The integration imperative: Key to delivering efficient and high-quality service to clients
By: Ss C Salentica
Tags: Wealth Management, Asset Management, Financial Services, Financial Advisor, CRM

Integrations can be key to effectively serving a vast client base.

The world of wealth management is increasingly data-dependent. To make informed decisions for their clients, investment advisors need to be able to see their portfolio positions and holdings in real time. To answer inquiries or have a constructive dialogue with clients, it’s essential to be able to surface accurate answers with just a few clicks. To deliver proactive and responsive service, firms need to empower teams with the information they need, when they need it.

Never before has getting the right information to the right place at the right time required such a high level of connectivity among systems and applications, both internally and externally.. Systems not only need to connect, but they need to be able to exchange data intelligently and securely. That’s the essence of integration: enabling multiple, disparate systems to function, in effect, as a single ecosystem through the seamless flow of data from one system to another. Effective integration speeds the exchange of data, increases operational efficiency, reduces the risk human error, and ensures consistency of data from one system to the next.

The Rise of Integration Platforms

It sounds simple, but effective integration is actually very difficult to achieve. Even with advanced integration tools and APIs, building discrete interfaces and communication protocols between systems can be arduous and time consuming, particularly if they come from different providers. With more and more applications moving to the cloud, firms increasingly need to connect and coordinate the activities between on-premise and cloud-based applications. The challenge is multiplied when trying to connect with external parties, which requires added layers of security and stringent data access controls.

The need to do business with accurate, timely and readily accessible data at hand is driving demand for solutions that enable fast, reliable and secure integration at scale, across multiple applications and different environments. That demand, in turn, has given rise to a new generation of cloud-based integration platforms designed to accelerate and streamline the deployment of business-critical integrations. These platforms contain automation tools that make it easier to integrate applications running in different environments -e.g, on-premise-to-cloud or applications hosted by different business entities. These enable businesses to realize the benefits of integration with less effort and expense than in building custom integrations from scratch.

Salentica Data Broker: A Single Integration Platform for Wealth Management

A prime example of a cloud-based integration platform built for the wealth management industry is Salentica Data Broker, an SS&C Salentica solution. Because client data resides in multiple systems, both within and outside of a firm, integration is critical to ensure consistency of client data across all the applications in which it is used. Salentica Data Broker enables firms to achieve secure integration quickly and easily among their CRM, portfolio management and custodial platforms. With full data transport, mapping and transformation capabilities, Salentica Data Broker delivers a 360 oview of the client relationship through the CRM platform.

Salentica Data Broker incorporates pre-built integrations with a growing list of leading custodians for real-time data feeds, eliminating the need to build and maintain multiple discrete interfaces. It is also pre-configured for widely used portfolio management solutions. Data from the portfolio management system flow into the CRM automatically — either scheduled or on demand. With Salentica Data Broker, users can quickly view up-to-the-second positions, holdings and transactions in any client account, all through the CRM interface. Salentica Data Broker also makes it possible to export CRM data directly into financial planning solutions, which eliminates duplicate data entry into two different systems. This results in fewer errors and increased scalability within the firm.

View real-time custody and portfolio data inside your CRM system by leveraging Salentica Data Broker

Ultimately, Salentica Data Broker reduces the risks associated with maintaining redundant data in multiple systems. Even something as simple as an address change poses a risk of inconsistent data among systems. With Salentica Data Broker, a change made in one system is immediately reflected across the integrated ecosystem.

Though part of the SS&C Salentica suite of CRM solutions, Salentica Data Broker is available as a stand-alone platform and supports third-party CRM systems, which include the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce platforms, including Financial Services Cloud. Salentica Data Broker also leverages the Microsoft Azure platform, ranked by Gartner, a leading technology, research, and advisory company.

Integration is one more avenue for wealth management firms to gain a competitive edge. A cloud-based integration platform makes it easier and more cost effective to implement integrations that ensure the integrity of data across multiple systems. By bringing together client data from CRM, custodial and portfolio management platforms, Salentica Data Broker helps firms drive greater operational efficiency, better informed decisions and world class client service.