Tools That Can Help You Create Consolidated Financial Reports for Your High-Net-Worth Clients

Wealth management professionals are hungry for a more efficient way to run financial reports.

A way that helps them control the narrative of their client’s financial story using reports that are unique, but intertwined. A way that lets them co-mingle accounting and investment detail, without pulling data from multiple systems. A way that minimizes the reliance on a single individual to prepare spreadsheet-based reporting, and opens the door to collaboration. A way that reduces manual touchpoints, which ultimately reduces errors.

That said, there’s a lot of information out there when it comes to client reporting for high-net-worth families and individuals. What types of reports to provide, client reporting best practices, even client reporting examples.

But the real question is how. How do you create recurring client reports in a way that doesn’t involve spreadsheets, institutional knowledge and dependency on manual processes?

Having spent time on the Archway Family Office Services Client Relations team and, more recently, as a Relationship Manager and de facto client training guru, I’ve done my fair share of reporting consultations and implementations for our family office clients. With those experiences top of mind, here’s a list of tools that exist within the Archway Platform that can help you automate your client reporting process.

Tools to Help You Automate Your Family Office Reporting

1. Report Library
2. Report Packaging and Branding Tool
3. Report Scheduling Tool
4. Report Delivery Tool

1. Report Library

If you work for or advise a wealthy family, chances are you know the pain of stitching together reports from multiple systems. A balance sheet from the accounting system, a performance report or two from the portfolio management tool, a private equity overview that you built in Excel and a collection of statements downloaded from various custodians and investment managers.

There’s no flow. Each report is formatted different than the next. The naming conventions and asset categories vary from source to source. And you’re tasked with compiling all of it together into some semblance of a cohesive report package every quarter.

Here’s the catch: your job doesn’t have to be this hard.

Archway’s family office software solution is built to provide a seamless reporting experience for your end-clients and internal stakeholders.

But to do that, we have to start with the database. Enter the Archway Platform’s core general ledger.

It’s important because this means that as the platform is receiving nightly financial data – think investment buy/sell activity, account balances and dividend/interest payments – from external data sources, the system is normalizing the data and automatically booking the journal entries to the general ledger.

Now extrapolate that out to the other wealth operations your firm performs: bill payment, invoicing, cash management, transferring and gifting of assets, trust accounting and other business functions. As each of these tasks is being performed, the system is filing away the accounting records for reporting purposes.

So, when it comes time to configure a report package, whether it be for an individual, a household or an internal employee, you’re able to leverage that complete set of accounting and investment data. This gives you the opportunity to build custom report packages that can span from traditional financials like balance sheets and income statements to allocation and exposure reports, performance analyses, alternative investment summaries, holdings snapshots and other financial reports.

And while the Archway Platform’s report library offers hundreds of reporting options, we also give you the ability to include third-party documents like market research, commentary and disclosure statements – all of which can be cleanly packaged together alongside system-generated reports.

2. Report Packaging and Branding Tool

To really automate the report preparation process, you need a report packaging tool, which is to say a tool that lets you pre-configure a collection of reports, divide them into user-defined sections, put them into a specific order, apply your own branding and then save all of these selections to use on a recurring basis.

In the Archway Platform, you can set up as many report packages as needed.

As an example, you could create a unique set of financial reports for each generation:

• Gen 1 – A report package for the family office principal that provides a holistic view of the family’s finances and delivers insights into investment strategies, manager performance and net worth
• Gen 2 – A report package that is distributed to his children representing their pro-rata share of the family’s assets alongside their personal household expenses and portfolio performance
• Gen 3 – A report package that is distributed to his grandchildren representing their trusts and personal assets

As an extension of these packages, we oftentimes see clients create a “client-facing version” and an “internal QA version.” This allows family offices to create a polished, professional report package for the end-client and a detailed, line-by-line report package for their internal reporting analysts. In turn, the family office can make sure that the visual, client-friendly reports are an accurate representation of the underlying detail.

Plus, by housing your report operations inside of a centralized tool, you minimize the impact of employee turnover and loss of institutional knowledge. If someone takes a leave of absence or departs entirely, you can still access the report packages within the Archway Platform, which means your quarterly reporting can continue to roll out uninterrupted.

3. Report Scheduling Tool

If you have access to an extensive library of reports and you’ve gone through the process of creating pre-defined report packages, you certainly don’t want to have to manually kick off each report package when quarter-end rolls around.

