5 Best Investment Manager Software Platforms
5 Best Investment Manager Software Platforms
Investment management is a highly specialized field and requires specialized investment management software to help RIAs perform investment management activities efficiently. The process of determining the best investment software is very time-consuming, there are just too many options out there. If you end up implementing a platform that is incompatible with your firm’s unique processes, it can cost you money as well as business. To help you in selecting the right investment management platform, we tested different investment manager software platforms available in the market and took feedback from the industry players and experts regarding the efficacy and usefulness of the platforms they are using. Based on our findings, we have compiled a list of the 5 best investment manager software platforms. In this article, we will discuss the top 5 investment manager software platforms along with their pros and cons.
➢ Digital client onboarding
➢ Funding account with Automated Customer Account Transfer Service & Automated Clearing House services (ACATS & ACH).
➢ Advanced financial planning tools
➢ Customizable investment frameworks and investment models
➢ Cutting-edge trading, portfolio rebalancing, and compliance features
➢ A somewhat overwhelming number of features
➢ So far supports only Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, NFS, National Financial and Pershing.
AdvisorEngine ranks number one on our list of top 5 investment manager software platforms because of its distinguishing features, tailor-made for fulfilling the requirements of investment managers. From client onboarding, financial planning models, to portfolio trading, rebalancing, and management, AdvisorEngine seems to have a module for basically everything.
Here is what we liked the most in AdvisorEngine:
AdvisorEngine provides a quick method to open clients’ accounts with its digital client onboarding feature. Because of this useful feature, clients are no longer required to make frequent trips to the financial advisor’s office to complete the endless process of documentation and signatures. The dashboard is sleek and modern. Thanks to its e-signature ability, an investment manager can easily get the digital signatures of clients on the custodian and firm’s documents for account opening purposes. The clients can get ACATS & ACH services for seamlessly shifting the securities from one brokerage account to another.
Apart from facilitating clients, AdvisorEngine also facilitates investment advisors in performing their day-to-day tasks. The platform provides advanced and interactive financial planning tools that create personalized plans and help investment advisors to present the plans in an interactive way to the clients. With AdvisorEngine, investment managers can customize investment models and frameworks based on the risk appetite, financial goals, and other relevant aspects of the client. Ther eis quite a bit of advanced functionality, allowing you to rebalance and manage portfolios with great control, ensuring that the portfolio remains on track to achieve the desired financial objectives keeping in view regulatory compliance.
AdvisorEngine is best-suited for investment managers and wealth management funds as the platform has been developed keeping in view the unique needs of investment managers and wealth management firms. The only downside is that the platform provides so much information and features that a new user may feel overwhelmed by the array of useful features, so much so, that new users can struggle to understand the complete list of features. However, they do offer training and we were impressed with the customer support. With little practice, even a beginner user can get familiar with the user interface and use the platform to its full potential.
Unlike some of the other platforms we looked at, AdvisorEngine (and its CRM Junxure) are open technologies with lots of integrations. That means if you’re using some other system for some tasks, you can integrate them together and get the best of both worlds. This is really important in a field where people are mixing software on a regular basis and need it all to work together.
➢ Mobile, web, and cloud platforms
➢ Feature-rich client management tools
➢ Sophisticated risk management and compliance tools
➢ Interactive reporting tools
➢ Focused too much on client management & risk management
➢ Limited portfolio management and rebalancing tools
Axia Suite by Profile Software ranks second on our list of top 5 investment manager platforms. The platform is available for use on mobile, web, and cloud platforms, providing ease of access to investment managers.
Let’s discuss the key features that we liked the most in Axia Suite:
Axia Suites provides client management tools in its investment management platform, which allows investment managers to manage clients and investments simultaneously. The platform has powerful and advanced risk management tools that help investment managers accurately measure and manage the risk within tolerable limits. Regulatory requirements can be easily met with the platform’s sophisticated compliance features.
