Putting clients at the heart of the system

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Outlining the key requirements of a CRM system optimized for wealth management, Fonseca says that the solution should include features such as contact management, campaign management, fee management, contract management, document storage, triggers, and alerts, says Fonseca. “A CRM solution needs to provide advisors with a 360 degree view of their clients”, notes Samy. Advisors should have a consolidated investment and risk profile of clients at the household level including details of all communication that the firm has had with household members and information about their interests and hobbies, he says. This helps advisors in not only comprehensively servicing clients but effectively cross-selling and up-selling additional financial products and services to them as well. “A consolidated view of the client is essential for wealth managers to be able to give them holistic advice,” agrees Didier Pitton, product marketing director, Private Wealth Management, at Swiss vendor Odyssey Financial Technologies. Referral management too is important, he notes. “The value of a client is not only their assets but the number of referrals they provide as well. Most new clients for wealth managers come through referrals and the CRM system should be able to track referrals and leads.”

Odyssey provides its CRM solution as part of an integrated wealth management platform. Institutions where this platform has been deployed are Davy Stockbrokers and Stanford Group. Pitton says that while the CRM solution can be deployed on a stand along basis, most customers opt for the integrated platform. The benefit of this approach, he points out, is that it helps reduce the number of applications a wealth manager needs to implement. Another benefit is the tight linkage between client data and portfolio management data. “Since most wealth management firms advise clients about their asset management strategies, an integrated platform helps them to easily manage between client data and their portfolio information. Many large wealth managers that have deployed stand-alone CRM solutions complain about lack of integration between client and portfolio data. This is usually the main reason why their usage of CRM is very low,” states Pitton.

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