Spotlight on… Azqore

Sebastien Buchard, Chief Sales Officer at Azqore, joined us for a webinar in our “Spotlight on…” series. Sebastien and Antony Bream, Managing Director – EMEA & Americas at Wealth Dynamix discussed the many benefits to wealth managers of combined front to back office technologies.

Core banking and CLM: Making the combination count

When reflecting on previous experiences of installing front office technology solutions, in combination with back-office platforms, most wealth managers harbour memories of complex, interwoven infrastructures that were difficult to deploy and slow to yield value.

But life has changed.

As pressure on fees and focus on delivering hyper-personalised client service has intensified, wealth managers are looking to accelerate digital transformation projects and adopt a holistic approach. Many technology providers have responded by facilitating deployments of combined front and back-office technologies in order to drive efficiencies, cut costs, and boost productivity, while also helping relationship managers find new ways to grow revenues.

In a webinar held in the spring, Sebastien Buchard, Chief Sales Officer at Azqore, joined Antony Bream, Managing Director  – EMEA & Americas at Wealth Dynamix, to outline how this is now possible.

“A Tesla has the perfect combination of front and back-office technology,” said Bream. “Powerful, clean, fast and efficient, with the ability to present the driver with timely and incredibly useful information via a range of easy-to-interpret, graphical screens and alerts – the fastest route, the nearest charge point, the weather and road conditions, and much more. The combination of reliability, intelligence, innovation and simplicity is potent.”

The core business for the driver is to travel from A to B as quickly, safely and comfortably as possible. Likewise, a wealth manager must focus on getting the right advice to clients, as quickly and free of friction as possible, to increase AUM.

How can you achieve this?

Tailor your technology solution to match your business requirements. You wouldn’t use the Tesla for off-road driving, so why use an all-purpose customer service solution for wealth management? Many wealth managers use a generic Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool that is incapable of satisfying the special client servicing and compliance requirements of relationship management—like a Client Lifecycle Management (CLM) solution would.

Unify front and back-office solutions for a complete understanding of the client. Still today, many wealth managers must access a multitude of different applications for day-to-day client servicing. By integrating a functionally complete core banking system like Azqore, with a fully-integrated CLM solution like Wealth Dynamix, relationship managers have one login, and a single client view, which reduces administration time, drives efficiency, and delivers valuable insights into next best actions.

Eliminate unstable and unscalable legacy technology to increase reliability and improve Cost-Income Ratio (CIR). Installing a shiny new display screen in an old and unreliable gas-guzzler is a false economy. The underlying infrastructure can’t capture or deliver data to the screen in a meaningful form, so its value can never be proven. “One Azqore customer had 40 different, poorly integrated systems in daily use. Every time a new system was added, it failed to meet expectations,” said Buchard. “Azqore performs 90% of what they need—from portfolio management through to credit, accounting, and treasury— with  just one system. So the rationalisation of their technology stack and the cost savings were immense.”

Know what you are trying to achieve (and don’t settle for less). Tesla’s analytics are of little value without a screen to display the results. And the screen without a battery to power it, or the data to drive insights, is of no value at all. Wealth managers want to drive value from the huge quantity of client data they capture in the back-office, to enable relationship managers in the front-office to enrich the client experience, and maximise returns. Wealth managers seeking innovation often turn to FinTechs for the answers. But many FinTech solutions integrate poorly, or not at all, with core banking platforms. To join both pieces of the puzzle into a valuable whole, wealth managers must look for platforms with open architectures and APIs that support seamless integration.

Ultimately, it is the seamless integration of both front and back-office technologies, orchestrated into a single, cohesive combination, that enriches the client journey and ensures client satisfaction. And whether you are driving a Tesla car, or a client relationship, the quality of the ride is optimised when all the moving parts are operating in perfect harmony.

To learn more about how Wealth Dynamix and Azqore work together, contact us on [email protected]