Without naming clients' names, have there been any recent implementation projects you have done that have gone particularly well/presented certain difficulties from which you have learned important lessons?

We have had a number of very successful projects recently and the feedback received from the banks and relationship managers on those projects has been extremely positive. In fact, with a few of the large projects involving thousands of relationship managers, we’ve experienced different offices requesting to be brought forward in the implementation scheduling because they were so impressed with how the Charles River IMS helps with their daily tasks.

As you’d expect, every project has its challenges, and often these can be cultural because clients have been working a certain way for many years.  A lesson learnt from early projects is having the right buy-in from the business at the very beginning makes it easier for change to be not just accepted, but embraced.

When using technology, is there a mistake that you see wealth managers making that you think worth drawing attention to?
Time and again we see banks persist with deploying tactical solutions to meet an immediate business need, whether regulatory or product related, which over the medium to long term proves to be incredibly expensive.  A strategic IT project to overhaul platforms is often considered a lengthy and expensive activity with little obvious benefit and is consequently often viewed as a low priority. The experience of a number of our clients suggests in reality, a strategic overhaul of the front office platform delivers significant benefits to relationship managers and their clients, while reducing the overall IT maintenance costs once the project is complete.

There has been a fair degree of M&A in wealth management at the moment and this of course can raise tech challenges such as in merging different systems, or other forms of integration. 

Please elaborate on what you think are the issues here.

A number of banks involved in M&A activity are on their second or third acquisition now and have learned from previous experiences, leading to a more streamlined process. The migration and reconciliation of data from a legacy system is always going to have its challenges, but with the right front office platforms in place that seamlessly integrates data from multiple sources, the impact for relationship managers and clients can be minimised. Integration itself these days is largely a solvable challenge for most IT teams and technology providers because it’s something we are all experienced in from previous projects – it really comes down to cost and timeline pressures.

The Asian wealth management industry is still more "transactional" than in Europe, for example. So what sort of systems tend to be more in demand and can you give some examples?
Yes, the business in Asia is still currently more transactional, however there is a slow but steady shift of assets towards discretionary products and we expect this trend to continue over time. At the moment we’re seeing a demand for systems which can present relationship managers with a consolidated view of a client's portfolio. This is growing in importance as banks launch new products. We’re also seeing more interest in cross-asset electronic trading platforms. Historically each asset class has been traded by the bank on a separate system, but the ongoing cost to manage multiple systems, including staff training costs, is becoming more of an issue.

Are there products and services at Charles River that are coming on stream at the moment that you would like to discuss briefly?
Charles River is continually improving the solution set by enhancing the Charles River IMS and the value added services which form the total solution offered to our clients. We recently launched our investment book of record capability as an integrated component of the solution and we’re seeing strong demand for this within the banks as a way of streamlining information delivery to front office users. This is especially so for banks with multiple booking centre systems and multi-strategy products such as UMAs. We’ve also seen a lot of interest in our "Wealth Hub" product, which links the banks with the asset managers who provide models or services around discretionary portfolios.