The Archway Platform’s report scheduling tool eliminates those extra clicks, thus creating more efficiency for you and your team. Specifically, the tool can be used to create recurring report schedules based on dates and rolling calendar periods.

As a result, you can produce multiple report packages at a frequency of your choosing through a one-time setup.

4. Report Delivery Tool

The obvious benefit of a report delivery tool is that it electronically sends the reports for you.

The less obvious benefit is that report delivery tools aren’t limited to the physical distribution of reports. In fact, report delivery can be broadened to include digital reporting tools and online document portals.

The Archway Client Portal can be used for all of the above. Whether you’re simply seeking a secure way to share reporting documents or an interactive reporting experience, the Archway Client Portal can be tailored to meet the needs of your firm and your clients.

Additionally, the Archway Platform’s report delivery tool can help automate the report review process.

Using integrated workflow capabilities, the Archway Platform can be configured such that once reporting has been run and passed through a preliminary review, a notification can be sent via text or email to a designated user for final approval. Once approved, reports can be made available to clients in the client portal or sent electronically.

It’s also worth noting that the same report delivery tool can be used to deliver operational reports directly to an internal server so that extended teams within your organization can access system-generated files and reports.

For example, if your family office oversees multiple households, each with their own executive assistant that is responsible for managing their respective household’s budget, you could set up a budgeting report to populate out into a shared folder.

In making the report available via an internal server, you don’t necessarily need to give ancillary employees access to the Archway Platform, but you can still enable them to leverage the data, make changes and resubmit to an authorized system user for upload back into the system.

The benefits of report automation aren’t limited to client reporting.

Using the same tools that automate the client reporting process, you can also automate internal management reporting on a daily, weekly or monthly schedule. Here are a few examples of what that might look like:

• Daily Reporting: This can be as simple as cash balance and cash activity queries delivered into your team’s inboxes each morning that depict the prior day’s inflows and outflows.
• Weekly Reporting: This frequency of reporting tends to include more traditional management-style reports, like reconciliation audit reports that help you confirm reconciliation tasks have been completed or AP/AR reports that help you quickly identify what bills or invoices are outstanding.
• Monthly Reporting: On a monthly basis, many clients leverage the Archway Platform’s automated reporting tools to proactively identify latent prices and performance outliers to isolate and address any errors prior to the end of the quarter.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Archway Platform’s reporting automation tools, schedule a call with a member of our team or take a tour of the Archway Platform.

Uncovering Key Benefits of Integrated and Best of Breed Fintech Models

If you currently are – or ever have – evaluated family office technology, you’ve probably heard the terms “integrated” and “best of breed” used to describe various solutions in the marketplace. But despite their frequent usage, they’re often misinterpreted during the family office technology evaluation process.

Unfortunately, this common misinterpretation can lead to flawed technology decisions that lack a proper understanding of the two options and their downstream implications.

On the bright side, if you’ve found yourself struggling to understand which tech stack may be the right fit for your family office or financial institution, you’re not alone.

To help potential fintech buyers better understand this technical terminology – and how it will impact their internal processes, data aggregation and reporting – we’ve put together some basic definitions of the two system architectures along with a few of their unique benefits.

Integrated Model

Integrated solutions typically refer to all-in-one systems. They tend to offer comprehensive functionality across multiple business disciplines while utilizing a single, underlying data warehouse that is managed and maintained by the technology vendor.

Said differently, integrated software means that most of the data is collected, processed and analyzed within one technology solution.

Sometimes referred to as enterprise systems, integrated solutions are designed as standalone platforms that can serve the back, middle and front office. As a result, family offices and financial institutions are able to consolidate accounting and investment data within a single database for end-client reporting purposes.

This type of solution is often sought after by firms who are looking to eliminate what are known as swivel chair processes, which is to say duplicative data entry across multiple, specialized systems. These systems may include a general ledger, a tax system, spreadsheets, an investment performance tool and a report writer – all of which have to be used together to produce holistic reporting both internally and for their end-clients.

Oftentimes, these firms cite the data input and reconciliation processes as cumbersome and error prone, and thus are looking to minimize the number of systems and vendors that are required to do their job.

