Ranking Wealth Management Platform Vendors: 2012

There has been renewed interest in the infrastructural support and seamless integration that wealth management platforms offer. Heading into the next year, Celent expects spending on platforms to increase 6-7%.

In the report Ranking Wealth Management Platform Vendors, Celent examines nine leading wealth management platform solutions in the North American market. The following vendors are profiled: Finantix, Fiserv, FIS, InformaIS, InvestEdge, SEI, SunGard, Temenos, and Thomson Reuters.

Volatile market performance and lackluster economic conditions have led to investors choosing less risky investments (cash and fixed income), which are less profitable and impact product yields for wealth managers.

“As a way to control costs, wealth managers are looking to outsource as much as possible while simultaneously controlling the number of vendor relationships. While these desires may seem contradictory, wealth management platforms support several components of the advisory process, eliminating the need for many point solutions,” says Alexander Camargo, Analyst with Celent’s Securities and Investments Group and coauthor of the report. “A platform’s open architecture offers the ability to integrate with third party and in-house solutions. Thus, platform vendors become a central point of contact for wealth managers to make queries about integration, about functionality support, etc. This introduces a new level of accountability and clarity in vendor-client relationships. ”

“Wealth managers have no choice but to expand their target client range and introduce new channels of service. This can potentially increase the complexity of managing multiple systems, functionalities, and user interfaces,” adds Isabella Fonseca, Research Director and coauthor of the report. “Platforms allow administrators and enterprises to manage these different channels in a consistent and streamlined manner.”

This report begins with a definition of wealth management platforms, and the criteria for vendor participation in the report. A look at current market and technology trends follows. The report features a detailed profile for each wealth management platform vendor, identifying its strengths and weaknesses. Also included in the study is a vendor comparison section, which evaluates each solution’s features and functionalities and further compares vendors by various functionalities. The last sections include a ranking of wealth management platform technology vendors through Celent’s ABCD dimensions and considerations regarding where the wealth management platform market is headed.

This 77-page report contains 18 figures and 33 tables.