PERSPECTIVES

Perspectives on managing complex wealth.

Perspectives from inside the operation. Notes, thinking, and analysis on working with Family Offices and Private Banks — from the individuals closest to the work, for the individuals who depend on it.

August 4, 2026

Article

·

time

-min

read

Bill Payment

Client Service

Family Office Bill Pay: The Complexity Behind Cash and Expense Management

Learn how family offices can strengthen bill pay, cash management, fraud prevention, reporting, and operational control with a modern workflow.

Megan Greer

Read the full article now

While family offices perform a myriad of functions, their primary purpose is to manage the complex financial lives of the families they serve. One key activity they perform is ensuring that the families’ bills are paid accurately, on time, and with appropriate oversight and safeguards.

Bill payment and related treasury functions often receive less attention than investment strategy, estate planning, philanthropy, or family governance. All too often, cash and expense management activities are under-resourced, rely on outmoded or point-solution technology, and can be prone to errors or worse.

Bill pay often gains executive attention only when something goes wrong, such as when the office receives a call from a family member about a missed or incorrect payment. This lack of focus, however, belies its importance. The downstream effects are real: missed or incorrect payments can impact a family member’s plans, trigger penalties, and damage credit relationships. Poor transaction oversight can expose a family member to fraud. The lack of coordination with a comprehensive treasury and accounting function can lead to overdrafts, duplicate payments, and late fees. Poor documentation hinders oversight and reporting and can complicate tax and audit preparation. Current approaches may lack scalability and redundancy and may not meet operational demands as family wealth structures grow more complex. As the number of entities grow and the volume and variety of invoices multiply, staff can quickly become overwhelmed.

This article examines the key challenges family offices face in managing bill payments and cash management, the risks created by inadequate processes and technology, and the principles and approaches that family offices need to adopt to modernize this important function.

Why Family Office Bill Pay Is So Complex

In most instances, family offices are managing payments for multiple entities in an ecosystem of fragmented financial interests and structures. A typical ultra-high-net-worth family may hold assets and require disbursements through a combination of the following:

Personal residences and vacation properties in multiple states or countries

Revocable and irrevocable trusts for estate planning purposes

Family limited partnerships and limited liability companies

Private foundations and donor-advised funds

Operating businesses and holding companies

Investment accounts and special purpose vehicles

The personal lifestyles of individual family members also generate a broad array of recurring and, at times, irregular payment obligations, including:

Property management and related fees across multiple residences

Household staff payroll, benefits, and employment taxes

One-time or periodic purchases of luxury items: cars, aircraft, art, and yachts

Luxury asset maintenance

Personal security services

Educational expenses

Medical concierge services and ongoing healthcare

Subscriptions, memberships, and club dues

Family member-specific tax obligations

Charitable pledges and recurring donations

Capital call obligations for private fund investments

It is easy to see how quickly the payment environment can become complex as each payment category involves different vendors, payment frequencies, levels of urgency, approval processes, and sources of funds. Invoices must be paid for by the correct entity and from the correct bank account. Some family members or entities may have their own bank account, payment obligations, and accounting requirements. Others may simplify the process by paying invoices from one entity and allocating expenses across the partnership structure through the accounting process. All of this needs to be reconciled across multiple transactions, statements and recorded in the accounting system.

Complexity increases when families maintain residences, businesses, and service relationships across multiple jurisdictions. This can result in invoices in multiple currencies, international wire transfers, currency conversion, correspondent banking fees, and cross-border compliance requirements, adding another layer of complexity to the bill pay process.

‍

Operational Challenges

Legacy family offices may rely on less formalized or consistently documented processes. Invoices arrive through multiple channels, often in hard copy, including paper mail, email, vendor portals, and property management systems. Invoices are often handled in hard copy with little tracking or workflow management. It is easy to make duplicate payments when invoices are received through multiple channels and processed independently. Misplaced invoices and missed payments can also arise when invoices fall through communication gaps or are simply lost.

