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There’s no shortage of media analysis of trends affecting asset management firms and face-to-face conversation is the best way to really understand how firms are managing the challenges and opportunities they have in common.
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The role of the personal wealth advisor is evolving. Today, many clients are less interested in investment research and recommendations, and more in need of a financial “life coach” to help manage their complete wealth picture.
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Allianz Life and the Black Diamond Wealth Platform have partnered to make it easier for advisors to incorporate annuities into their retirement strategies.
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While Padilla Wealth Management is a fairly new financial advisory firm, its founder, Dion R. Padilla, is exceptionally experienced.
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Reconciliation challenges are a daily fact of life for investment firms. For buy-side firms, issues typically arise when adding new asset classes, fund structures or systems that necessitate new workflows or integrations.
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Reconciliation challenges are a daily fact of life for investment firms. For buy-side firms, issues typically arise when adding new asset classes, fund structures or systems that necessitate new workflows or integrations.
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The alternative investment arena has experienced some tumultuous times recently, but continues to attract investors seeking asset class diversification and market outperformance.
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Just as quickly as technology is changing, so too are investor expectations. Investment advisors would do well to understand the strong correlation between the two.
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If you are stuck on legacy IT, this is likely to be a hot topic for your organization. If not it probably should be. Developing premium client offerings on top of old technology is difficult, if not impossible.
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SS&C Advent has claimed the title Best Portfolio Management System in the 2019 Fund Intelligence Operations & Services Awards.
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There are perceptions that large tech firms can function as factories, cranking out products on a slow-moving assembly line and pushing them out into the market.
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Any wealth manager who looked at the Black Diamond Wealth Platform in the past should take a look today, says Steve Leivent, SVP of Advisory for SS&C Advent. “We’re a completely different system than we were just a few years ago.”
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This year at GAIM Ops West, SS&C Advent will be joining 320+ professionals from across the fund and investor spectrum, representing the increasingly diverse nature of the alternatives industry.
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Passionate, influential and innovative – those are just three words used to describe SS&C Advent leaders Cathy Messina and John Marinatos who were recently recognized by the Jacksonville Business Journal for their impactful leadership.
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1,300+ people from across the industry to preview new products and weigh-in on product roadmaps, advance their proficiency in hands-on learning labs, glean insights into industry trends, and connect with their peers.
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SS&C Advent took home two best-in-class honors from Private Equity Wire and Hedgeweek in September for its Geneva Portfolio Management Platform.
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One of the key objectives of the Black Diamond® Wealth Platform is to provide investment advisors with a centralized business hub so they can easily access all the solutions they need to build and manage their clients’ portfolios.
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The phrase “alternative assets” has become something of a misnomer. Asset classes such as private equity, private debt, real estate and infrastructure have become so popular among investors they are now almost mainstream.
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SS&C Deliver 2019, recently held in Orlando, Florida provided attendees with a comprehensive view into what is driving impact and change in the wealth management industry.
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The changes in the industry are varied and growing, and many commentators have observed that this is as much a cultural shift, than a technology shift. I have covered his subject in previous blogs and I believe that cultural change is critical, but just as technology alone cannot bring about change, neither can culture.
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Fure Financial is an independent financial planning firm dedicated to helping clients understand the complexities of retirement planning, investing, managing assets and debt, risk management, and estate planning.
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The Pittsburgh Foundation works to improve the quality of life in the Pittsburgh region by evaluating and addressing community issues, promoting responsible philanthropy and connecting donors to the critical needs of the community.
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Mirador is a leading provider of bespoke portfolio performance reporting solutions for high net-worth families and family offices, wealth management firms, and endowments and foundations.
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Life is a series of choices. We’re taught we can’t have it all, that we must pick one thing or another. And with every choice comes an inevitable opportunity cost. Wealth managers face the same predicament when determining and implementing their business strategy. Or think they do.
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The CCO’s plate is pretty full these days, between ever-expanding disclosure and reporting requirements, tighter investor protection laws, and the challenges of compliance in multiple global jurisdictions.
