Williams De Broë, the UK-based investment manager, has selected
Third Financial Software to provide the firm with a fully
integrated wealth management platform, tercero.
It comes as UK-based Third Financial starts to
pick up speed in the wealth market, announcing a 300 percent
increase in revenue in the full year to November. De Broë is the
business’ 14th client win since it started operations in January
2008.
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The tercero product is currently deployed
across Williams de Broë’s UK offices, and the system is expected to
be fully implemented by 2010.
The technology will reach 300 users managing
600,000 accounts, according to Gary Linieres, a founding director
at Third Financial.
Tercero integrates its portfolio management
software with Microsoft technologies to provide solutions for
portfolio management as well as client relationship management and
internet access for investors.
“Third Financial were selected due to their
strong and proven management team as well as their ability to
provide a modern, scalable, platform unencumbered by legacy
technology,” said David Howard, chief operating officer at Williams
De Broë.
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By GlobalDataLinieres added: “Williams de Broë is one of
the fastest-growing and forward-thinking organisations in the UK
wealth management market.
“Our relationship with them will enable us to
produce an innovative product supported by some of the
highest-quality business knowledge in this sector today.”
The Third Financial name comes from its
incarnation as the third technology business its management team
have set up.
The two previous businesses were asset
management software provider ACT, now one of the biggest companies
of its kind globally, and Financial Objects, which was acquired by
Temenos in September 2008.
“The largest reason we set up the business was
because we felt the private client market was heading in a certain
direction with regulation and compliance and client driven
requirements,” Linieres said.
He said there had been a failure of wealth
management firms to join up information held on client relationship
management systems with investment managers.
“Having these gaps can work fine in a bull
market, but clients start to ask questions when they are losing
money,” Linieres added.
Linieres said there was an opportunity for
start-up organisations like Third Financial to take advantage of
changes in the industry that can make implementing solutions
cheaper.
“Some of our rivals are older businesses, set
up in the 1990s,” Linieres said.
“They will tend to feature older products,
which are quite rich in terms of functionality but that are now
showing a certain amount of ‘clunkiness’.
“We thought that meant it was time for a fresh
technical approach.”
There was a particular opportunity for
boutique wealth management firms in the current environment,
Linieres said. While there has been speculation in the industry
that smaller firms could struggle because of increased regulatory
and compliance costs, Linieres believes they can benefit from
developments in technology that make systems cheaper.
“Technology is really giving these boutique
firms the ability to compete,” he said.
Linieres said he expects clients to continue
to turn their backs on investment banking wealth business models to
more boutique wealth management firms in 2010, as they favour a
more personalised and customised service.
In particular, he said stock broking firms and
independent financial advisers would start to soak up more of a
share of the high net worth market, while boutique firms and
private banks would shift upstream to the ultra high net worth
market.