Expense approval and oversight can be haphazard. Family offices typically maintain payment approval thresholds, with amounts below which staff can authorize payments independently and amounts above which principal or trustee approval is required. In practice, these frameworks are frequently informal and inconsistently applied, lacking approval documentation, tracking capabilities, and an audit trail.

Many family offices use spreadsheets, small business accounting software, or a combination of the two to manage their bill payment process. While flexible and familiar, spreadsheets present fundamental limitations for payment management, including:

Poor spreadsheet access controls can allow any user with file access to alter payment data without an audit trail.

The lack of version management can result in staff working from outdated files, creating conflicting records.

There is little workflow to support the end-to-end process.

Manual data entry can lead to errors.

There is little system integration, with data manually entered into other recordkeeping and accounting systems, creating redundant work that is time-consuming and may diverge from the official books and records.

Many accounting platforms pose their own set of challenges. They are not designed for family office complexity and may lack integration among payment processing, cash reconciliation, and the general ledger. Workarounds that allow these platforms to approximate family office requirements can create duplicative processing and reconciliation of data between systems, increasing the risk of errors. In addition, they have significant reporting limitations that require manual effort to overcome.

Finally, a key challenge is the lack of staff redundancy. Family offices frequently have lean staffing models. Often, this complex process relies on a single employee or a handful of employees. If someone leaves or is unavailable, this can create a gap in the bill-paying process.

‍

Coordination with Treasury Functions

Communication and coordination with treasury functions present another challenge. Once an invoice is approved for payment, the treasury function must be notified of the correct bank account and the amount of the payment. Treasury must then review relevant banking details to ensure adequate funds are available to meet the obligation. Treasury then notifies the bill pay team to execute the transaction. Without a robust workflow and platform, this process often relies on email and callbacks and is prone to errors.

‍

Fraud Prevention Can Be Weak

Not surprisingly, family offices are potential targets for financial fraud. The combination of substantial assets, lean staffing, informal processes, and lack of systemic controls can create an environment that sophisticated fraudsters can easily exploit.

One approach is known as a Business Email Compromise (BEC) attack. Fraudsters compromise or spoof the email account of a trusted party — a property manager, investment manager, attorney, or one of the principals themselves — and issue fraudulent invoices or payment instructions to family office staff.

A vendor impersonation scheme is another fraudster favorite. A fraudster monitors family office communications and business relationships to learn of important vendor relationships. In a typical vendor impersonation scheme, attackers send invoices using spoofed or lookalike domains that closely resemble legitimate vendors, request bank account changes for future payments, and exploit informal vendor management practices that lack verification protocols. Without fraud detection and prevention processes, it is easy for busy staff to miss fraudulent activity.

Family offices are also not immune from internal fraud. They often operate with insufficient segregation of duties in their payment functions. A single employee may have authority to add new vendors, initiate payments, and reconcile bank accounts — three functions that should ideally be performed by separate individuals to create appropriate segregation of duties and oversight.

‍

New Solutions and Best Practices

Leading family offices are addressing these challenges by taking a fresh approach to bill pay and the broader cash and expense management process. Through a combination of technology, organizational design, workflow tools, process discipline, and outsourcing to a third party, they are adding significant scale, efficiency, and safeguards.

Purpose-built family office bill payment platforms can now provide capabilities specifically designed for the multi-entity, multi-bank, multi-currency environment. These platforms consolidate and digitize invoice receipt and capture and allow for invoice tracking and multi-tier approvals with complete audit trails. They enable payment execution across multiple payment entities, automatic reconciliation with accounting systems, and consolidated reporting across all entities. Also included are important aspects of the treasury function to ensure funds are available to meet obligations and payments are made from the correct accounts. By outsourcing this function, a family office can gain access to a best-of-class technology platform and achieve scalability and personnel redundancy.

Key Components of a Modern Bill Pay Workflow

Whether managed internally or with an outsourced partner, a modern family office bill pay workflow should include the following components.

How Archway Can Help

Bill payment management sits at an unusual intersection in the family office: it is operationally essential yet often organizationally undervalued, technically complex yet frequently entrusted to informal processes, and financially significant yet rarely properly resourced.

