InvestCloud’s cScore Drill-down: Client Document and Data-driven reporting
In this week’s post on InvestCloud’s cScoring process we come to Client Document and Data-driven reporting. With these we come to the elements that are the most important tools for servicing existing relationships and giving them a reason to visit your site. It is with the addition of these two that your site becomes a client portal and not simply a marketing website. In the past we have written much on the importance of client reporting. Following are the keys to keep in mind. Client Document Reporting. While paper will some day go away, documents never will. There will always be a need, legally and otherwise, to take a snapshot in time of trades, balances, gains, losses and portfolio positions. Likewise those periodic documents that offer a consolidated view of performance will continue to be the cornerstone of client communications in an advisory relationship. In the simplest sense, with Client Document Reporting you move this exercise from print and paper, to automated upload and storage into a secure vault in the cloud. Because this process is relatively easy to set-up and manage and can save a firm both time and money over print and mail, it has been broadly adopted by managers. In terms of how we score this factor, we give added points for those services that have the ability to automate the process, and give clients the ability to add documents. InvestCloud’s document reporting applet is especially useful for allowing you or your clients to archive snapshots of any view from any applet at any time. Given the power of the InvestCloud applets to allow for very flexible and sophisticated filtering of account and relationship views, being able to capture and save particular views can be quite valuable. Client Data-driven Reporting. What has emerged as the best-practices standard for client portal reporting is for firms to offer interactive, position-level data-driven reporting. It is the same kind of reporting now commonly offered by brokerage firms. This quality of reporting was, until recently, cost-prohibitive except for the largest wealth management firms. Now it has become both cost effective and easy to implement even for firms managing less than $100M in assets. That said, because many firm’s are not aware of these most affordable cloud-based options, like those offered by InvestCloud, it is still common for firms to take half measures by putting links on their sites to custodians with whom they work. This has the limitation of not only giving up control over branding, messaging and report structure, but also of offering clients a consolidate view of assets unless the firm required clients to use a single custodian. As we mentioned in an earlier post, one of the interesting findings in our recent 2013 client survey is how many money managers still question whether clients expect this level of reporting from their advisors. As stated, the reason this was surprising is that we know from industry statistics, recent demographic research and InvestCloud’s own
internal monitoring of server activity that clients in fact very much prefer the convenience and currency of online account access. We know, for instance, that when a firm upgrades from delivering document PDF’s to an online vault to fully interactive account web-access that the number of client web-site visits go up by 300% to 400%. We also know that over 50% of InvestCloud clients that adopt fully interactive data-driven reporting report that they are able to “substantially reduce or eliminate paper reporting entirely”. That end-investor clients are willing to give up their paper reports suggests that they trust and prefer online access. Add to this, the strong demographic case for client demand which according a recent study by the Pew Internet and American life project has the majority of 65+ year olds now online, with 61% of all adult now doing banking or investing online, it’s clear why so many advisors are now considering this transition. This also explains why we give such weight to this factor in our cScoring process. In fact, the reason that InvestCloud has invested so heavily in our cReporting platform, is that the weight of our own client experience along with industry and demographic evidence, renders an one unquestionable conclusion: Any advisor that intends to remain competitive as the boomer generation inherits assets from their parents, must offer daily, cloud-based data-driven reporting to their clients. In our next posting, we will pick up with our next to last cScore area, the use of Video. We will discuss how effectively well-produced short videos can be for communicating both the “what” and especially the “why” that differentiates your firm. The following week we will finish with our final element, Mobility. The adoption curve for Tablets is off the charts, and clients -- both young and old -- are not only buying them, they are using them far more as well. This has key implications for how your clients will prefer you to deliver your client reporting. If you would like more information on InvestCloud’s website design or 100 point cScore visit us at www.investcloud.com or click here to request a demo.