Press article

A smart alternative to classic portfolio management systems

Published: 12.03.2024 | By investify

A stricter regulatory environment, growing administrative tasks and digitalisation requirements, along with an ever increasing shortage of skilled professionals are a burden for banks, asset managers and insurances. With its leading wealth management platform, the technology and regulatory services provider investify TECH offers a smart alternative to fragmented and labour-consuming value chains in wealth management and, as a result, to the use of classic portfolio management systems (PMS).

“We are firmly convinced that, in the modern world, each and every one of us needs to focus on their core competences in order to remain competitive”, says Dr. Harald Brock, Managing Director at investify TECH. “Banks, asset managers and insurance companies rightly see these core competence in asset management, in advisory services and in sales. For this reason, we provide digitalised solutions to support them with their administrative tasks and regulatory requirements, and enable our cooperation partners to efficiently meet the demands of their customers.

This modern type of service provision can only be successful if one reduces to a minimum the number of services providers, programs and (back office) employees that work around a portfolio management system on a daily basis and that are involved – sometimes even manually – in the value chain. In a regulated and digital world, inconsistencies within the system and interfaces are efficiency killers. Furthermore, for the end customers these structures adversely affect modern user experiences which, in times of demographic change and increasing digitalisation, are becoming more and more important.”

More about our Wealth Management Platform

“Portfolio managers have never worked so comfortably”

Andreas Falger, Head of Private Banking at Internationales Bankhaus Bodensee (IBB), part of the Würth Group, and avid user of the investify TECH platform, comments: “Our portfolio managers claim they have never worked so comfortably, because they are able to focus on their core competences, namely capital market analysis. They decide: this is what the portfolios should look like – and the execution in the individuals depots then takes places digitally via investify TECH. This not only speeds up but also simplifies the process. We are no longer involved in what goes on in the background – including the connection to the custodian bank(s), order calculation, pre-trade check, block order creation, trade, order control, booking, reconciliation – because investify TECH takes over these processes for us. Including the risks associated with it.

Doing all of this manually would no longer be efficient for us today. In addition, we would have to hire qualified employees for this and ensure that holidays and absences due to illness are covered. We made a conscious decision not to include this within the value chain of wealth management in times of skills shortages. With investify TECH we have now found a competent partner.

More about our modular solutions

Integrated PMS improves efficiency

“We have integrated a very powerful portfolio management system into our wealth management platform. But the performance is merely a hygiene factor. Our approach decreases the complexity, reduces the number of interfaces and enables a cost-effective operation”, Dr. Harald Brock explains. It can be used, for example, to monitor investment policies, portfolio structures and loss thresholds, execute order and payment processes and control these centrally via the platform. If, for instance, discrepancies are identified in the order controls and the daily reconciliation, the investify TECH employees take care of troubleshooting the problem. This is no longer up to the bank or asset manager. The PMS is thus reduced to being only an integrated piece in an orchestrated and modern value chain which no longer requires as many resources or as much control.

One-stop shop – from onboarding to reporting

investify TECH also takes care of the entire reporting process (including cost reporting, quarterly reporting, sustainability reporting), the connection to various custodian banks, digital or hybrid onboarding of end customers, portals for end customers, advisors and portfolio managers (including an own application) as well as powerful billing management. This also does away with the need to run multiple systems in parallel. For example, if the regulatory environment changes, investify TECH integrates the changed legal requirements into the entire process chain. This means that the bank or asset manager no longer has make reconciliations with multiple value-adding partners which, in turn, reduces the (cost) expenditure considerably.

And the end customer gets a completely new user experience. Since all services are provided from a single source, or “end-to-end” in business terms, there is also consistency in terms of content and appearance – all in the financial service provider’s design, of course. The user friendliness (UX) as well as the customer and advisor front ends, including the apps, are cutting-edge. All calculations, including statistics relating to performance, risk ratios and sustainability parameters for end customers, are carried out via the platform, irrespective of the custodian bank. investify TECH’s cooperation partners no longer require a separate, sometimes costly portfolio management system or the front-end systems of custodian banks.

No fear of data migration

This also concerns the topic of data migration. “We have a wealth of experience with a wide variety of companies, and have never run into any difficulties with data migration – be it with independent asset managers like Maeistas, large asset managers like DJE, cooperative institutions like klarwert (a subsidiary of Volksbank Bielefeld Gütersloh) or traditional private banks like M.M. Warburg”, explains Dr. Harald Brock, Managing Director at investify TECH. “During the migration, we work in accordance with the asset manager’s mode of operation and requirements, thus saving our cooperation partner’s resources as much as possible – all in line with our smooth TECH approach. This allows us to perform data migrations of existing systems in just a few days. Not many players on the market are able to do this.”

The article was first published in Private Banking Magazin on 12.03.24.