Simon Cornwell, co-founder of Vermilion, spoke recently to this publication about the work it is doing in the Asia wealth management market, and its future prospects.

Vermilion Software is a global provider of client reporting and communications software and services to the financial asset management industry. The firm was established in 2003 and delivers its flagship product, Vermilion Reporting Suite (VRS) to clients across Europe, North America and Asia.

Simon Cornwell, co-founder of Vermilion, has extensive experience of the financial markets having been involved in a number of start-ups and new business divisions. Over the past two decades he has held a number of senior marketing and business development roles, giving him a unique perspective on the industry. Cornwell recently relocated to Asia to drive Vermilion’s growth in this region.

WealthBriefingAsia caught up with him to ask how the new challenge was working out.

What is your role?  
I am responsible for Vermilion’s strategic and day-to-day Sales and Marketing activities across our three main markets: Europe, North America and Asia. Thankfully, we have strong sales teams in Europe and US, allowing me to focus my time on Asia. This is an exciting market place with lots of potential for Vermilion.

What sort of services do you provide to the wealth management industry?
The most important service is the Vermilion Reporting Suite. This is a best-of-breed, standalone client reporting solution. It is multilingual and integrates with most back office platforms. VRS enables clients to output reports in a flexible range of formats, including Word Excel PowerPoint HTLM and PDF.

We also offer our clients best-practice consultancy services that combine our market knowledge with extensive client experience. Linking this in with our implementation services means our clients receive the most effective and efficient services from Vermilion. We also offer hosting on a case by case basis.

Finally, we provide regional support. VRS is very much a business user system, enabling our clients to advance their reporting requirements, independently of Vermilion. To support our clients with this we have a help-desk based in Asia which integrates with the follow-the-sun support centers in Europe and the US.

Where do you see Vermilion adding value in the wealth management/private banking business across Asia?
Beyond automating client reporting through VRS, there are a number of areas in which we add value to wealth management and private banking businesses. VRS can lower the cost of the reporting process without compromising functionality or quality. Our clients also benefit from being able to deliver many types of reports to their clients; from complex to straight through reporting. In addition they can enrich these reports with market commentary and graphs, all at boardroom quality.

As a result their clients receive a more efficient, timely service allowing them to make decisions faster. VRS can produce all report types, in Eastern and Western languages, automatically translating static or dynamic text with our translation services. This is crucial when delivering a service in Asia. Additionally, the solution connects directly to all the underlying data systems, removing any user errors that may arise and allowing audited data to be used multiple times throughout the reporting process.

What are the short to medium term goals for Vermilion in the region?
Our initial goal was to fulfill on the promise made to our customers in Asia to have an office here. Next, I intend to increase market awareness, building on Vermilion’s success in Europe and US. We already have highly-skilled technical staff in the region and plan to expand on this over the coming months. The medium term goal is to be the leader in the Asian client reporting market, which is an exciting challenge.  

The cost income ratios are squeezing some banks can Vermilion help to deliver a solution to this?
Yes, absolutely this is where we can really help banks. By delivering the end-to-end process, from the extraction of data through to the report delivery via email or a portal, Vermilion significantly lowers the report production costs and also enriches the process workflow. We have a number of case studies that can support my statement.

What would you say is the benefit to wealth managers in using your products? Is it just a cost issue or are there other services that apply?
Yes as you say, it is not just financial benefits that are available. Companies can efficiently handle all those hidden time consuming tasks that get push aside and forgotten when something more urgent comes up. For example; error rates, data and commentary reuse, data quality, end-of-month or end-of-day report runs, client take on, quicker reaction time to client change requirements, just to name a few. So there are huge benefits in implementing our reporting platform.

Asia is seeing an increase in independent asset managers and family offices: are your products and services saleable to this group?
Yes, very much so. VRS is a very scalable solution, designed to address all company sizes, we currently service firms with $1 billion of AuM, through to $2 trillion, so the platform is extremely flexible. We also have a number of third party administrators and property asset management companies as clients. If a company needs to automate a regular report, month-in-month out, delivering a high quality output from disparate data sources, VRS can address it.

What are your hiring plans for the rest of the year?
This is not a call for recruitment agents to contact me; however we are taking on a number of new technical staff members over the coming months to support our growing client base.  

Are you working on any new products?
Yes, we have a very flexible portal that is integrated with the VRS reporting suite. This enables all types of reports to be presented securely to our clients, their sales people and the customers of our clients. It provides access to charts and graphs enabling the user to look-through or drill-down on the information presented. There is video streaming and many other features within, delivering consistent client branding throughout.  

What proportion of Vermilion business do you see coming from Asia in say five years’ time?
That is a very good question and tricky one to answer. Asia, or the APAC region, is both growing in size and developing in terms of maturity, as a result many financial firms are attracted to the region. Vermilion had the foresight to see this some time ago so started planning and made an investment early. Our plan is to have at least one third of our revenues coming from this region over the next two to three years, past that, who knows.