Archway’s Cash and Expense Management solution addresses the treasury, accounting, and bill pay needs of complex family offices. Our secure, permission-based platform manages the full operational lifecycle of the payment process, from invoice receipt and approval through payment generation, reconciliation, general ledger integration, and reporting. Clients can delegate the full process to the Archway team or retain control over selected activities, including approvals and fund disbursements.

Recognizing the value of an enterprise-grade treasury and accounts payable platform can achieve more timely bill payment, better cash management, more accurate reporting, stronger fraud detection, and a more efficient payment process.

November 30, 2022

Article

· Single Family Offices

·

time

-min

read

Family Office Software

Client Service

Family Office Trends

4 Things Archway Platform℠ Users Can Learn from One Another

Explains how Archway Platform users learn from one another through shared use cases, underused tools, reporting ideas, and peer community discussions.

Natalie Peters

· Relationship Manager

The Importance of a Family Office Software User Community

At Archway Family Office Services, we have always prided ourselves on our ability to understand the nuances of our ultra-high-net-worth clients. Our teams have extensive experience working through complex issues and one-off scenarios that are unique to family offices and private wealth management organizations. We are, by all accounts, well suited for the job.

We’ve helped hundreds of family offices leverage the Archway Platform to support critical facets of their operations like central disbursement entities, multi-layered ownership structures, complex equity transfers, and family member-specific reporting requirements.

But even our most tenured team members will tell you: There is no substitute for the opportunity to problem solve amongst your peers.

As mentioned in our blog discussing the what, where, who, and why of Archway’s exclusive Archway Platform User Conference, IMMERSION, the leading request from our clients is access to other members of our family office user community.

So what exactly can family offices who share a common wealthtech solution—say, the Archway Platform—learn from one another?

1. How family offices are using the Archway Platform to solve complex issues.

The evolution of family offices and the development of family office software are undeniably intertwined. As the needs of family offices have shifted over the years, so has the Archway Platform’s suite of tools.

With each product upgrade, we’ve introduced new functionality, built efficiencies and automation into the application, and enhanced the capabilities of our existing tools. As a result, our users have found that there’s often more than one way to do the same thing in the system.

And while we offer release notes, product documentation, and system training, sometimes the easiest way to learn something is to hear from someone else that’s already using it.

Common in-app operations that our clients discuss with one another include:

How to transfer ownership based on different scenarios, and which Archway Platform tool is most suitable for the desired outcome
Best practices when using the Archway Platform’s reconciliation tools
Usage of alternative asset-specific tools to track activity and report on investments
Accounts payable processes best practices
Creating ad hoc reports and recurring family member report packages
Archway Client Portal use cases and adoption strategies for family members and outside stakeholders

2. What Archway Platform tools they could be utilizing, but aren’t today.

When a client begins discussing how they’re using the Archway Platform to solve complex issues, this often leads to another user saying, “We hadn’t thought of doing it that way!”

The fact of the matter is, it’s our human nature to create routines and processes. If a process works, we don’t necessarily go out looking for another way to do it. But, when a step in the process changes, it presents an inflection point: Is there a better way to do this?

And when it’s time for our clients to find that answer, Archway Family Office Services offers multiple channels:

Reach out to the Archway Family Office Services Client Relations team for product support
Engage with the Archway Platform Training team for consulting on a new process
Pose that exact question to other Archway Platform users through a variety of forums and idea exchanges in our secure, online client support portal

Although it’s widely accepted that each family office has its own unique way of operating, we frequently find that there are common threads that tie them together. While our clients’ experiences may not be identical, users may have experienced similar scenarios that can nonetheless lead to the adoption of new tools and the implementation of new processes.

3. Which reports they can use to answer challenging financial questions.

Reporting is the pinnacle of family office wealthtech. It is, after all, how family offices and the family members they advise render and make sense of the data that’s been collected, entered, and validated in the technology. So it’s no surprise that reporting is one of the most comprehensive functions that exists in the Archway Platform.