By implementing an integrated technology system that marries their accounting, tax, investment and client-facing teams, the firm essentially creates a single system of record, which in turn helps them streamline their reporting processes. But there are other benefits to consider too, including:

Automation, automation, automation

Using a single system for both accounting and investment detail typically allows you to leverage automated data entry. For instance, the Archway Platform^SM is built on a core general ledger, with each of the surrounding modules – or sub-ledgers – representing a specific business function.

As users perform these non-accounting operations – like stock purchases, changing security prices, calculating fees, receiving private equity distributions, transferring cash and paying bills – the journal entries behind each of these operations are automatically generated and booked to the GL based on a series of user-defined accounting rules.

This means accountants can eliminate the month-end process of copying balances – like dividends (qualified and non-qualified), income (taxable and non-taxable), unrealized gains/losses, custodial fees and cash – from their standalone portfolio management system into their standalone general ledger, which makes for effortless recordkeeping.

One support team for all

When multiple technologies or services are used within an organization, customer support can become messy. Lacking a centralized helpdesk or hotline, users have to reach out to each of the unique support teams and act as the liaison between vendors in the event a problem extends across multiple solutions.

With an integrated solution, the client service team is knowledgeable on the full breadth of capabilities within the application taking the onus off of you to identify, triage and solve any issues yourself.

Consolidated data at your fingertips

Unless you’re planning to use in-house resources to spin up and maintain your own data warehouse fed by custom integrations with bespoke tools and services, multiple systems means multiple databases. And multiple databases means manual consolidation. On the flipside, an integrated fintech platform stores your accounting and investment data within a vendor-managed database.

Using the Archway Platform as an example, this means that you can generate ad hoc data extracts and formatted reports like financial statements, net worth and cash summaries, performance and alternative investment metrics and target to actual allocation compliance on-demand – and, better yet, you can do it across all of your entities, accounts and investments.

No technical IT background required

If you do in fact have a dedicated IT team at your disposal to manage a reporting database, integrating multiple systems together may be a non-issue. But, if you don’t, integrated fintech solutions typically mean that the solution is developed, maintained and hosted by the technology vendor. As such, you nor your team need a technical IT background to begin using the platform in-house for your accounting, investment data aggregation and reporting needs.

And you certainly won’t be responsible for future development and upgrades. That said, integrated solutions are multi-faceted and contain broad spectrums of functionality, so it’s important to understand your fintech vendor’s approach to product development and where they plan to focus their attention in the future before diving into a partnership with them.

Best of Breed Model

Best of breed intuitively means the best product of its type.

Instead of consolidating multiple business disciplines within a single application, the best of breed model takes an integrated solution and splits each of the business-specific functions into its own unique tool. Each of the tools perform a highly-specialized operation independent of the other tools.

Examples of best of breed tools include alternative investment data aggregation systems, real estate management software, trust accounting platforms, performance reporting applications, expense management tools and document managers. As expected, this model features a significantly larger technology stack than an integrated technology solution as it includes more standalone systems.

Because each of these tools typically utilizes its own vendor-managed database, one of the most important considerations for this type of technology model is your organization’s ability to support a complex data warehouse.

This type of model is best suited for firms that have the resources needed to establish and troubleshoot connections between the systems and the underlying database, normalize disparate, unstructured data from multiple systems and develop highly-customized reporting across thousands of data objects and fields.

However, harnessing the power of multiple best of breed solutions has clear benefits:

Flexibility, flexibility, flexibility

While integrated fintech solutions provide clear structure, a reporting warehouse receiving data from multiple best of breed systems provides unencumbered flexibility. Surprisingly, this degree of flexibility is often needed by firms with particularly rigid reporting objectives that are better served using a high-degree of firm-specific customizations.

Using a homegrown database means firms can collect seemingly endless data points from various systems, which can then be computed and reported on according to their unabridged requirements.

Separation of duties (and risk)

For some wealth management firms, bifurcating responsibilities across multiple function-specific technologies is a requirement. For this reason, best of breed solutions are a natural fit as each functional team can select the technology system that most adeptly meets their needs. Furthermore, by extricating ancillary users from certain operational platforms, firms can limit their risk exposure and manage regulatory compliance with confidence.

Quick road to buy-in

Because integrated technology solutions are meant to be used by multiple teams, they tend to require interdepartmental agreement on the final purchase decision. In contrast, best of breed solutions are typically geared for a single purpose, making majority buy-in easer to achieve. One downside is that when teams begin making technology purchases independent of one another – and without consideration of one another – the technology stack can become disjointed and unwieldy.