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Ten years after the launch of Bitcoin, there are still many questions and few simple answers about digital assets and the underlying technology that makes them possible: Blockchain.
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At SS&C Deliver, we’ll hear from someone whose career bridges both fields––study of the brain and study of the markets.
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Few things are worse than getting your name in the papers for the wrong reasons, and a financial or regulatory error due to a spreadsheet miscalculation can quickly damage reputations.
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LifeYield and the Black Diamond Wealth Platform have partnered to help advisors show clients how to improve after-tax results while accumulating assets when drawing income.
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The Gen X and Millennial children of baby-boomer clients stand to inherit an estimated $68 trillion in assets over the next 25 years.
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Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a fast emerging and powerful form of business process automation technology.
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A quick Google search of “high profile spreadsheet errors” will turn up enough examples to scare any C-suite executive still relying on them, and in recent years some of these figures have been large (in the billions, not thousands).
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As we approach the sunset of our legacy BlueSky platform, we can reflect on a chapter that led to significant growth – but more importantly – a chapter that provided deep insights on what advisors need to take their businesses to the next level.
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Complex spreadsheets are the bane of many businesses around the world. In fact, some firms have banned the use for certain functions.
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We’re honored that SS&C Advent has received the award for “Best Accounting System Provider” at Waters Rankings 2019 as voted by the Waters readers.
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Artificial intelligence. Predictive analytics. Big data. Investment industry experts are telling firms they need to get on board with these technologies or risk being left behind.
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Have you ever purchased software to be used for a specific purposes, but once you are able to “play around” with the system, the real value and capabilities become clear?
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If you subscribe to InvestmentNews, you probably know that the online magazine recently published its 2019 list of Best Places to Work for Financial Advisors. What you may not know is that nearly 30% of the top 75 firms are users of SS&C Advent technology.
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You’d be forgiven if you are feeling a bit whipsawed by the vastly divergent opinions on digital assets and cryptocurrencies.
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Comparing Q1-2019 with Q4-2018, there was a 23% increase in the number of hedge fund launches.
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Surprise: the fastest growing RIA firms are less focused on profit margins and client referrals, and more focused on technology training and integration.
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The consensus is clear: investment in alternatives instruments are growing.
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This year at SS&C Deliver, we have a terrific lineup of both thought leadership and product focused sessions designed to meet the needs of financial advisors.
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In today’s digital world, there is so much opportunity to engage and impress clients without having to incorporate another manual process.
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This September, at SS&C Deliver we’re challenging attendees from hedge funds, wealth managers, and institutional asset managers to think beyond the standard narrative as we deliver the future with thought-provoking sessions.
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If you needed reminding of the pitfalls of housing illiquid assets in an open-ended fund, then the recent woes of star manager Neil Woodford offer a stark warning.
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Once again, Advent Outsourcing Services (AOS) outperformed a highly competitive field to earn “Best Outsourcing Provider” honors in the 2019 FTF News Technology Innovation Awards.
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The financial services industry has seen significant change over the last decade. Technology is at the forefront of a new user experience and radically changing the relationship between consumers and providers, allowing firms to scale their business. But what does scale really means?
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Investing in credit, bank debt, and structured financing products can provide a steady return on investment for hedge funds, but for many investors, accounting for these complex instruments proves to be the real challenge.
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Digital experiences have transformed nearly every aspect of our personal and professional lives.
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Many hedge funds and other asset managers are electing treasury platforms for the financial and organizational benefits of having one central point of control.
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Switching from insourcing to outsourcing your investment operations functions brings a whole different set of staffing requirements. What does that mean for your team?
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Don’t miss this opportunity to experience the many ways technology, thought leaders and advanced solutions will be Delivering the Future at the Orlando Gaylord Palms, September 17 - 19, 2019.
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As one of the big four custodians, Pershing Advisor Solutions always attracts a big crowd to their annual Pershing INSITE conference and this year gathered over 2,000 attendees to Phoenix, AZ for three days of industry content, technology demonstrations, and networking.
