In the WealthTech Talks interview series, we interview senior executives from leading wealth management firms, solution providers, and WealthTech influencers to learn more about them, their journey, their perspectives on the market, and how they see the future of wealth management.
For this issue of WealthTech Talks, we caught up with Jim Marks, CEO of WealthHub Solutions. Built on the Salesforce.com platform, WealthHub is known as the CRM for trust companies and family offices.
In this interview, Marks shared his insight into the role of a CRM for family office and trust company fiduciary needs. Marks also shared his views on productivity gains made possibly through automation that can leverage all information being maintained in a single, secure data store.
Could you provide a brief introduction to your business?
WealthHub provides an end-to-end CRM and administrative system designed to address the unique relationship and asset management needs of family offices and trust companies. By organising entity, relationship, and asset information in one platform, WealthHub automates the daily functions of UHNW professionals.
In the wealth management sector, what types of clients do you primarily work with and target?
We work exclusively with fiduciaries managing UHNW relationships and assets—family offices, trust companies, law firms, and RIAs, primarily in the United States, but increasingly internationally.
Why do your existing and target clients choose to work with you? What makes your solutions relevant and distinct from your competitors
Clients choose to work with WealthHub because it delivers a CRM out of the box built to handle multi-family multi-generational relationships; complex entity (especially trust) structures, relationships, and compliance; and the management of special and unique assets. They also appreciate the flexibility
WealthHub provides in configuring its layouts, fields, and workflows for the unique needs of each client. WealthHub can offer this flexibility because it is built on top of Salesforce, so configuration changes to layouts and workflows can be done on a low-code no-code basis by our staff, no need to go into a development queue and have to wait for a new version. Clients also choose WealthHub because of its reputation for high-quality high-touch customer support from a staff that understands the operational needs of family offices and UHNW client and asset servicing.
In choosing WealthHub, family offices or trust companies do not have to settle for a CRM that is built primarily for retail wealth management or is inflexible in its workflows and processes. If they have been considering building a CRM out on their own, they can save months of management time educating consultants on their unique operational needs, years of development and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in third-party consulting or development fees.
What's next for your business? Can you share the firm's current focus and future plans, such as product development, market expansion, and strategic goals?
Our short-term development focus is on the introduction and roll out of our new digital onboarding platform for UHNW clients and assets. Onboarding trusts and UHNW families and their assets is the most complex onboarding process in retail financial services. The process today invariably involves dozens of emails back and forth between multiple clients to collect information on assets and individuals; identify and upload required documents; acquire signatures; go through underwriting review and approval processes; and satisfy all related compliance requirements.
WealthHub’s new digital onboarding module takes away the many emails, manual entry of information, and other inefficiencies in the process. It uses an onboarding portal where end clients and their advisers can see who is responsible and the status for forms that need to be filled out, documents to be uploaded, and signatures. Information filled out in forms is automatically loaded to WealthHub. As information is filled out, a list of required documents is generated and can be uploaded securely. The information and documents are then fed into underwriting and compliance workflows to complete the onboarding.
We are also exploring ways to safely incorporate AI into our product. We have been very cautious in using AI as the data we (and our clients) handle is sensitive and highly confidential (and from our interactions with family offices, we believe that many do not fully understand those risks while others blindly refuse to consider AI at all). We anticipate using AI for two initial purposes. The first is for data extraction from trust documents to populate trust document reviews. The second is for preparing for update meetings and producing follow-up tasks and workflows based on the topics in those meetings. For both of these, we are evaluating whether to develop these on our own or to integrate with partners.
Based on your experience in the wealth management sector, what key opportunities and challenges do you foresee for firms today and in the next three years?
As discussed above, we believe that the operational impact from AI presents both opportunities and challenges for firms over the next few years. Apart from its potential uses for investment analysis, AI has the potential on the operating side to make it much easier to retrieve and present information, which can dramatically change the way processes and workflows function. However, we caution against getting caught up too much in the hype and being critical in determining what it realistically can and cannot do. One of the pitfalls that enthusiasts are not paying enough attention to is the lack of accuracy and reliability in results from AI functions. And, of course, the information security issues that must be rigorously examined and vetted by any firms looking to deploy AI in any way.
Another issue that we think will be coming to the forefront concerns data availability and connectivity. An absolute requirement in pursuing more automation and efficiency is the ability to share data across systems. This will only become more important as reliable AI becomes more widely available. However, we still see many systems that do not offer modern functional APIs and other systems that are effectively putting their APIs behind paywalls and charging substantial fees for API usage. These practices will become increasingly burdensome obstacles for firms looking to improve automation and efficiency. As a result, we believe firms should be making data availability – from both a technology and cost perspective – an important criteria in evaluating their technology vendors.
About WealthHub Solutions
WealthHub Solutions provides an administrative operating platform for trust companies, family offices, and other ultra-high net worth fiduciaries. WealthHub allows trust administrators to organize all their information in one digital vault—trust details, documents, account and asset data, activity records. It leverages this digital data foundation into automated workflows for common activities like account or entity onboarding, distribution review and approval, bill payment management, or compliance reviews. Built on Salesforce, WealthHub turns CRM into the tool for UHNW advisers that dramatically improves efficiency and customer service quality while reducing risk and providing greatly enhanced management reporting. For more information, please visit WealthHubSolutions.com.
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About the WealthTech Talks Interview Series
In the WealthTech Talks interview series, we interview senior executives from leading wealth management firms, solution providers, and WealthTech influencers to learn more about them, their journey, their perspectives on the market, and how they see the future of wealth management.
Read the latest editions in the series below!
- Cory Shea, Founding Partner of Clockwork - click here to read the interview
- Patrick Spencer, Managing Director at Moneytree Software - click here to read the interview
- Anneke Stender, Executive Vice President of Plumb Bill Pay - click here to read the interview
