This publication recently caught up with one of the founders of a client reporting and software firm working in the wealth management space. The Asian market is one of its priorities, as it explains here.

In the world of fintech and the wealth management space, one of the firms competing is Vermilion Software, a business that has been around now for more than a decade. The Asia-Pacific market, needless to say, is a potentially lucrative one. This publication recently interviewed Simon Cornwell, co-founder, global sales and marketing director. Cornwell is, significantly, based in Singapore, a city-state that has seen considerable digital innovations: when Credit Suisse’s private bank, for example, launched its own digital platform earlier this year, it chose Singapore as the place. 

Cornwell has held sales and marketing roles in the financial software market for the past 20 years. He has been involved with a number of new start-ups and divisions of companies, running a number of different sales and marketing teams. And he is one of the founding directors of Vermilion, founded in 2003. In the current role, Cornwell is responsible for the development of the company strategy, global sales and marketing for Vermilion. He has also spoken at April's WealthBriefingAsia conference in Raffles, Singapore, and his firm was crowned "Best Client Communications and Reporting" vendor at the WBA Awards in Singapore for the second year in a row. So this is a firm with some cause to celebrate - but not, of course, be complacent. Among other developments for 2015, Vermilion opened an office in Australia as part of its regional expansion.

In broad terms, what parts of the Asia market does Vermilion currently serve with its client reporting and communications solutions? What financial sector segments (e.g. private banking, wealth management, other) does it particularly focus on?
Vermilion is currently focusing on the APAC region, which includes Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Australian markets, in all the major asset management sectors including wealth management and private banking.

How would you say Asia-based firms are positioned, relative to those in other regions, in their use of client reporting solutions? Are they doing better/worse than, say, those in the US, Europe, other? Are there outstanding examples of good practice and are there cases where progress has been poor?

My feeling is that the APAC companies are behind the curve relative to the other regions we market to.  The main reason is that there has been a lack of client reporting vendors focused on the region. Firms are typically addressing the challenges in client reporting as they grow by adding more staff, rather than adopting an automated solution.

When talking to existing or potential clients about the benefits of your offerings, what do you typically tell them? What sort of requirements, needs do they have?
It is very much an education process. Traditionally, client reporting vendors have poorly marketed their systems in this region, so a number of the firms I am talking to have never heard of a us or thought about the automation of client reporting.

I would typically highlight the business benefits that Vermilion delivers, rather than the technology. When firms implement a solution like VRS the returns are evident; enabling them grow their client bases without the need to increase their staff. It also enables them to produce higher quality reports in a timely manner, thus delivering a better service to their clients. In addition to the solution, I introduce them to our local team of experienced, specialist implementation staff. They all have a solid background in client reporting and VRS, which goes down extremely well. We bring expertise to the region which firms would not normally get access to.

Their needs are exactly the same as in Europe or the US: multi-lingual is high on their agenda as you would expect, but requiring a heavily Eastern language report output and GUI, which fits in well with the VRS solution. 

Do you get many cases in Asia of firms using you because they are unhappy about an existing system, either externally provided or done in-house? What sort of complaints, bugbears are you hearing about?
No not really. Most companies have simply not come across a client reporting vendor before. They all want local support, so going to Europe or the US for support is not really acceptable to the IT departments. For this reason firms have tended to build their own systems or create large teams of client reporting staff. The key is to have a local presence, with sales, implementations and support personnel on hand.

Is he seeing signs of firms getting positive financial returns from investing in client reporting? Is this becoming a clear positive value differentiator? How can this be measured?
Client reporting is typically not viewed as a profit centre, except when a firm wins a mandate because they can address a specify client reporting need. Firms in Asia do, however, see a very good return on investment operationally, with efficiencies throughout the client services division and reduction in head count.