A major problem for many firms, she says, is that their size and scale require them to keep their old technology operating at full capacity. Because they’re so busy maintaining their systems and their processes to keep the business running, they rarely have an opportunity to innovate and invest in new systems. That creates a vicious cycle that, if it persists for too long, can lead to a painful and fragmented user experience, both for clients and advisors.
“One client came to us, and we were getting ready to integrate some of our technology with their in-house systems,” Shamberg says. “We were about to do an SSO handoff, and we were asking for their client identifier to log in. We found out they had more than 20 client identifiers to log in to their systems; they didn’t have a central data hub with a master identifier.”
Even now, such problems could be festering within many enterprises in the North American wealth space. The initial impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 lit a fire under countless companies to accelerate their plans for digital adoption. Years-long timelines were compressed into months, and wealth technology firms saw heightened business as firms looked for digital solutions to maintain client service.
“It’s shocking to think that firms could have latent technology issues like that, and it often proves to be the case,” she says. “So that’s when we hunker down, get our best people on the line, and say ‘we’ll figure this out.’”
Shamberg says InvestCloud’s focus is to help transform the financial industry’s approach to digital. That means understanding wealth managers’ need to retain and grow their clients, which goes hand in hand with obtaining a level of operational efficiency.