And a fragmented tech stack equals lost time, lost money and lost resources. That said, if your goal is to unify the whole of your best of breed systems, it’s important that each technology decision be made for the greater good of the overall tech stack to ensure that things like system connectivity, data flow, database organization and reporting outputs aren’t jeopardized or diminished in the long run.

It’s cheaper – wait, really?

Cost seems like a counterintuitive benefit when you’re talking about purchasing the best products in the market, but the rationale is simple: when implementing best of breed systems, firms can prioritize which system (or systems) should be implemented first, and incrementally add additional tools to their technology stack. This, in turn, spreads out the cost over a longer period of time. Keep in mind though, the cost of multiple systems will eventually add up.

Although the upfront cost of an integrated solution may be more than a single best of breed tool, the long-term investment in integrated, multi-purpose technology may pose cost-savings over a multi-platform tech stack.

At Archway Family Office Services, we believe that our solutions should be both integrated and best of breed.

Why? Because we know that a powerful tool like the Archway Platform is made stronger by its connections with other solutions that help our clients be more efficient, insightful and confident in their roles.

So whether you choose to replace multiple systems with the Archway Platform and our supporting services, or whether you choose to use our solution as the hub of your technology stack, we’re here to help you build a family office technology ecosystem that befits your family office or financial institution.

Interested in learning more about how Archway’s Platform can fit into your technology strategy? Watch the Archway Platform demo or schedule a call with a member of our team to start a conversation.

How 3 Family Offices Used the Archway Platform’s Parameter-Driven Reporting Suite to Create Custom Client Report Packages

As we head into the New Year, many of us are deep into 2021 planning. And as we plan for our future, it’s traditional to reflect on which processes have worked well throughout the past year and which ones could use some refining.

Throughout our long history working with family offices and financial institutions, we often see our clients use the start of a new year as a time to reevaluate their accounting and investment reporting functions, including how they can leverage the Archway Platform^SM to better perform these functions in the coming year. We’ve found that our clients tend to focus on details like:

• Reporting Content: Are we providing each family member with financial reports that are meaningful and relevant? Are there new reports that we could introduce to the family? Is there a report that needs to be fine-tuned for better comprehension?
• Data Classifications: Do investment groupings need to be updated to reflect newly acquired asset types? Is there a better, or more appropriate, classification structure for family investments? Are certain individuals interested in customizing the way their financial data is grouped on their reporting?
• Report Delivery: Does the existing report delivery method still make sense? Is the family interested in adopting digital reporting?
• Reporting Operations: Could we be automating manual processes using advanced technology, like the Archway Platform’s report preparation and scheduling tools?

Whether it’s a small tweak to legacy reports or a complete client reporting overhaul, Archway’s family office software helps our users continuously improve their client reporting experience. Using a controlled customization approach, our report library features 200+ parameter-driven reports that range from traditional financial statements to performance, allocation, exposure, risk and activity reporting.

In lieu of starting with a blank canvas, each report includes a list of pre-defined options that allow users to tailor reports in a manageable fashion. Among the hundreds of configuration options across the reporting suite, users can customize reports with user-defined data groupings, adjustable date ranges, performance and fee calculation options and flexible report layouts.

Fun Fact

A single report within the Archway Platform can be rendered hundreds of different ways depending on each user’s unique parameter selections.

So if your family office or financial institution is thinking about making some changes to its client reporting going into 2021 — whether it’s what information you’re presenting or the way you’re presenting it — here are a few ways our clients have found success using the Archway Platform to support their reporting processes.

MINI CASE STUDY #1

Creating a Consistent Reporting Experience Across Households

OVERVIEW

A family office had been using the Archway Platform for two years when they decided to enhance their client reporting. Prior to implementing the platform, the family office staff primarily used a compilation of spreadsheets to produce reports for 20+ family members, but struggled to maintain the custom requests and level of detail necessary to satisfy each individual.

The Vice President of Investments engaged Archway Family Office Services’ Client Services team to design a report package that could be produced for each individual family member with the click of a button.

OBJECTIVE

At a high level, the family was interested in three key financial insights: holdings, investment allocation and performance. The family was indifferent to position-level detail and preferred to view their financial reports summarized by asset category, portfolio and manager. Additionally, the family office wished to create unique report naming and asset category nomenclatures that would resonate with the family members.

