Why platform integration is important for clients

Origo chief executive Anthony Rafferty acknowledges that a lack of integration between platforms, back offices and advisers’ tools means firms are being forced to operate at a “fraction of their potential”, costing time, resource and money, as well as affecting service to clients.

Kingswood Group wealth planner, Georgia Ball, likewise tells of how platform and back-office integration reduces administration for support staff.

“It also makes advisers’ lives simpler, particularly when having unexpected discussions with clients, as everything is in one place. It is also great for a client to be able to have one place to view all their investments.”

Indeed, many back-office providers offer client portals that enable clients to see valuations for all their assets in one place, especially when not all their assets sit on one platform, says Mariam Pourshoushtari, an analyst at research consultancy Platforum.

Where there is a lack of integration between a platform and back office, Ball notes how this can mean a client has outdated figures, as the client portal is unable to pull through live feeds.

“If data is not up to date, there’s a risk of inaccurate advice being provided to the end client,” warns Robin Bevan, chief executive of Sprint Enterprise Technology, which is behind the integration hub Finio.

The benefits of an integration hub approach

Bevan says a benefit of integrating via a hub is that, rather than building and maintaining connections to more than 100 software systems, the platform needs to build and maintain one connection to the data hub, which makes data available to all software systems.

“Likewise for each software system, rather than building a point-to-point connection to more than 30 platforms, they can build one connection to the hub and gain access to data from all platforms,” he adds.

Consistency of data is another benefit of integrating via a hub, says Bevan. “Any software system connecting to a data hub will get platform data fully normalised across all platforms – that is, the data from one platform is in the identical format to that of another. This makes it far easier for the software system concerned to interpret and ingest the data.”

Ross Easton, head of platform proposition at Scottish Widows, says the provider is continually evolving to integrate with key back-office systems.

There is a knock-on effect here, in that it frees up staff time to work on other areas of the business.Anthony Rafferty, Origo

“We deliver bulk data solutions enabled by Origo hub technology, and have also built an electronic fee and commission reconciliation (EDI) remuneration solution that drops remuneration statements directly into adviser systems. The platform is integration ready for more than 95 per cent of CRM market valuation coverage," says Easton.

“Using the Origo integration hub, we have also created account opening functionality for back-office systems to use, and are currently in build with several back-office providers; in addition, we are planning for delivery of bulk transaction history data.”

Indeed, Origo's Rafferty describes valuations, bulk valuations, account opening, remuneration and transfer tracking as key tasks for firms in delivering service to clients, or improving the remuneration process.

Integrated valuation statements, for example, can help firms produce suitability and review reports faster, notes Rafferty, and integrated remuneration can help firms be paid quicker.

“There is a knock-on effect here, in that it then frees up staff time to work on other areas of the business, rather than being tied to manually inputting and checking data.”

He highlights how time can then be spent dealing with more cases, or focusing on tasks that add value to the client and the business.

“It provides the scope to either increase the volume of work a firm can handle, and/or deploy staff to other tasks that will help deliver more and better value to clients, helping to improve retention and new business rates,” says Rafferty.

And although management information on a platform is generally very accurate, Pourshoushtari at Platforum notes how business is commonly placed on multiple platforms, with individual clients also sometimes having assets on more than one platform.

“Having platform and back-office integration should allow the back office to aggregate the platform data seamlessly with its own records and data from other providers, offering a richer picture of the health of the advice business,” says Pourshoushtari.

Chloe Cheung is a senior features writer at FT Adviser