How to prepare for handling more customers with increased profitability
The investment industry is a sector experiencing a substantial increase in mandatory controls and regulations. Unfortunately, the investment industry is also an environment that over time has been overwhelmed with shadow IT. Typically, a setup consists of several various systems such as trading systems, systems for risk, accounting, and portfolio management, as well as a notable amount of complicated Excel and VBA code. Essentially, this creates a mashup of numerous systems not originally designed to ‘talk’ to each other reliably and securely.
This type of setup poses major problems, and the challenges increase exponentially with the expansion of customers. The more customers you have, the harder it will be to keep track of valuable data, ensure the quality of that data, and maintain a clear and secure outlook of everything from investment strategy to exposure and risk.
At the same time, asset managers face growing challenges in data management and reporting because both investors and regulators have become significantly more demanding in terms of both the quantity and quality of the information received and reported.
When many asset managers start, they often have just a few customers. And as long as the customer database is relatively small, you can easily get far with performing somersaults in Excel. However, when you reach a certain number of customers, everything quickly adds up, and it’s hard to keep track. Therefore, you need a solution where you can scale up your business without spending more of your valuable time: a solution where the most time-consuming tasks are streamlined and automated.
Read on and see what benefits there are with a flexible and efficient investment management solution, such as Vitec Aloc’s PORTMAN solution, and how you can employ it to achieve the maximum business benefits.
#1 Achieve more scalability and reporting
As an asset manager, it is important to maintain an overview of your customers’ investments, however, the challenges of managing and controlling investments, exposures and risks have never been greater.
In particular, administration and compliance tasks are often draining assignments that take precious resources away from business development activities. For example, accounting and reporting can take an exorbitant amount of time without a proper setup. It’s not uncommon for the process of generating annual financial figures to take several weeks, especially if you work with shadow IT or other types of systems that are not integrated or automatically updated.
The challenges increase exponentially as the customer base increases, and the quarterly customer reports can add up to an immense amount of employee hours a year. Often, more than 50 full employee workdays can be saved annually with the optimization of customer reporting alone.
Fortunately, scalability becomes much easier with an effective investment management solution like PORTMAN. An example being that reporting can often be reduced to 1-2 days per distribution. This means that you’ll have the ability to take in more customers without it demanding more of your time; that precious payroll can be spent on generating revenue and growth rather than working on unnecessarily heavy reporting tasks.
#2 Free up resources for activities that create added business value
A flexible investment management solution also represents your ability to free up resources as many processes are now automated. In this way, more time is freed up for core tasks, costs associated with administration tasks are reduced, and resources associated with heavy systems or manual processes are minimized.
Inefficient processes and workflows mean that more customers require many more hands, and the cost to hire in this industry is only going up.
In other words, you must have deeper pockets if you want to continue paying the extra salary necessary for scaling up your customer base while using inefficient workflows and outdated IT solutions. Additionally, there are copious managerial tasks that must be considered for when employees take holidays, become ill or change jobs where you have to find a new candidate for the position.
Freeing up time also means you can create extra value for your customers because you now have more time to dedicate to customer-facing activities rather than administrative tasks.
Are you curious how to provide your clients with additional value?
Look through our selection of guides, blogs and videos informing you of trends and insights in Asset Management. Here you can get inspired by, and apprised of, how you continue providing your clients with the best in-depth advice.
#3 Achieve operational execution security
A vital step in eliminating error reporting is ensuring the data quality is accurate and trustworthy. Fortunately, you can ensure this with an effective investment management solution. With the right investment management solution, you ensure that only the correct numbers are sent to the customer, inherently creating credibility with customers that they can trust their asset manager is in control of the numbers.
Error reporting can be an asset manager’s nightmare.
Namely because, if there is one thing customers always remember, it is errors in the reporting. And if you work in some form of shadow IT, the risk of these errors popping up is significant.
It also creates an efficient organization, because data not only comes in quickly and correctly but is also reconciled and risk calculated to create a solid foundation for ESG, tax, etc., showing proof that system security and data validation are in order.
In other words, you get greater operational execution security because you get a system that automatically validates the data for your effective use.
#4 Become less person dependent
The high demands of data quality, the availability of data and real-time overviews of exposures, risks and returns place great demands on the technological infrastructure of a company.
With an efficient and scalable platform, you can secure your setup for the future, so you can meet today’s high demands as well as stay better prepared for future regulations or alternative investment opportunities.
When manual processes are automated, scarce resources is available for analysis, insight and process optimisation freeing up more time; all this while the company becomes less dependent on staff as accurate data is sent to relevant functions automatically.
PORTMAN – a future-proof solution for risk management, accounting, government reporting and performance measurement
Is scaling knocking on your door?
Our PORTMAN solution is an all in one solution for professional and efficient Asset Management, which is used by several reputable organizations in the Nordic region.
PORTMAN is built using modules, which means that the platform is secured against any future requirements that arise as the business grows and scales up. If or when this happens, you can simply buy the module you need for the next step of your business expansion.
Our Asset Management solution is an integrated solution that covers front-to-back management through:
- strengthening and streamlining your work processes, so you have more time to service and advise your customers
- providing an intuitive and clear overview of the customer’s securities, returns, composition, transactions, and more
- enabling you to offer your customers easy access to the same overview, on various platforms
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Mikkel S. Lyngbye
- Chief Sales Officer
- Tel.: +45 2999 7141
- Email: mikkel.lyngbye@vitecsoftware.com