Ideally, the report package would be versatile enough to satisfy each family member’s distinct expectations while ensuring a consistent, repeatable reporting experience across households.

RESULT

Using the Archway Platform’s report building tools, the Client Services team and the VP of Investments worked together to create a standard report package for the family. After consulting with Archway’s reporting experts, it was ultimately decided that the package would include nine (9) unique reports depicting:

• Summary asset allocation, period activity and change in account value
• Portfolio-level holdings grouped by custom asset categories
• Manager-level investment details compared to benchmarks
• Historical holdings over time
• Investment allocation comparisons across distinct time periods
• Current against target allocations
• Trailing investment performance summary
• Detailed manager performance
• Alternative investment overview including capital activity, market values and performance returns (MOIC and XIRR)

Using the Archway Platform’s report preparation tool, the family office staff completed a one-time configuration for each of the reports and compiled them into an organized report package including custom commentary and disclosures. Today, that report package is automatically generated and, in some cases, electronically delivered to each of the family members on a quarterly basis.

As new reports become available in the platform or as family members request more reporting customizations, the family office staff can easily add to, and tailor, the existing, pre-configured report package.

MINI CASE STUDY #2

Digital Delivery of Quarterly Trust and Personal Wealth Reporting

OVERVIEW

A multi-generational family office selected the Archway Platform to help them provide comprehensive financial reporting that could look through multiple entity levels – or layers of ownership. In addition to establishing their internal corporate reporting – including GAAP statements for creditors, cash flow statements, management reporting and line of business reporting – the family office sought to produce enhanced client reporting.

Using the self-service Archway Platform Documentation Center inside of the Client Support Portal in conjunction with one-on-one consulting with the Client Services team, the family office created consolidated reporting for nine (9) family members across two (2) generations.

OBJECTIVE

The family office’s chief focus was to illustrate holdings and investment performance. With heavy allocations towards private equity, they also wanted to include in-depth analysis of their alternative investments. Due to the differing reporting preferences across the two generations, the family office wanted to design multiple report packages.

RESULT

The family office was able to successfully construct two report packages that are delivered to each family member on a quarterly basis. The internal staff selected five unique reports that focus on asset allocation, investment performance, private equity analysis, consolidated holdings and portfolio detail. The family office was able to add efficiency to their reporting process by leveraging uniform – or global – parameters across all of the reports, and making individual adjustments where needed.

• Report Package 1 contains a snapshot of their assets and performance across their respective trusts.
• Report Package 2 is tailored to the individual family member and reflects their personal net worth consolidated across assets, portfolios and entities. The family office retains the standard set of reports, but leverages unique parameter selections for enhanced detail and personalized performance metrics.

Using the Archway Platform’s branding tools, the family office includes a cover page with personalized imagery and report package names. These packages are electronically generated and delivered through the Archway Client Portal’s document manager, providing family members with on-demand access to their quarterly reports.

As each generation’s preferences change, the family office is able to quickly and easily adapt using the wide array of parameters that enable them to collapse, exclude and add detail to the existing report packages.

MINI CASE STUDY #3

Look-Through Reporting Across Trusts and Investment Partnerships

OVERVIEW

As a newly-established family office with a growing number of investment partnerships, the Chief Operating Officer selected the Archway Platform for its renowned partnership accounting tools and its ability to scale and adapt to the firm’s processes as their family office staff grew. The COO required a solution that could look through multi-layered ownership across various legal entities and allocate P/L down to the individual family members in a consolidated fashion.

OBJECTIVE

The family office wished to establish a consistent reporting process for the multi-generational family that included 25 family members across seven households. Given the firm’s diverse entity structures – ranging from trusts and foundations to investment partnerships and a managing company – and multiple asset types, they needed a sophisticated reporting engine to be able to account for and consolidate all of this financial information.

RESULT

Using variations of five (5) different reports available in the Archway Platform’s reporting suite, the family office was able to configure a report package containing eight (8) distinct client reports.

Additionally, the platform’s powerful look-through capabilities enabled the family office staff to prepare consolidated reporting across individual’s trust and partnership assets, while delivering a comprehensive view for the family’s principal that shows consolidated holdings across the entire family and their legal entities.

