Upgrading wealth reporting technology

Wealth reporting imperatives: Completeness, speed, and design

How does your reporting solution measure up? Over half of advisors surveyed in independent research said that reporting is a capability that they have but feel could be improved or they don’t have but would like.

Strategic initiatives to upgrade or switch wealth reporting technology platforms often have lengthy due diligence checklists.

Common must-haves are the need for more comprehensive data that shows the full picture of a client’s financial situation, a desire to improve speed (e.g., reducing application slowness), and have a more intuitive and modern interface.

In this issue, contributors Bill McGuire, Ryan Eisenman, and Joe Marsh discuss these modern reporting imperatives, namely completeness, speed, and design.?

Cynthia Stephens

“When it comes to reporting, advisors must practice what they preach and apply it to their marketing efforts,” states Bill McGuire, Managing Director of W.M.McGuire Marketing. “Peter Drucker is often quoted as saying, ‘You can't manage what you can't measure.’

“That is certainly true in marketing. Proper reporting in marketing is essential for tracking goals, making data-driven decisions, and driving continuous improvement. It enables advisors to measure the impact of their efforts and optimize strategies to achieve better outcomes. This focus should be applied whether marketing is managed internally or by leveraging external partners and resources.”

Wealth reporting “must-haves”

While reporting should be seamless, our contributors are keenly aware that reporting is no mundane entity.

McGuire shares that “from a marketing perspective, the biggest challenge for financial advisors is achieving simplicity. For most people, finance is complex and intimidating. That’s why they go to an advisor in the first place.

“Advisors should make sure reporting content is digestible, personalized, and visually appealing. Once a report is presented, the advisor should ask if the client completely understands everything in it. If they don’t, this becomes an opportunity to further educate, engage, and add value.”

While a goal is to make reporting content as personalized as possible, Joe Marsh, Senior Product Owner at Advisor360°, states that one of the biggest challenges in reporting is the ability to configure reports to meet client needs. “Advisors may be discussing long-term goals with one client and short-term income with the next client. Some clients want as many details as possible, and some clients just want basic information. Advisors need to have access to configurable reports that can deliver the exact data that clients want.”?

Configurability and flexible design aren’t the only requirements. Speed counts, too. According to Ryan Eisenman, Co-founder and CEO of Arch, the time it takes to prepare data and documents in order to compile reports can be challenging. “This challenge impacts the front office, back office, and client experience by increasing the cost to serve investors, billing, performance reporting, client pain point alleviation, and sometimes keeping advisors from having the bandwidth to take on new clients.

"Information is spread across many (sometimes hundreds) of different sites and has to be manually retrieved. Due to the manual nature of this problem, many advisors aren’t able to pull in all of a client's investments to advise on and support their whole financial picture. In this scenario, advisors make less and clients receive less.

“Data aggregation solutions have been architected to save advisors time, support their clients’ entire financial picture, serve more clients (with higher margins), and deliver a more seamless client experience," said Eisenman.

“Advisors should make sure reporting content is digestible, personalized, and visually appealing.”—Bill McGuire

Complete, accurate data is a prerequisite for great reporting

For Marsh, “Accurate data and accurate reporting are essential to the advisor-client relationship. If the advisor presents inaccurate or incomplete information, the client may question the advisor’s legitimacy.”

Emphasizing Marsh’s thoughts, Eisenman says, “Accurate data and reporting is everything for a client and advisor. Without definitive data, it is impossible for an advisor to communicate the value they’re providing to their client, and it becomes challenging for the advisor and client to make informed decisions.”

He further explains, “In the past, the difficulty in reporting on alternative investments kept advisors away from this asset class, which has historically delivered a higher return than the traditional 60/40 portfolio. As the popularity in alternative assets grows and the traditional 60/40 portfolio fades, accurate reporting of fund investments is essential to access this asset class, furthermore communicating the value that forward thinking advisors provide to their clients.”

“Reporting is the foundation for how an advisor communicates with a client,” echoes McGuire. “It reaffirms everything an advisor does for a client: determining appropriate goals, evaluating performance and progress, helping to make informed decisions, and building a sense of security and confidence in the advisor’s capabilities. When done right, reporting provides the opportunity to have more meaningful conversations and ultimately strengthens the advisor-client relationship.”

“Accurate data and accurate reporting are essential to the advisor-client relationship.”—Joe Marsh

Appearance and ease of use matters

“For most advisors, the majority of their interactions with their clients are digital. The digital interface advisors provide their clients is a far bigger part of the overall experience of the firm than the physical space where you meet. Investing in accurate reporting and a digital client experience is one of the highest ROI ways to deliver a better client experience and modernize the feeling of your firm,” according to Eisenman.

He elaborates, “Proper reporting of alternative assets provides advisors with enhanced analytics, allowing them to provide more confidence in their investment decisions. This occurs as the investment performance is more clearly presented to internal teams as well as their end clients.

“Quality data is the prerequisite for the analytics and insights required to understand investment performance. This information feeds into overall finances and the ability to plan for the future.”

“The digital interface advisors provide their clients is a far bigger part of the overall experience of the firm than the physical space where you meet.”—Ryan Eisenman

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Please leave a comment and let us know how you enjoyed this conversation around wealth reporting. To see what advisors are saying about their firms’ reporting capabilities, read our Connected Wealth Report here.

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About our contributors:

Bill McGuire, W.M.McGuire Marketing

Bill McGuire is managing director of W.M.McGuire Marketing, a full-service marketing firm supporting the wealth management industry. We help businesses grow with common sense and a keen eye toward your budgets, deadlines, and results.

Ryan Eisenman, Arch

Ryan Eisenman is the co-founder and CEO of Arch, a digital solution utilized by over 150 private investment firms to automate the administration and management of tens of thousands of private and alternative investments. Ryan is a Houston native, graduated from Vanderbilt University, and now lives in New York City where Arch is headquartered.

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Joe Marsh, Advisor360°

Joe Marsh is a Senior Product Owner for portfolio reporting with a focus on investment-related reporting.

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Learn more about reporting here: https://www.advisor360.com/blog/streamline-how-financial-advisors-run-reports