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Nearly 300 clients gathered to discuss various topics with their peers, ranging from industry trends to best practices across the SS&C Advent product suite in a series of successful events through the first half of the year in New York, Boston, Chicago, Vancouver and Seattle.
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As the saying goes in the RIA wealth management business, all roads lead through the custodians. After all, that is where client accounts are housed, transactions take place, and reports are generated.
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Clients call SS&C Advent’s Axys® the “bulletproof” portfolio accounting system for good reason. Stable and fast, it is the backbone of over 1,000 firms’ operations.
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Investment managers could be “the next group to feel disruption,” according to hedge fund investor Doug Kass.
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Change is a constant in the wealth management industry, yet the pace seems to be accelerating these days, with a number of macro trends picking up steam and converging at once.
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“Culture eats talent for breakfast”. It has showed up in my LinkedIn feed several times lately. It’s written by people that are proud of their strong company culture.
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With spring, comes the first of two releases planned for 2019 across many of SS&C Advent’s solutions.
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The popularity of model portfolios among advisors is growing - and for good reason. When you combine rising global regulations, the expansion in availability, and the need for efficiency due to increasing client expectations – utilizing this type of outsourced investment management makes for an attractive strategy.
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Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel, a Cincinnati-based RIA, was founded in 1990 and has been a client of SS&C Advent from day one—“Back before people even used email,” notes Glenn Warden, the firm’s chief information officer.
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At SS&C Advent, we believe partnership and collaboration are crucial to success. Which is why we were delighted to see so many clients, partners, consultants and friends at our latest fund administration strategy workshop on May 15 at the Westbury Hotel in Dublin.
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Detalus Advisors is a fast-growing wealth management firm based in St. Louis, MO. The firm is not only grounded in offering advice, but builds strong relationships on a foundation of trust and mutual respect.
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Data integrity is paramount. If there is a glitch in operations that slows down a process or an error in a statement that goes to a client, chances are that faulty data is the culprit.
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As Black Diamond clients are well aware, the total Black Diamond offering is more than a cloud-based technology solution. There’s a huge service component as well.
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Berman McAleer is an award-winning independent financial advisory and wealth management firm based in Baltimore, Maryland, with an office in Manhattan. Berman McAleer focuses on working with high-net-worth individuals and their families.
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Firms across the alternative investment perspective are eager for insights and best practices in how to efficiently divest certain areas of their operations.
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There is a clear difference between a “technology provider” and a “technology partner.”
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I watched the award-winning movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” the other day. I must admit that I had forgotten how many hits Queen actually produced. How they dared to be different and take bold moves.
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It wasn’t that long ago that notebooks stuffed with dry numbers and tab dividers were the norm for quarterly client reporting. Now, investors know they don’t have to wait a full quarter to find out how their portfolios are doing.
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How an asset or wealth manager handles the transition from in-sourcing to outsourcing can make or break their business.
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It wasn’t that long ago that notebooks stuffed with dry numbers and tab dividers were the norm for quarterly client reporting. Now, investors know they don’t have to wait a full quarter to find out how their portfolios are doing.
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Wealth management is a relationship business. Sure, it requires a lot of financial acumen, but firms that succeed over the long term do the best job of attracting, retaining and growing clients. They succeed by delivering a highly personalized client experience that engenders confidence and loyalty that can last a lifetime – or, if they’re really successful, across generations.
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Every year, we like to bring together top clients for an executive discussion where we share the latest Black Diamond developments and gain valuable feedback from some of our power users.
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Client input is critical to the ongoing development of the Black Diamond® Wealth Platform, SS&C Advent’s portfolio management solution built specifically for investment advisors.
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The SEC’s annual list of exam priorities undergoes adjustments from year to year, but one topic has turned evergreen and risen to the top of the list for buy-side firms: cybersecurity.
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SS&C Advent has successfully implemented more than 400 firms previously using PortfolioCenter. Part of our success comes from our seamless process for transitioning users.
