“The days of bringing printed books of reports to clients meetings are over!” exclaimed James Dunigan, CIO (Retired) of PNC Asset Management.  If you haven’t been living under a rock in the wealth management industry for the last few years, this shouldn’t be surprising to you.  Robo Advisors and digital platforms are transforming how clients interact with their wealth managers.  The problem is that mature wealth management firms are having difficulty adapting their business model to this new world and perhaps for good reason.

The Challenge

For startup wealth management practices, being able to deliver a digitally driven client experience in managing their wealth is not a challenge.  Starting fresh with new operational practices, software and technology is ideal.  The challenge is that mature wealth management firms with years if not decades of operational practices, technology decay and a focus on the short term has resulted in a delivery mechanism for wealth information that is reliant on printers and a face to face meeting.  In the next few decades, there will be a massive transfer of wealth to the next generation that will not consider looking at bounded reports as high value.  The time for Wealth Management industry needs to begin adapting, or it will go the way of Kodak and the dodo bird.

The Opportunity

Seeing these realities and the opportunity to help our clients be good stewards of their clients (and their client’s next generation) wealth, First Rate has embarked on our own digital revolution but it’s not quite what you might think.  Instead of helping our clients start over, we are offering them the ability to transition to the new era of digitally driven wealth management solutions without going nuclear.  First Rate is excited to help our clients retain most of their legacy systems but deliver the mountains of valuable insights, data, and information to their clients’ fingertips.

The Answer

First Rate released it’s Open APIs in 2016 because we believe the best way for Wealth Managers to move forward into this digital new world is to leverage the assets they have, digitally.  To enable this, First Rate has partnered with Wealth Access to provide a digital client portal that pulls all of the valuable legacy performance, holdings, risk and client information and deliver it via multiple digital channels to your investors.  By doing so, our joint clients can:

1. Manage the transfer of wealth to the next generation by showing their clients AND their clients next generation wealth digitally through their mobile and web applications.
2. Enable their clients to consolidate their assets held across over 20,000 financial institutions into a single view, identifying holistic wealth solutions and increasing assets under management.
3. Offer a turn-key way to take the best of what Robo advisors have to offer and deliver it through a hybrid digital client experience.  Allowing your clients to access information on all of their wealth via a mobile or web-based platform without changing their core architecture including trust accounting, performance reporting, and custodial systems already in place.

Interested in finding out more? Email [email protected] to get signed up for the next webinar. You can also contact me below via email [email protected] or via phone at 817.525.1859.

Marshall Smith( EVP, Services )

Marshall Smith CIPM, EVP of Services, has been with First Rate since 2006. You can follow Marshall on Twitter @MarshallCSmith, or connect via LinkedIn.