The family office’s report package includes:

• Overall exposure across equities, alternatives, real estate and collectibles
• Historical allocation with side-by-side comparisons
• Investment performance against benchmarks
• Allocation compared to investment mandates

Based on a pre-defined runtime schedule, the Archway Platform automatically generates the report packages on a quarterly basis. Upon completion, the report packages are reviewed by the family office staff before being distributed to the family members.

Interested in enhancing your high-net-worth reporting experience? Find out how the Archway Platform's investment reporting capabilities can help your family office or financial institution create a scalable, sustainable reporting process.

DISCLAIMER: These case studies describe the attributes of a specific Archway Family Office Services client based on objective criteria, including organizational goals, product offering and asset size. Discussion of results is intended to help clients understand Archway’s customized approach and capabilities and should not be regarded as representative of the experience of other clients nor indicative of future results.

Why Client Service is a Differentiator among Family Office Software Solutions

When assessing financial technology solutions, it’s easy to focus solely on functionality. After all, a thorough technology evaluation involves several rounds of system-specific questions and detailed technology proofs-of-concept, making it easy for the ongoing service function to drift out of focus.

But when you exclusively assess features and capabilities, you miss the opportunity to evaluate the long-term service component of your relationship with your new fintech partner.

Even if you were to find the ideal family office software solution, if the client service doesn’t match the quality of the technology platform, the long-term viability of the solution becomes murky.

So, ask yourself, when the software is implemented, and you’re off and running on your own, who will support you? Can you rely on them to help you work through complex financial scenarios using the technology? To respond quickly to your important questions? To be knowledgeable on both the software and your unique usage of the system?

To help you avoid a preventable client service mishap down the road, we recommend evaluating the competency and reliability of the client services teams with as much vigor as you use to evaluate the solution’s capabilities.

As a firm that has built an elite client service team to support hundreds of family offices and high-net-worth families, we’ve identified five starter questions to help you navigate the client service evaluation and set the stage for a more detailed assessment.

How is your customer support organization structured?

Your client service team should be able to do more than just reset your password. They should be able to problem solve on the fly and lead you through nuanced scenarios – like entering data or running a report – as well as less common scenarios – like how to perform equity transfers or validate performance calculations using the technology.

The composition and experience of your support team are important factors as you evaluate the client service team.

Is customer support performed in-house or does the technology firm outsource this business function? Will you have a dedicated support staff or will you be funneled into a large-scale call center? What are the client service specialists’ qualifications? Are they accounting and finance professionals? Do they have a background in service operations? Is there a manager or team lead that is responsible for inquiries that require escalation? Are there designated subject matter experts (SMEs) for specific topics or functions within the technology?

Digging into these questions helps you assess the value your technology firm places on client service, and can create an image of how you might interact with the customer service team as a client.

Where are the client service operations located?

Although not necessarily a deal breaker, geographic location can affect the quality of your service. Depending on where your family office is located and where your technology vendor houses its client service operations, you may experience impacts to availability and turnaround time for support cases and client service inquiries due to differences in time zones.

Furthermore, if the client service operations are based offshore, you may need to review your risk compliance policies and perform additional due diligence related to data security to confirm that your data can be accessed from other countries.

What communication channels and tools are available for customer support?

A good client service organization will utilize an omni-channel service model that allows clients to engage with the client service team in multiple ways. In a best case scenario, you should be able to reach a client service representative via phone, email, or online client support portal depending on the urgency of your request.

It’s worth noting that some technology providers use a tiered support system, so it’s important to understand what type of support is available at each level. For example, certain channels like phone or direct email may only be available to customers paying for the top tier of support.

We also recommend asking about the technology provider’s support case system. Is it automated and easy to use? Does it offer templates or pre-defined issues to expedite the ticket submission process? Does the system log your inquiry directly to a client service representative? What happens if your case requires involvement from additional teams like product development? What is the typical turnaround time for requests submitted through the system?

Internally, you should consider the volume of anticipated requests, the size of your organization and the amount of product knowledge your team possesses to help you determine whether or not the available communication channels will be suitable for your family office.

Do you offer ongoing training?

Family office fintech providers regularly introduce new versions of their products and services. Finding a technology firm that offers educational resources, online training courses and live user conferences helps your family office stay in-tune with updates to the solution.

Simply put, ongoing training is core to excellent client service and is crucial for family offices that want to make the most out of their technology investment.

Do you facilitate user groups or peer networks?