With a suite of tools consisting of an extensive report library, raw data queries, dashboards, and a client reporting portal, users of the Archway Platform have a variety of options when it comes to reporting on their financial data.

That said, in a perfect world, family office professionals would have plenty of free time to explore the report library, try out new queries, and customize reporting dashboards. But day-to-day responsibilities often prevent that.

So what’s a quick and easy way to discover new reporting ideas? Clever report configurations? Unique data classifications and groupings?

Enter: The Archway Platform user community.

By inquiring with other users to learn what reports they’re using, which metrics they’re leveraging, and how they’re applying parameters and data groupings, family offices can quickly identify the right combination of reports, data points, and formats to get the output they desire—straight from the individuals that have walked the same path.

4. How family offices are handling situations that have nothing to do with the software.

Perhaps the most important thing family offices can learn from one another has nothing to do with technology or operations at all.

As anyone who works in the family office arena knows, it can be excruciatingly difficult for family offices to connect with other family offices. And while there are a variety of family office membership organizations and events that can help, family offices are, generally speaking, incredibly private and confidential, making networking and communicating with one another challenging.

Understanding that gap and recognizing the commonality of our client base, we created a trusted community in which all of the members share a unifying theme: Usage of the Archway Platform.

Sustained through national and regional user conferences, virtual peer dialogues, online user forums, and brokered introductions, our family office software user community presents our clients with the unique opportunity to connect and build relationships with other family office professionals.

Through their expanded network, our clients have gone on to create a variety of breakout peer groups that frequently get together to discuss the issues they face as family offices—whether it pertains to the Archway Platform or not.

These peer groups, though born out of their common usage of the Archway Platform, have grown across a much wider spectrum, where family office professionals can discuss trust law, tax planning, family office restructuring, burgeoning investment strategies, talent acquisition, process documentation and new hire training, and so much more. The community has flourished.

To learn more about joining the Archway Platform user community, schedule a call with a member of our team to discover how other family offices and private wealth management firms are using Archway’s purpose-built wealth management solutions.

October 18, 2022

Article

· Single Family Offices

·

time

-min

read

Family Office Software

Client Service

Family Office Trends

How Archway Family Office Services Built an Exclusive Family Office Event Rooted in Connection and Collaboration

Explains the history and purpose of IMMERSION, Archway’s exclusive family office user conference for client training, networking, and peer collaboration.

Eric Sampson

· Relationship Manager

Everything you need to know about IMMERSION: Archway’s Platform^SM User Conference

When we ask our clients what would help them become even more successful, we get plenty of answers: Specialized functionality, new reports, more hours in the day. But time and time again, the answer that we hear most often—the one that is echoed over and over by family offices, regardless of location, size, or tenure—is the opportunity to connect with other family offices.

And so, nearly a decade ago, the IMMERSION User Conference was born.

Let’s take a look at the history of IMMERSION: What it is, where it happens, who attends, and why it’s become a mainstay in the Archway Family Office Services training program.

What is IMMERSION?

The IMMERSION User Conference is a multi-day training and networking event hosted by Archway Family Office Services. We invite our family clients from across the globe to join us for a three day immersive experience (see what we did there?), where they’re given the opportunity to:

Receive firsthand training from our team of experts
Preview new Archway Platform enhancements
Join roundtables discussing family office best practices
Hear from strategic partners about additional family office solutions
Build their network of family office professionals

While at IMMERSION, attendees can choose from a menu of expertly curated, CPE-accredited sessions. Focusing on key functional areas of our family office software platform, these sessions deliver best practices, tips, and tricks in areas like troubleshooting system issues, completing reconciliations, managing accounts payable, tracking alternative investments, measuring performance, and producing family office reporting.

In 2016, we introduced our first-ever New User Workshop, giving new clients the opportunity to get up to speed prior to the more advanced sessions at the main conference. Not surprisingly, the New User Workshop has become a cornerstone of our event and has expanded to include not only new users, but existing users simply looking for a refresher on Archway Platform blocking and tackling.