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James Liotta spent seven years working for big brokerage houses and then five years in his family’s ingredients business before deciding to strike out on his own. His first solo effort was a hedge fund, but a broader opportunity beckoned.
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We’re elated to win HedgeWeek’s Best Managed Account Platform Technology Provider for the second consecutive year!
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Imagine that a crucial trade pricing error wasn’t identified, or a corporate action event was accidentally duplicated leading to a mis-valuation, or that there has been significant turnover in the operations team due to increasingly high-risk workloads and job dissatisfaction. Data errors and human capital issues, such as these, can expose a firm to financial penalties, affect its reputation in the market and severely influence its ability to service clients.
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Private investors expect their advisors to look at their financial lives from a holistic perspective. They want financial planning and investment advice that is grounded in an understanding of their life goals, their family situations, their appetite for risk, and their comfort with different types of investments.
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As a long standing SS&C Advent client, Avalon Advisors put its trust in Advent Outsourcing Services (AOS) and it immediately paid dividends.
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After stewing on it for several years, Tim Hockey, CEO of TD Ameritrade, boldly announced that the firm would not compete directly with RIAs for high net worth clients at the recently held TDA LINC conference in San Diego, CA.
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Tamale RMS® is the research management solution purpose-built by and for investment professionals. It provides a centralized repository for organizing all research data, both internal and external, in one place.
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Every year the advisor technology community gathers together to showcase the latest developments, enhancements and innovations designed to help advisors do a better job with clients at the Technology Tools for Today (T3) conference.
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In a recent blog, we examined the rapid growth of private credit funds and noted that private equity investors are at the forefront of this trend towards alternative financing. Mark Vandevelde, in his Financial Times piece, takes it even further by suggesting that the biggest PE firms are “supplanting” traditional bank lending.
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The explosion of mobile device usage has reshaped our perceptions of the value of being connected. We now take for granted our ability to access just about any information we want, whether personal or public.
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While 2018 saw a slight downturn in wealth management merger and acquisition activity, the market was still quite robust. In its annual M&A summary, Fidelity reported 95 transactions across RIA and independent broker-dealer firms, with more than double the amount of AUM changing hands compared to 2017.
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LourdMurray, a firm that operates as life-long advisors, bringing its clients comprehensive solutions ranging from investments and insurance to education, retirement, and wealth planning, prides itself on delivering refined expertise to accomplished clients that have complex financial and professional lives.
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Recently, we explored the explosive growth of private credit and the opportunity it presents for investors. A smaller, but growing, subset of the private credit market is distressed debt and credit investing. Distressed debt includes debt instruments trading at a steep discount to par value due to an extremely negative outlook, or even outright default, on the part of the borrower.
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The use of model marketplaces for portfolio management has exploded in recent years. Global investment management corporation, BlackRock, estimates that there is around $2.7 trillion invested across all types of investment models. That $2.7 includes home-office model platforms, built and maintained by a dedicated in-house team, third-party models from Asset Managers and Strategists, and Advisor-customized model portfolios.
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Recently, a client told me something that I have been hearing quite a lot lately: “Nobody is hiring us, because we are wicked awesome at entering trades.” The quote is rather funny (especially if you happen to be from Boston), but within that comment is something that we have witnessed more lately from numerous clients.
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If there was one technology theme that sums up 2018, it was most certainly the client experience. 2018 was the year the concept of “CX,” a new acronym for all aspects of how a client interacts with advisors, was broadly injected into the wealth management industry’s technology strategies. And for good reason – Pershing reports that firms who are focusing on CX are growing 5 times faster than those that aren’t.
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On the Black Diamond team, we don’t often have the luxury of looking at things in retrospect. We are so busy focusing on the future, working on the next new set of applications, that we rarely raise our heads to reflect on past accomplishments.
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Lincluden Investment Management previously utilized a trade-order-management system with built-in modeling functionality that served the firm well for many years. However, as the number of accounts grew, the Canadian firm ran up against the system’s limitations, especially in the process of modeling to trade creation.
