A technology platform must provide a robust foundation for digitalising the traditional investment and trading businesses, thereby significantly reducing process time and improving operational efficiency by minimising touchpoints. It must also pave the way for new-generation businesses by drastically cutting down the product development time using Low Code No Code (LCNC) framework, offering seamless connectivity using open APIs and cloud-native technologies, enabling channels, as well as providing useful insights.

This is important because the total investible assets of high net worth clients have continued to rise. Thus, there is an ongoing hunt for the right opportunities to deploy these assets in a manner consistent with client’s investment goals. It is therefore essential that investors, and their advisors, have access to a wide range of asset types. This means access to different geographies as well as various asset classes – shares, mutual funds, ETFs, bonds, foreign exchange, derivatives, structured products, and insurance policies. Thus, it is a mix of traditional investment products as well as new-generation products.

While investment opportunities are increasing, the regulatory environment around the distribution process is becoming more prescriptive. It is crucial for any private bank or asset manager to ensure complete compliance with all the relevant regulations. Banks need to achieve these goals while keeping a lid on the costs. This requires a single-minded focus on digitalisation. This is precisely why we talk about digital transformation which encompasses the use of technology as well as change in current processes.

Digital transformation achieves multiple goals:

• Smooth customer journey
• Minimizing manual intervention
• Empowering the investment adviser with the right tools and information
• Access to a wide range of asset classes
• Access to assets in all geographies, across time zones
• Ability to customise product offerings to fit every customer’s requirements
• Compliance with regulations
• Seamless processing of all investment- related transactions
• Keeping the customer and the relationship manager fully informed about the performance of investments
• Reducing the cost of the entire process.

Main challenges today:

• Historic assets are not fully digitalised, and hence not properly presented
• New generation products cannot be offered on a scalable basis since the incumbent systems don’t support them
• Increasing operational risks as relationship managers and clients are connected remotely and the existing processes not entirely digital
• Online access given to clients is often non-interactive and static, whereas it should be dynamic and connected to all markets so that clients can carry out their own analysis and make their investment decisions.

Figure 1: Our mission - to digitalise the entire product distribution ecosystem

FinIQ’s Wealth Core System (WCS) is a flexible and scalable modular system that covers the front, the middle, and the back-office functions. It has the capability to capture and process any asset type from traditional to the more sophisticated wealth products.

For traditional instruments like bonds, funds, shares, FX cash, and deposits, FinIQ’s WCS creates a uniform asset recording framework that captures all aspects including asset details, order details, regulatory information, settlement instructions, client correspondence, documents, statements, income generation, position squaring, corporate actions, renewals, P/L attribution, unrealised and realised P/L, and much more.

The entire journey from trade idea, indicative quote, firm quote, execution via trading venue, order fulfilment to trade completion, all the way to maturity or liquidation of the trade, happens in one system, making it easy to have a consistent set of data, and available in real-time.

For new generation products, including complex OTC derivatives, equity-linked / index-linked structured products, commodities, Lombard wealth lending, algo trading, and even recurring instalment-based investment schemes, FinIQ deploys a universal product framework that allows a smooth end-to-end handling of the respective trade, asset, or investment scheme.

Computations are based on cohesive data models and consistent inputs, thus requiring very little or no work to be done outside the FinIQ system. The system extends upstream to link with the world’s leading product manufacturers and downstream into the settlement and general ledger core systems by posting various cash and non-cash accounting entries.

FinIQ offers elevated customer experience by allowing end clients to access their holdings and assets, compare them to model portfolios, discover prices, and information of any asset, including retrieving pertinent documentation. Such actions can be performed by any digital channel, including the web and mobile. Clients accessing this information can obtain a better product view and make an insightful investment decision.

The system empowers the relationship manager (including investment advisers) to assist their clients more effectively. It provides them with the right tools not only to achieve their business goals but also to offer a better journey to their clients. Such a digital experience includes easy onboarding, profiling, accessing eligible products, monitoring customer positions, price discovery, proposal generation, tracking customer activity, and feedback. The system gives the banks the ability to authorise their relationship managers to execute investment ideas with the click of a button. And the digital workflow significantly reduces the time taken by the traditional process of price request-to-execution, thus offering clients timely access to the markets.

In addition, the system provides product teams with the ability to maximise the visibility of their product. They want user-friendly methods that assist in idea generation, idea broadcast, back-testing, scenario analysis, tracking interest, and orders from various channels.

There is a positive impact on sales channels too. Banks prefer deploying a single platform for cross-asset execution rather than multiple impractical platforms that deal with only one asset at a time. Therefore, they are working with FinIQ to enhance their existing sales channels (web / mobile banking) or build new ones such as white-labelled platforms offered to any type of client (individual, asset managers, etc.) using APIs, and either FinIQ UX or an in-house solution.

Our ecosystem is a full pre-trade, trade, and post-trade infrastructure that supports the distribution and the management of any investment product from the most complex structured and OTCs, to traditional products such as equities, funds, bonds, and insurance policies.

Why front-runners in private wealth are partnering with FinIQ
Industry leaders collaborate with us to increase profitability and support their future growth plans. Some of the objectives we help them reach are:

• Improve their offering of a multiasset environment where customers can quickly access various asset types and markets
• Meet increased regulatory demand for compliance, at the same time keeping the business profitable
• Adhere to the increased demand for internal checks and governance, which requires a flexible infrastructure and seamless communication between various process points and systems
• Generate new ideas that can be easily configured and offered to clients so that the bank has a competitive advantage
• Migrate to a digital world where the cost of ownership is lower, and processes and workflows are more efficient and productive

FinIQ’s system workflow for wealth is a modular front to end complete solution. It is highly configurable by the end-user using ours flagship design toolkit User Configured Products (UCP). The system is able to process and record all types of wealth assets and supports virtually every existing business workflow. All the processes shown in the diagram below can be digitalised using our system.

Figure 2: FinIQ’s system workflow

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Click here to access the full UK WealthTech Landscape Report 2020.