Where does IMMERSION take place?

Since the inaugural IMMERSION was hosted in our hometown of Indianapolis, IN, in 2014, we’ve had the chance to collect plenty of feedback over the course of several events, allowing us to evolve the format of the event, the topics we cover, how we deliver the content, and even where we host the conference.

Following our first IMMERSION User Conference, we decided that we would alternate between the large global conference in even-numbered years and smaller, regional user conferences in odd-numbered years.

We followed this cadence through 2019, hosting two additional IMMERSION User Conferences in Indianapolis and a dozen regional user conferences across the country, from New York to Dallas to San Francisco—and many more in between.

But like most firms, Archway Family Office Services took IMMERSION virtual in 2020 and 2021 as we adjusted to the world around us. Broadcasting live from a pop-up studio in our Indianapolis office and powered by a newsroom-worthy studio crew, we were able to carry on the IMMERSION tradition despite the obstacles that inherently come with transitioning a typically in-person event to being fully online.

And now, in October 2022, we are back in-person and we’ve moved. This year, our global conference is being hosted in Austin, TX.

Who goes to IMMERSION?

IMMERSION is an exclusive, invitation-only event for our family office and private wealth clients. By bringing together a group of family office professional that all share a common usage of the Archway Platform, we create an intimate, secure environment where users can connect, share ideas, collaborate, and learn together.

Today, IMMERSION has become a core tenant of the Archway Family Office Services training program. Outside of its discernible popularity amongst clients, the event has grown be so much more than a training exercise for users.

IMMERSION is an opportunity for our team to connect with one another, to put faces to names, and build lasting relationships with our clients. Sure, we spend a lot of time talking about partnership accounting, performance validation, and data management.

But we spend an equal amount of time talking about the things that happen in our lives outside of the four walls we work within. IMMERSION is about discovery and learning and bringing people together: Some of the most human elements we all possess.

After 20 years working with family offices, the team at Archway Family Office Services understands how critical your technology partner—and the people who comprise it—is to your success. Which is why we invite our clients to come together for a day—or three—every year so that we can continue to grow together.

Discover the many ways Archway Family Office Services connects with our family office clients through education, support, and training in our mini ebook, Our Commitment to Exceptional Client Service.

September 30, 2022

Article

· Single Family Offices

·

time

-min

read

Family Office Software

Family Office Outsourcing

Family Office Trends

3 All-Purpose Strategies to Overcome Common Family Office Challenges

Presents three broad strategies for family offices facing operational complexity: education and networking, outsourcing underserved functions, and working with consultants.

Chelsea Francis

· Head of Strategy

Leveraging Family Office Software and Outsourced Services to Help Your Operations Stay Balanced

The very nature of a family office is to provide multiple services, across multiple households, across multiple generations. To that end, it goes without saying that family offices are rarely, if ever, afforded a singular operational focus.

The ubiquity of daily, multi-entity data management, routine monitoring of inflows and outflows, evolving investment strategies, shifting ownership structures, and seemingly always-on-the-horizon tax and reporting deadlines can make running a family office inherently challenging. Compounded by social, economic, and political influences, running a family office can truly become a balancing act.

And when you’re juggling that many balls at the same time, it can be difficult to know which ones to keep in the air and which to hand off to someone else.

Luckily, growth and innovation in the family office space have created a host of options to help lighten the operational burden.

Struggling with your family office’s financial data management? Evaluating or implementing a new technology solution? Wanting to connect with other family office professionals to talk shop? From purpose-built family office technology to exclusive family office communities, dedicated family office service providers, and experienced consultants, the answers are out there. You just need to know where to look.

Here are three universal strategies that can help your family office identify solutions and overcome its unique challenges—big or small.

Pursue all of the training, education, and networking opportunities.

You’ve probably said it, we’ve definitely said it, and you’ve surely heard it: We don’t know what we don’t know. But more often than not, someone is willing and able to help you learn—and what better way to connect and share experiences than through training, education, and networking events?