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For today’s financial advisors, meeting the rising expectations of digitally savvy investors is a top priority. Clients want to interact with streamlined, user-friendly tools they can access 24/7.
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Ernst & Young’s 2017 Global Hedge Fund and Investor Survey showed that 78 percent of hedge funds currently use or expect to use alternative, or non-traditional data, in their investment process. That number is up from 52 percent the year before.
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J.P. King Advisors, founded back in 1981 by Jim King, is one of the original, pioneering, fee-based independent firms. The illustrious history of the firm, now in its fourth decade of serving clients in the San Francisco Bay Area, is a fascinating example of how a focus on business and practice management can keep a firm alive, well and growing into the next generation of management.
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It’s not every night a firm earns industry accolades both for a product and for the people behind it. Yet, at the American Financial Technology Awards on December 3, the spotlight shone brightly on SS&C Advent.
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The primary goal of the Black Diamond® Wealth Platform is to help advisors grow their client relationships by delivering an outstanding client experience. The ability to allow 24/7, interactive information access has nearly become standard for an advisory business.
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Private credit is now a mainstream source of financing, fueling growth for small, medium, and large enterprises worldwide across a wide range of sectors. Per Preqin, the number of private debt funds reached a historic high of 389 at the end of Q2 2018.
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As we set out to create a best-in-class outsourcing offering, we discovered that clients had decidedly mixed feelings about the outsourcing concept in general. Firms understood the advantages of cost control and staff augmentation, but they were wary of giving up too much control and flexibility, as well as concerned about cybersecurity.
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LifeYield and Black Diamond have partnered to help advisors help investors improve after-tax results. In this guest post, we invited LifeYield executive Steve Zuschin to share information regarding asset allocation vs. tax-smart asset location.
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How can hedge fund managers profitably answer the growing demand for liquidity, transparency, and increased control on the part of investors? That question sparked a lively panel discussion moderated by SS&C Advent’s Katherine Pearce, vice president of Product Management and Solutions Consulting, at GAIM Ops West.
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Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a growth strategy is becoming increasingly popular. In fact, a recent wealthmanagement.com survey reported that within the next two years, nearly one in four advisors anticipates being a part of either a merger or acquisition.
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Research today is disseminated by so many sources that it can be challenging to zero in on what’s most important, which is why many firms turn to research management technology to help. SS&C Advent’s Tamale RMS® addresses these challenges with purpose-built software to help investment firms organize their research and apply it most effectively in their decision-making processes.
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More than 25% of Americans say they’re “almost constantly” online and roughly three-quarters go online at least daily. Not only are more people comfortable using technology, but they have come to expect the convenience it affords them in every aspect of their lives.
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In 2018, Black Diamond Wealth Platform added 71 new firms that use Schwab Advisor Services. Today, Black Diamond has 600 clients that custody with Schwab. In total, more than 1,300 firms with $900 billion in AUA rely on Black Diamond as the cornerstone of their technology stack.
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A full month past our annual client conference is a good time to reflect on the influence this event has had across our firm, clients, consultants, partners and other industry influencers and, equally important, how we plan to sustain the momentum going forward.
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At our recent SS&C Deliver conference, future trends were front and center. The technologists and business analysts from Black Diamond who work with over 1,300 top industry firms have been reading the tea leaves to provide a vision for what the advisory practice of tomorrow needs to look like.
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We are honored to be recognized in the second annual Fund Intelligence Mutual Fund Services and Technology Awards where SS&C Advent took top honors in two categories: Best Portfolio Management System and Best Technology Provider Overall.
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New York-based asset manager, Dalton, Greiner, Hartman, Maher & Co., LLC (DGHM), is an established client of SS&C Advent, beginning with its 2004 implementation of Axys. Early on, DGHM saw an opportunity to replace five separate software programs they were currently using with the recently launched Advent Portfolio Exchange (APX).
