Recently, SS&C leaders hosted a gathering of some of the country’s largest and fastest-growing wealth management firms for its annual Advisory Executive Forum. This event provided a platform for senior principals from these firms to discuss strategies for tackling the myriad challenges of today's industry. Amidst a backdrop of impressive growth and innovation within SS&C's wealth and investment technologies solutions, attendees were given a glimpse into the future of advisory services, marked by integration, expansion, and a relentless pursuit of excellence.
Driving Growth
Steve Leivent, SS&C co-general manager of SS&C Advent, opened the day by welcoming the attendees to the Forum and sharing some impressive numbers and trends driving SS&C's advisory business success.
“With the combination of recent acquisitions and integrations of new business lines, we now have over $3.5 trillion in assets on the Black Diamond Wealth Platform, serving over 2,500 firms, representing 470,000 users accessing us daily,” Leivent shared. “As a result, we are continuing to make investments to create a truly unique and comprehensive platform, integrating all of the tools to work better together, enabling you to provide a superior advisor and client experience.”
Recent integrations and product extensions include expanded financial planning capabilities by embedding third-party financial planning software content from popular platforms, such as RightCapital (with others to follow), directly into Black Diamond, rendering them in the application to deliver a consistent experience. Additionally, Black Diamond has developed native financial planning capabilities, further enhancing the value of the total platform.
Efficiency Redefined
To better manage client relationships, Black Diamond now provides a purpose-built CRM solution that automatically contextually synchs contact information. If an advisor updates a client address in the CRM, it is automatically updated throughout the platform. CRM is now also being offered as a service, with many administration and configuration functions provided by expert SS&C personnel, further leveraging back-office staff to pursue more value-added functions.
As alternative assets become more popular among advisors to provide better portfolio diversification and new ways to increase yield, the demand for better reporting capabilities is growing dramatically. This need dovetails nicely with the launch of SS&C Accord, which helps aggregate siloed data, deliver analytics, and leverage a single source for alts data instead of having to go to multiple third-party portals.
Beyond Boundaries
Another major capability featured at the Forum was SS&C Rendezvous, an investment platform that saves time, lowers implementation costs, and personalizes investment decision-making to elevate the client experience. Powered by ALPS Advisors, Rendezvous provides manager research, model construction, proposal generation, and tax-efficient rebalancing.
Rounding out the platform discussions at the Forum was the introduction of the Risk & Compliance Intelligence (RCI) Digital Message Surveillance (DMS) Module. This comprehensive, advisor-centric surveillance and archiving solution integrates email, text, social media corporate communications (like Microsoft Teams), and Black Diamond Relationship Timeline messages into RCI, making it available via the Black Diamond platform. The DMS module ensures that Black Diamond Relationship Timeline surveillance is streamlined, removing the need to export data periodically. With regulators focusing on “off-channel” communications and imposing record-setting fines, DMS empowers compliance professionals to identify and follow up on potential issues in an automated and streamlined fashion.
A key component of the Forum is our client's ability to engage directly with the teams responsible for developing and implementing each of these product and platform updates. Attendees networked with our talented professionals, asked questions, and provided user feedback that help enable the platform’s constant improvement.
Stay tuned for our next blog post, which will discuss the mega-trends in the wealth management space discussed during the event, including insights from market researcher Celent and research from Schwab Advisor Services’ benchmarking studies.
For more information on how SS&C can support the unique needs of your wealth management business, request your personal demo, call 1-800-727-0605, or email info@advent.com.
