasons the industry should tap the technology to its advantage. 76% of investors agree that digital technology will not reduce the quality of advisor relationship.

It is therefore imperative that Incumbent wealth management firms build upon new technology for inculcating value-based collaborative relationships.

Remodelling Around Regulations

With risk regulations more stringent than ever, the wealth management industry needs to be more alert than ever. After all, the very foundation of this industry is based on trust. One intangible factor that can change the course of any business. Therefore, restructuring key areas of businesses to comply with regulatory norms will be a priority task for sure.

The New Normal in Wealth Management

Posted on by Valuefy

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the wealth management industry. Many of the trends that were already underway, such as the rise of digitalization and the shift to personalized advice, have been accelerated.

In the new normal, wealth managers will need to focus on the following key areas:

  • Digitalization: Wealth managers need to embrace digital technology to improve the client experience and operational efficiency. This includes offering online and mobile access to accounts, as well as using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to automate tasks and provide personalized insights.
  • Personalized advice: Wealth managers need to shift from a product-centric approach to a client-centric approach. This means providing clients with personalized advice that is tailored to their individual needs and goals.
  • Risk management: Wealth managers need to help clients manage their risks in a volatile and uncertain environment. This includes developing risk management strategies that are aligned with each client’s individual risk tolerance.

In addition to these key areas, wealth managers also need to be aware of the following trends:

  • The rise of the mass affluent: The mass affluent segment is growing rapidly, and wealth managers need to adapt their offerings to meet the needs of these clients.
  • The increasing diversity of clients: Wealth managers need to be prepared to serve a more diverse range of clients, including millennials, women, and immigrants.
  • The growing importance of ESG: Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing is becoming increasingly important to clients. Wealth managers need to be able to offer ESG investment solutions and help clients understand the impact of their investments.

How Valuefy can help wealth managers adapt to the new normal

Valuefy is a wealthtech platform that can help wealth managers adapt to the new normal in a number of ways. Valuefy’s platform can help wealth managers to:

  • Digitalize their operations: Valuefy offers a variety of digital tools and solutions that can help wealth managers to automate tasks, improve the client experience, and gain insights from their data.
  • Provide personalized advice: Valuefy’s platform can help wealth managers to develop personalized financial plans and investment portfolios for their clients. Valuefy also offers insights and recommendations that can help wealth managers to provide better advice to their clients.
  • Manage risk: Valuefy’s platform can help wealth managers to develop and implement risk management strategies that are aligned with each client’s individual risk tolerance.

Valuefy’s customers include wealth managers, asset managers, and private banks. To learn more about how Valuefy can help you adapt to the new normal in wealth management.

Hybrid Advisory Model: The Future of Wealth Management lies in Man-Machine Collaboration

Posted on by Valuefy

The thought of Robots and Artificial intelligence eventually replacing us and taking our jobs is a frightful one for all of us. However, beyond this fearmongering, there’s the simple truth that Artificial Intelligence is definitely much quicker than human beings at some tasks such as complex computations while humans are better at intuition.

The Wealth Management industry is currently undergoing a sea change as it moves from traditional methods to adopt the final frontier of technology adoption including AI, Big Data, Analytics, and Robo-advisory. However, the human element of customer service and ‘gut instinct’ can never be replaced and Wealth Management firms are seeing the rise of a new model, namely the ‘Hybrid advisory’ model.

What is the Hybrid Advisory Model?

Hybrid Advisory takes what’s best about both the worlds (human and robot) and puts them together in one basket. Machines being inherently quicker than human beings at computational tasks, wealth management firms are using wealth management platforms and robo-advisors to comb through terabytes of data and convert it into actionable intelligence and insights. This tempers the tendency of advisors to make purely instinct based investment decisions and helps them leverage the power of data to derisk their decision process.

The increased efficiency of the model helps a single wealth manager optimize his daily activities and automate operational tasks by around 60%. This helps make Wealth Management more accessible, flexible and cost-effective and reduces the human effort associated with each customer improving the scalability of your wealth management practice.

What are the different kinds of Hybrid models being adopted?

There are three kinds of Hybrid advisory models that banks and wealth management practices are adopting based on client demographics, portfolio types and specific requirements and demands of the client base.

Digital advisory model:

The Digital advisory model offers the customer simplified financial services to customers as a DIY digital service. This makes investing more economical for mid-size or smaller investors as the commissions, as well as the minimum asset requirement for investing, are quite low.

In this model, the human advisor is involved only in the initial phase of guiding and setting up the portfolio, and the investment goals after which the digital platform or robo-advisor takes control. Digital advisory is usually based on passive investment instruments such as ETFs or index funds. The major benefit of a digital advisory model is that the customers have the flexibility to move towards the ‘High touch’ model with more human advisor involvement as their assets grow and management needs become more complex.

Scalable advisory model:

The scalable advisory model enables the robo-advisor and the human advisor to serve “mass affluent” clients economically and with efficiency. The scalable advisory model generally employes the robo-advisor purely for insights and to drive transparency while the final investing decisions are actively made by the human advisors.

In the scalable advisory model, the human advisor creates the financial plan, configures the roboadvisory, helps in investment decisions and manages complex financial instruments. This gives the client a balance between digital services as well as access to a human advisor for major investing decisions. The scalable advisor model is generally preferred by tech-savvy investors who value the skillset of human advisors as well the transparency and monitoring capabilities afforded by robo-advisors and wealth management platforms.

High-touch advisory model:

The ‘High touch’ model is made specifically for HNI clients with complex financial needs and larger assets under management with a tailored experience. In this model, the financial advisors usually take complete control of the Wealth Management platform and the clients get access to a client app where they can monitor their portfolio at all times.

Advisors use the platform to optimize and automate operations so that they can invest more time in exceptional client servicing and client relationship meetings. In this model, the data and analytics insights provided by Robo-advisors are used to power insightful conversations with HNI clients who are starved for time as well as to prepare detailed portfolio reports. Human wealth managers in the ‘High touch’ model offer full-scale advisory services such as succession planning, real estate planning, retirement planning, advice on annuities, alternative investments and more.

The Indian Wealth Management Landscape: Moving towards ‘High touch’ experiences

Hybrid advisory models offer both investors and wealth management companies several benefits such as the lowered costs of advice, high scalability in service models, data-driven financial advise as well as the ability to monitor portfolios 24X7.

In the face of Indian HNIs picking up on global cues and demanding world-class technology from their wealth management firms, Indian banks are turning to Fintech partners for a solution. Valuefy, India’s pioneer investment technology company is leading the digitization charge for market leaders such as Kotak AMC, Reuters, WGC and Aditya Birla Group and helping them deliver the coveted high touch experience to their HNI clients.

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