e-Portfolio
Client investment portfolio data consolidation & reporting
Getting back to the business of giving advice
Every financial planning practice has experienced the problems and frustrations associated with providing clients with timely, accurate and comprehensive reporting on investment portfolios. Whether it's phoning fund managers for the latest balance or downloading files from a dozen different websites, this can be a tedious, resource-hungry and error-prone activity. At every manual step in the process adds another layer of cost and risk to your business. Going it alone and doing it yourself is a recipe for disaster and does not scale with the growth of your business.
Does the client who drops in unannounced for a quick update on their investments send your office into a meltdown. Even if you use one of the latest financial planning systems, these may not always be up-to-date, and may not be capable of accurately reporting on some investment types. And most still require manual intervention at some stage of the updating process.
Not having easy access to a client's transaction history brings its own set of problems. Aside from the obvious capital gains and performance calculation issues, a complete record of a client's transactions can help your business identify trends, errors and even fraud before someone else does. Having all the data at your fingertips when your client starts asking the hard questions can make the difference between a long and profitable relationship and an unhappy client (or worse). Now that many clients have the capability to view their investment details online, merely providing account balances is no longer sufficient to provide the comprehensive service that clients now expect from professional financial planners.
Practices with automated client management systems are 217% more profitable than manually updated systems.
— Business Health "Future Ready III", April 2007
Clients are the core asset of every advice business, but unlocking the value of this asset relies on the quality and currency of information held on those clients.
Compliance, administration and technology demands are threatening to overwhelm the average advice business. Just ask yourself these questions...
- Do your staff spend more time talking to product providers than they do talking to clients?
- Is the hassle and cost associated with doing reviews "not worth it" for most of your clients?
- Do you find it difficult to get accurate and complete picture of your advice practice?
Many practices do business with dozens of different product providers, despite attempts to consolidate business under a handful of platforms. Managing the masses of information from these sources is cumbersome, error-prone and expensive. As a result, most practices don't update client files daily; potentially suffering an even higher reputation cost of not being fully up-to-date and accurate in the eyes of their clients.
Practices that automate the client portfolio update process quickly realise that having a comprehensive source of client information is a key asset for maximising the value of their business. Client segmentation, profitability analysis, business valuation and measurement of other key business metrics all become possible with a comprehensive database of client information.
Imagine being able to outsource the hassle of ensuring that your client information is up to date, allowing you and your administration staff to get back to the business of giving advice. e-Portfolio makes it possible.
