In wake of the sub-prime crisis, wealth and asset management firms have become the fastest growth areas within financial services.  To take advantage of double-digit asset growth opportunities in 2008 and beyond, firms will need to look at business transformation, especially business process and operations improvements.

Leading wealth and asset management firms are increasingly turning to business process improvement and technology optimization to address capacity issues. For example, a major U.S. bank worked closely with the NorthStar Professional Services team to streamline and automate their wealth management process using firm and industry best practices. As a result, the bank was able to increase advisor productivity across the bank. With the improved process and technology in place, the bank can now achieve a higher return on investment when it hires additional advisors in the future.

At the highest level, it may seem there is no room for differentiation based on the client wealth workflow process because many firms have similar ways of working with clients and prospects. For instance, almost all wealth management firms start the workflow process with investor prospecting and profiling. Then they generate financial plans and proposals. Next, they design and implement portfolios for clients. Finally, they monitor and report back to clients.

However, there does remain a tremendous differentiation opportunity for firms that streamline and automate their wealth management processes.  At over 90% of the firms, advisors still use a combination of twelve un-integrated tools and manual steps to support the wealth management workflow process. This results in redundant effort, lack of compliance and preparedness for federal watches and audits, inaccurate client data and lack of client responsiveness.  Ultimately, when there are disparate systems, advisors become the integration point, and this further constrains their capacity to take on new clients and take advantage of client and asset growth opportunities.

Leading firms resolve this advisor capacity issue by transforming the way advisors collect, process, and manage information. Firms gain competitive advantage when they streamline and automate the process using an integrated advisor desktop that pulls together all of the portfolio management, analysis and data tools into one desktop platform.

To find out how NorthStar can meet your firm’s needs, call 1-866-916-8524.