Buyer’s Guide: Innovative Wealth Management Systems

In 2012, the top-20 largest asset management firms globally controlled 28% of the total funds under management worldwide, typically by growing passive fund management, e-commerce-centric business models. This reality left many small-to-medium-sized active fund management firms facing new challenges to their ability to compete with larger rivals by dynamically picking stocks or balancing portfolio weightings.

As a result of these competition pressures, third-party technology vendor software solutions are emerging that can provide asset and wealth management firms with a competitive edge in their client reporting practices. In 2014, client reporting – through the usage of enhanced analytics for market data and risk assessment analysis – has become a service that many clients now judge as a differentiator between portfolio or fund management firms. This report reviews the client reporting functionality of six technology vendor software solutions that GreySpark Partners identifies as innovative.

The software solutions reviewed in this report are deemed innovative because they provide asset management firms with a forward-thinking set of data management and data reporting applications. As such, the report explores some general principles of optimal IT architecture design that asset and wealth management firms should seek to implement if they wish to fully realise the benefits that the reviewed software solutions can provide for them and for their clients as platforms for enhanced reporting and data analysis functionality.