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Does your firm or any of its associates have a LinkedIn or Facebook page? Have you ever received a “like” or an endorsement from anyone in your network? If so, you could be running afoul of the SEC Advertising Rule, according to the Investment Adviser Association’s Assistant General Counsel, Sanjay Lamba.
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Hedgeweek readers did not hedge on this one. They selected SS&C Advent as the Best Managed Account Platform Technology Firm in the annual Hedgeweek USA 2018 Awards, presented at a ceremony in New York on September 20.
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Held in early September at the fabulous Wynn resort in Las Vegas, SS&C Deliver this year was definitely future-forward, a theme captured in breakout sessions, keynote addresses and more. This was especially true in the advisor-focused sessions.
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Are you looking to get a competitive boost from your business operations so you can benefit from: More responsive client servicing capabilities and happier customers, reduced risk, faster and easier regulatory compliance, lower costs, and greater scalability to grow your business?
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Back from our annual conference, SS&C Deliver 2018, we’re excited and energized after seeing our clients, engaging in sessions and panels and enjoying Las Vegas. During the action-packed three day event, we shared several announcements and captured videos of attendees and speakers talking about their experiences at this year’s big event.
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Your high-net-worth clients have agreed to an investment strategy and asset allocation based on their goals and risk tolerance. Now, it’s your responsibility to make sure their portfolios stay on strategy, regardless of market movements that may alter the values of their holdings.
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By now, you’ve certainly heard some of the buzz about alternative data, one of the past year’s hottest topics in the asset management world. Many firms are interested in it as a means to generate alpha, while others have had mixed experiences and still others are taking a wait-and-see attitude to determine if it adds measurably to investment research and portfolio performance.
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We are less than a week away from SS&C Deliver, the premier event for leading minds in financial services and technology. During the September 12 – 14, 2018 event at Wynn Las Vegas, we’re covering key trends in wealth and asset management and are featuring can’t-miss keynote sessions, hands-on workshops and lively panel discussions.
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The collection, management and deployment of ever-greater volumes of data and information has become an asset management focal point.
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I am looking forward to being a moderator at SS&C Deliver in Las Vegas on September 13. The panel is titled Artificial Intelligence Meets Asset and Wealth Management. There are currently over 200 people registered, which does not surprise me because AI/ML is currently in a strong hype phase, although much of this hype is deserved.
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Advisory firms increasingly rely on technology to enable a new, digitally-driven client experience. But how do advisory firms ensure that they are fully getting the most out of new technology, while still driving internal workflow efficiency and bottom-line profits?
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Nick Nolan recently sat down with Anthony Tu-Sekine, Partner at Seward & Kissel to discuss blockchain and the upcoming session on crypto assets at SS&C Deliver. Read on for a few highlights of what’s to come.
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AI seems to be everywhere today, but is it in your firm’s future? TD Ameritrade’s Dani Fava will join a panel of experts at SS&C Deliver for Artificial Intelligence Meets Asset and Wealth Management on Thursday, September 13 at 4:00 pm. We caught up with Dani to get a snapshot of the major trends she sees affecting the industry.
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Anticipating future economic and market movements is always a challenge. We're fortunate to have one of the most sought-after economists in the business, Jeffrey Kleintop, Chief Global Investment Strategist, Charles Schwab, speaking this year at our annual industry conference, SS&C Deliver.
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What is it like to get a call from the SEC saying they are planning to visit your firm? During our recent webinar, “CCO Speaks – Insights from Recent SEC Examinations,” two Chief Compliance Officers from two different firms, joined Focus 1 Associates’ Toby Cochran, Managing Member and President and me to answer questions like these and more.
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One of the more pressing business and operational issues facing advisors over the years has been the daunting task of bringing all of their technology systems and custodians together so that they work in harmony, deliver efficiencies and streamline back office tasks.
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Founded in 1984, Fure Financial is an independent financial planning firm dedicated to helping clients understand the complexities of retirement planning, investing, managing assets and debt, risk management and estate planning. Over the years, Fure Financial has upgraded their technology to take advantage of latest innovations for greater efficiencies, capabilities and to enhance the client service experience.
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