Nevertheless, even on our best days, when your capacity is already hitting the limiter, it can be hard to look at a new opportunity and say, “Yes, I want to add more to my plate.”

We get it: It’s hard to make time. We’ve all felt the pinch, but when it comes to training, education, and networking, we at Archway Family Office Services firmly believe it’s worth the reward.

Let’s look at a few examples:

Scheduling one-on-one or team training with your technology provider

Pros: Expand your knowledge of the application; Explore new tools and functionality; Smooth out workflows; Discover ways to automate processes and reduce clicks

Cons: Requires time out of your schedule; May incur a financial cost

Attending a family office conference

Pros: Connect with other family office professionals; Discuss alternative solutions to shared operational challenges; Learn about new technology and service providers; Gain insight into regulatory changes, investment trends, and other strategic topics

Cons: Requires time out of your schedule; May incur a financial cost

Among the weary, the busy, and the cost-conscious, a natural response is to say “I don’t have the time” or “It’s not in the budget.” But a shift in mindset to say “It is worth my time” or “It is worth the cost” can pave the way to new connections, elevated conversations, and creative ideas that just may hold the solution to your most stubborn challenges.

Don’t be afraid to outsource underserved operations.

Sometimes it’s not a matter of training, education, or networking—after all, even a creative solution can’t add hours to the day. And if you’re not in a position to hire additional staff, capacity challenges can quickly become overwhelming.

But the situation doesn’t have to be dire. The industry is laced with experienced, trusted service providers that specialize in family office operations.

Take Archway Family Office Services for example. Given our deep roots in family office software, it’s only natural that we offer outsourced services to our clients that either augment or replace their in-house usage of the Archway Platform^SM.

Ranging from portfolio reconciliation and consolidated client reporting to personal expense management and partnership administration, our menu of solutions helps our clients create a bespoke combination of technology and services that is right-sized for their family office or financial institution.

Still on the fence? Check out the Top 10 Reasons Private Wealth Managers Choose an Outsourcing Partner.

So, whether you’re looking for expertise in broader areas like financial data management and tax planning, or more niche areas like private foundation management and family governance, there’s a good chance you can find a service provider that specializes in it.

Which brings us to the world of consultants.

Partner with an experienced consultant.

When in doubt, reach out to a consultant.

Oftentimes leveraging in-depth assessments and contextual reviews, consultants are equipped to help make recommendations that are appropriately suited for your family office. Their range of expertise and their unbiased opinion can help your family office identify key pain points, evaluate viable solutions, partner with experienced technology and service providers, and implement long-term strategies.

Read How Consultants Can Help Family Offices to get a deeper understanding of the three primary roles of family office consultants: Administrative consulting, technology consulting, and operational consulting.

Contact Archway Family Office Services to find out how our suite of technology and service solutions helps our clients overcome their accounting, investment data aggregation, and reporting challenges.

Just need a suggestion for a family office consultant or conference? We can do that too.

August 29, 2022

Article

· Single Family Offices

·

time

-min

read

Family Office Software

Technology Due Diligence

Client Service

The Client Service Trifecta: Family Office Software Client Support, Education, and Training

Explains why client support, education, and training should be evaluated alongside functionality when selecting family office software.

Natalie Peters

· Relationship Manager

Using Client Service as a Mechanism to Qualify Family Office Technology Providers

Capabilities and tools, code and databases, reports and more reports.

When it comes to family office technology evaluations, these tend to be the topics that dominate most conversations. And for good reason: These topics are, no doubt, core to selecting a solution that will work for your family office.

But a technology solution that merely works for your family office is a far cry from a technology solution that enhances your family office. Your family office software should extend beyond functionality and reporting. Ideally, an investment of this magnitude should support the growth and strategy of the family, generation over generation.

In our experience, the key to finding a dependable technology partner with a staying power equal to the family wealth itself is to look beyond the product or service and evaluate the whole of the firm’s client service approach.

It’s no secret that at Archway Family Office Services, we routinely cite the importance of client service as a key consideration when choosing a family office software provider.