Your client service experience isn’t limited to the interactions between you and the technology provider. In fact, there are some questions that can be better answered by those who are in the daily throes of the system: other platform users. A technology firm that recognizes this opportunity and facilitates secure client exchanges clearly has their clients’ success at the top of the list.

By posing questions to other users, you have the benefit of learning from system power users who have likely dealt with similar situations in the past.

These peer-to-peer interactions help you brainstorm creative solutions for complex problems, establish best practices for common family office accounting and reporting scenarios, hear different perspectives on the effects of industry trends and regulations, and develop a sense of community among other family offices – all of which should be equally important factors when selecting a technology vendor.

Interested in learning about Archway’s customer-first approach to client service?

Download our mini ebook Our Commitment to Exceptional Client Service to find out how Archway Family Office Services has devised an approach to customer support that is valued and trusted by hundreds of family offices and financial institutions.

What You Should Know About Common Costs Associated with Family Office Fintech

“How much does your solution cost?”

This is typically one of the first questions we get asked by family offices and investment advisors evaluating family office accounting and reporting solutions.

When it comes down to it, pricing can be one of the most influential factors in choosing a family office fintech solution. And while most technology vendors wish that value alone dictated buying decisions, we’d be naïve to believe that budget constraints don’t play a role when it comes to selecting a technology solution.

But technology costs can be tricky. There’s certainly no industry standard and, in many cases, family office software providers may price their solution differently depending on what combination of technology and services you choose from their menu of offerings.

To help you prepare for family office software pricing discussions, we put together a crash course of sorts in family office software pricing. To do this, we identified several pricing structures that are common amongst family office fintech and service providers. Our goal is to help you understand the basic premise of each pricing model so that you can better anticipate costs based on your unique family office structure.

Types of Pricing Models

Flat Rate

One of the simplest pricing models is a flat rate fee. In this structure, the solution is sold at a predetermined price and offers a fixed set of features. Using a flat rate fee, the software provider does not take into account any additional information or detail about your family office like the number of users, entity count, investment types or add-on functionality. This type of pricing structure is typically employed by off-the-shelf software, meaning there’s limited room for customizations.

In short, what you see is what you get.

Per User

Largely self-explanatory, a per user fee is dependent on the number of users that will receive login credentials for the technology platform. This pricing structure is simple and enables your family office or advisory firm to control costs since you ultimately dictate how many users need access to the solution. This pricing structure is often incorporated into the tiered pricing structure described below.

Feature-based

Feature-based pricing allows firms to pick and choose pieces of software functionality to create a unique suite of capabilities. In this model, you have greater control over costs by only paying for what you need while retaining the ability to scale the product by adding additional functionality as your team’s bandwidth grows.

Per Account

Most family offices need to collect vast amounts of financial information – from portfolio transactions, cash movements and account balances to alternative investment activity and valuations. The per account pricing structure charges based on the number of accounts or portfolios within your investment profile. This fee is particularly common across data aggregation and reconciliation services, and can fluctuate depending on the type of asset and whether data is retrieved automatically or manually.

Similar to a per user fee, the per account fee typically fits into a tiered, or escalator, fee structure.

Per Transaction

Although a per transaction fee is a less common pricing model for family office software providers, it will occasionally enter the equation with transaction-based services. For instance, if you leverage ancillary services like cash management processing, bill payment or trade execution, you may see it as a line item in your pricing proposal. These costs are typically framed as processing fees for any cash movements between accounts or invoice payments.

More often than not, this type of fee is in addition to other software-based fees, like per user or per entity subscription fees.

Tiered

A tiered pricing model is fairly common amongst family office financial solutions. This pricing structure offers firms economies of scale. The tiers represent scalability and are designed to provide per unit cost savings as you increase your usage of the solution. Tiers might be based on the number of users, number of entities, number of accounts or assets under management. In a tiered pricing model, you can incrementally increase your subscription as your organization or assets grow.

Assets under Management (AUM)

AUM-based pricing can be one of the more volatile pricing models. Similar to AUM pricing models typically employed by investment advisors, this structure charges basis points, or a percentage of assets, based on the amount of money that’s being aggregated and reported on by your fintech solution. Since market conditions directly impact asset valuations, the amount you are charged on a monthly basis may change drastically.

