Infosys Finacle on Accelerating a Modular Digital Wealth Management Offering

The wealth management industry must, many believe, play catch up. If players in the industry are to both survive and thrive, they require front-to-back digitisation to meet customer expectations, regulatory demands, enhance staff efficiency and satisfaction, and to improve cost efficiencies and boost revenues. Importantly, they need to prepare for competition from new entrants, from smaller FinTechs to Big Techs entering some of their market niches. Jagdish Joshi, Principal Consultant of Finacle Wealth Management Solution for Infosys Finacle gave his insights to the front-end world of empowered digital financial advisory and how Finacle can also provide the robust digital core wealth management engine for mid and back-office operations.

Joshi began by telling delegates that his mission was to explain the Finacle Wealth Management Solution which Finacle offers for the distribution of wealth products, primarily by the financial institutions which include banks, NBFCs and IFAs, in fact any of the players who distribute wealth products across India and globally.

“Servicing clients is the central objective,” he reported, “and what we see today is that aside from digitisation of platforms, the advisory piece is becoming ever more important as a key offering, as well as the analytics piece, which highlights returns, portfolios and which is somewhat evolved from the traditional offering of the banks and others. In short, things are moving on, and we can help you in these vital areas, as what we offer today as part of the wealth management is holistically from the front office, mid-office and back-office, all the functions.”

Real-time pictures

He explained that on the front office, there is the risk profiling, goal planning, the portfolio management, portfolio analytics, portfolio rebalancing of the customers, dashboards for the RMs. “All these are part of the same product and available on different channels, and on different technologies, for example, tablets or smartphones as well as online,” he added. “All this is real-time data which the RMs can access and which will help them to serve the customers in real-time.”

He explained that the technology can capture the data of the customers, and the reporting can be done at the customer level or at the family level.

The mid-office digestive system

“And from the mid-office perspective,” he reported, “the Finacle wealth-management platform offers 12 asset classes with the entire order management flow, the fees and charges, corporate actions, management fees, and performance fees, as well as the reconciliation of the holdings, transactions, commission structures, reconciliations, trailer fee reconciliations, all available out of the box. And so too is the reporting, compliance, and audit capabilities, also out of the box.”

He explained that this all adds up to a holistic solution from a single platform which enables clients to have just one system. “And we offer seamless interfaces with your brokers, AMCs, custodians, data providers, and you can build this out in a modular manner, all configurable to the products that you make available. Moreover, we can even include customer assets outside the platform, for example real estate, in the single holistic view to be provided to the customer.”

The RM dashboard

He then offered a short demo of the dashboard for the RM, highlighting all the key features of this 360-degree view of all the customers which he, or she, might be handling, as well as the realisation of the portfolio valuation and performance monitoring aspects. “And you can determine risk- or goal-based investing, create model portfolios, that match these criteria and future planning needs, and all of this also out of the box. Moreover, in the context of India itself, we have an online interface with BSE STAR and other local-specific functionalities, such as for RTAs, KYC, Insurance Issuers or for protection data across asset classes.”

A lively and engaging interactive session with delegates ensued in which Joshi mined down deeper into the system and especially the RM dashboard.

Snapshot or microscope, the choice is yours…

“When the RM surveys the dashboard,” he elucidated, “they can see all the data, all the families or relationships which they manage, all the prospect data and any executionary customers, all the AUM, each portfolio. And for each customer or group of customers, you can customise to drill down to up to four levels of detail, to offer you the key information you might need.” Armed with all this and research coming in from in-house or other sources, the RM evidently has an outstanding opportunity to deliver excellent ideas, products and advice.

After delving into more detail on how the system helps the RM handle customers, customer communication prompts and other key areas, Joshi highlighted the multi-asset class order, where on the same screen the RM can place orders for multiple asset classes, for example, mutual funds, equities, or other types of investments. “For different products,” he noted, “you can place the order at the same time, and there are the necessary validations are available.”

A global operation

Joshi concluded by explaining that Finacle has some 30 implementations live in 18 countries, primarily in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China and multiple other countries in the Southeast and East Asia regions. “We also have implementations in the Middle East, in Europe, so this is a global product in itself. Here in India, we have Axis Bank, and other global banks for their India operations.”

And Joshi reported that Finacle is continuously upgrading its capabilities, for example in the area of advanced portfolio management, and analytics, as well as enhancing the API framework to meet the global parameters of multiple global players who also use the platform and new enhancements on the insurance side.

Holistic transformation

“Truly digital wealth management requires holistic transformation,” Joshi stated on closing the talk. “The result should be that everyone in the bank can innovate as they will have the tools and technology and processes to enable them to do so. The wealth management industry is indeed evolving fast, faster than ever before. Ubiquitous digitisation, growing customer expectations, regulatory initiatives, and new competition from FinTechs are driving this change.”

“To succeed,” he maintained, “you need to keep pace with changes and stay ahead. Develop agility to innovate rapidly and continuously to become a truly digital business. The Finacle Wealth Management Solution is a front to back office solution designed to give you a strong foundation to power your digital transformation.”