Client Support

Oftentimes, the most common face of client service is client support. In the traditional sense of client support, this is the real human answering the phone, replying to your email, or triaging your support ticket. In a more modern sense, it could equate to chatbots, automated voice systems, or robotic process automation (RPA).

When evaluating your technology provider’s client support capabilities, consider the following:

Support hours and availability
Location of support staff
Types of support channels (i.e. phone, email, online support portal, etc.)
Experience and/or qualifications of support staff
Self-service support capabilities

Client Education

Client education can come in a variety of forms, from knowledge bases, setup guides, and product release notes to step-by-step process and policy documentation. A key pillar in any client service model, education is fundamental to giving clients the tools they need to successfully operate a wealthtech solution.

But perhaps more notably, this facet of client service puts clients in the driver’s seat, allowing them to acquire the knowledge and skills they need so that they can become self-sufficient within the application.

When evaluating your technology provider’s client education capabilities, consider the following:

Availability of online, self-service product documentation
Communication strategy related to product enhancements, upgrades, and announcements
Creation of thorough process documentation and/or best practices for critical operations
Access to how-to guides, tutorials, and setup manuals
Opportunity to join peer networks and/or forums for best practices, tips, and tricks

Client Training

Ongoing client training is critical to maximizing your family office’s technology investment. Training represents the tipping point from becoming self-sufficient to proficient in an application and often covers more advanced features and functions of the technology.

At Archway Family Office Services, we offer a variety of training opportunities including ad hoc client-specific trainings, recorded tutorials, live group trainings, and our pinnacle training event exclusively for our family office clients: Archway’s IMMERSION User Conference.

When evaluating your technology provider’s client training capabilities, consider the following:

Availability of dedicated, in-house training staff
In-person and/or virtual group training opportunities
One-on-one custom training opportunities
Access to user conferences, regional user groups, or client communities
Accreditation of training content

By checking the boxes in these three areas of client service, your family office can feel more confident in not only the technology you’ve selected, but the people, processes, and documentation that will support you going forward. More importantly, these areas—even more so than the software itself—will define how you engage, connect, and grow with your technology partner for years to come.

Learn more about how Archway Family Office Services builds lasting relationships and connects with our family office and financial institution clients through education, support, and training in our mini ebook, Our Commitment to Exceptional Client Service.

July 28, 2022

Article

· Single Family Offices

·

time

-min

read

Family Office Software

Family Office Reporting

Family Office Trends

Client Portal

Family Office Client Portals: 5 Vital Financial Insights + Examples

Explains five key financial insights family office client portals should provide, including net worth, holdings, performance, cash, and expense detail.

Chris Rose

· Sales Director

What to Look for When Selecting Client Portal Technology for Your Family Office

Client portals have taken many shapes throughout the years. With nearly every modern financial institution offering clients some form of digital access to their financial information, online portal technology is a far cry from its infancy.

The same can be said for family office client portals.

To paint the picture, let's take a look at the evolution of the Archway Platform^SM and its portal technology.

Originally introduced in the early 2000s, our initial portal concept was referred to simply as Investor Login. Limited to a handful of configuration options, the Archway Platform's Investor Login served as an online access point for individual users to view performance returns, capital activity, fees, and a select number of reports.

Since those early days, we have rolled out several iterations of the portal using a combination of client requests, internal feedback, and a healthy dose of innovative thinking.

Which brings us to today, where the Archway Client Portal gives end-clients on-demand access to an interactive, mobile financial reporting tool.

Based on our experience developing and enhancing our own family office software and client portal, here are several key financial insights you should consider looking for when selecting client portal technology for your family office or financial institution.

1. Consolidated net worth

This seemingly simple request can actually be one of the most difficult to questions to answer, especially when it comes to high-net-worth (HNW) individuals.

Your family office’s client portal should be able to—at a minimum—tell your end-client exactly how much they are worth, inclusive of cash, investments, property, and indirect exposure to additional holdings, at the click of a button.