For this reason, most AUM-based pricing structures also include minimums, or floors, that require a minimum amount to be paid should asset valuations drop noticeably.

Per Entity

No two family offices have the same infrastructure and their unique ownership structures can become very complex – from nested entities and family partnerships to creative investment strategies and esoteric holdings. To handle this degree of complexity and the associated system configuration, some family office fintech companies use the number and type of entities – among other relevant data points – to determine pricing of their solutions.

This type of fee is common amongst tailored family office solutions that require substantial solution configuration to meet the specific needs of each client.

More often than not, fintech providers will use a blend of the aforementioned fees to create their own proprietary pricing model. It’s also common for vendors to package pricing into phases. For instance, they may charge a per account fee for upfront implementation – or setup – costs, while using a flat subscription fee for ongoing usage of the platform or service.

Keep in mind that you can control costs by changing variables and inputs within the cost models to help you ultimately find a solution that meets both your capability and budget requirements.

Although fintech software prices can vary dramatically, understanding the different family office software fee structures can help you anticipate the size of the investment and the degree of scalability in a family office software solution.

Interested in learning about how we price our technology and service solutions for family offices and financial institutions?

Connect with a member of our team to learn more about our award-winning accounting, investment data aggregation and client reporting tools.

An Inside Look into the Relentless Development Philosophy at Archway Family Office Services

This isn’t surprising: long-lasting technology companies, those that thrive amid changes and challenges, are the ones that meet the demands of their clients over and over again without disrupting the way they operate.

This obviously implies ongoing accessibility to the technology as changes take place, but it also alludes to the intentional design and development of features and functionality that build efficiencies and make a user’s job easier. Where’s the value in a change that doesn’t align with — or unnecessarily distracts from — the solution’s core mission?

As advocates of transparency, especially when it comes to product development, we know how compelling a unique and forward-looking strategic vision can be for family offices and financial institutions. But we also strongly believe that an organization’s strategic vision should seek to enhance, not clutter, the capabilities of a platform.

At Archway Family Office Services, our commitment to intentional innovation is embodied by our Relentless Development Philosophy. When you look back on the past two decades of the Archway Platform^SM, the evolution of the product has always been channeled through a long-term vision.

Our resolve to adhere to this vision and to avoid diversions along the way ultimately afforded us the staying power that we have today as an award-winning family office solution within the broader Archway solution suite.

As a part of this ongoing process, there are a few guiding principles that help us deliver meaningful, if not incremental, improvements to our clients.

User Feedback

Technology companies don’t withstand the test of time by making assumptions. Period. They use data, analytics and tangible user insights to establish and prioritize critical enhancements. Through focus groups, enhancement requests and everyday client service interactions, Archway Family Office Service has amassed a wealth of enhancement requests and leverages these requests internally to help drive our strategic roadmap for the Archway Platform.

Peer Dialogue

Many organizations believe that internal disagreements negatively impact a business. But we think a dose of healthy opposition leads to some of the greatest product outcomes.

We engage with internal stakeholders across the entire lifecycle of a client — from the sales and marketing teams that help them begin their buying journey to the client service personnel that deliver ongoing product and service support — to ultimately derive the right balance of function and flair when it comes to product enhancements. This is evident in our current effort to redesign the Archway Platform’s user interface scheduled to be released in December 2020.

The interplay of these dynamics puts our internal release committee in a position to design a product roadmap with input from advocates of system power users with complex problems as well as proponents of simple, easy-to-understand solutions. The result is well-rounded innovation.

Frequent Upgrades

Firms that can successfully combine constructive user feedback and the internal exchange of ideas are more likely to deliver effective product enhancements and upgrades that align with the solution’s core mission. And the frequency at which firms release these product upgrades is a key driver in letting users know the value their fintech provider places in product development.

At Archway Family Office Services, we upgrade the Archway Platform on a regular basis through both minor and major releases throughout the year, amounting to hundreds of enhancements on an annual basis. By delivering incremental enhancements seamlessly and often, clients gain access to better tools while not missing a beat in executing their daily operations.

To ensure our clients are aware and up-to-date on these major improvements, we provide complete release notes and documentation through our client support portal. By being transparent and thorough in explaining our upgrades, our clients are able to trust that each change is an intentional improvement to the solution.

So how does this all play out in real life?

Download our latest mini ebook, Our Perspective: A Relentless Development Philosophy, to learn more about our future of innovation.