Axia Suite is predominantly a client-centric platform, with the majority of features facilitating client management. Axia Suite’s investment management platform also supports digital client onboarding. The platform’s digital client portal allows clients to view comprehensive reports about their fund’s performance and can access their accounts 24/7 without relying on their investment manager for information.
While Axia Suite does provide investment management features to handle most of the portfolio and investment management tasks, it focuses too much on risk management, compliance, and client management. The platform aids investment managers in financial planning, asset allocation, risk analysis, compliance with local and international regulatory requirements, client management and reporting, etc. Also, the platform falls short of adequately performing portfolio management and rebalancing tasks, which is where the platform needs a lot of improvement.
➢ Plenty of investment management tools
➢ Interactive investor portal on mobile and web
➢ Document management with encryption feature
➢ Workflow management
➢ Lacking in compliance and risk management features
➢ Complex portfolio rebalancing feature
Investera ranks third on our list of top 5 investment management platforms. With its robust investment and client management tools, Investera has attracted many clients and its client base is growing. Let’s discuss the features that we liked the most in Investera.
Investera gives plenty of tools to investment managers for managing portfolios of their clients. Investment managers can build and manage investment structures easily through a user-friendly interface. Complex investment structures can be easily visualized that facilitates investment managers in analyzing and understanding the critical aspects of the investment. The platform gets securities pricing feed from different vendors, enabling the investment managers to accurately value the public securities any time.
An interactive and easy-to-use investment portal gives clients access to detailed reports and graphs about the performance of their investments right on their mobile devices. Investment managers can even configure the portal to add or restrict some features as per the needs of the clients.
Another important feature that we liked in Investera is its encrypted and secured document management platform. Investment managers can store their documents securely with encryption. With its document management platform, investment managers can get another layer of security for their confidential documents by setting up a password key. The platform also has categorization, search, and tagging features to access the required documents quickly.
Investment managers can customize the workflows of their processes and assign tasks to the nominated employees at each step in the workflow, resulting in streamlining the processes according to the needs of clients and the organization.
Although the Investera platform has excellent features, there are also a few downsides that we discovered while testing the Investera platform. Let’s discuss the weak areas of Investera where it can improve.
The software has weak portfolio and compliance management features that can negatively impact the returns generated by investment managers for their clients and can create trouble for the managers and organizations in case of breaching the regulatory requirements.
The portfolio rebalancing feature in the Investera platform is complex and difficult to use. This is where Investera needs to improve to compete with other rival investment management platforms.
➢ Comprehensive portfolio & fund management features
➢ Automatic portfolio rebalancing
➢ Secure client portal
➢ Regulatory compliance features
➢ Client management features
➢ Document management not available
➢ Workflow customization and automation not available
FA Solutions ranks fourth on our list of top 5 investment management platforms. The platform offers excellent features, fulfilling most of the needs of investment managers and their clients. Let’s discuss the best points of the FA Solutions investment management platform.
The investment management platform by FA Solutions has extensive portfolio and fund management features, making it easy for investment managers to manage a large number of clients, portfolios, and funds. With FA Solutions, investment managers can select and manage securities based on sector allocations, exposure to asset classes, and market capitalization. Also, the platform allows investment managers to automatic rebalance portfolios so that the portfolio realigns with the investment objectives.
The platform offers clients secure access to the client portal that has all sorts of reports for clients to monitor their investment portfolios. Also, the regulatory compliance features of the platform ensures that internal and external compliance requirements are met while meeting the desired investment objectives. Investment managers can set investment limits and risk thresholds so that the investments stay within the tolerable thresholds.
Apart from providing traditional investment management features, FA Solutions’ platform also provides client management tools such as sharing documents with clients, storing KYC (Know Your Customer) data, and synchronizing email and calendar with Office 365.
However, FA Solutions does not provide robust document management features like AdvisorEngine and Investera. Also, the platform does not have workflow customization and automation features, which are very essential features for an investment manager.
➢ Mobile and web client portal
➢ Wide range of investment management features
➢ Portfolio trading and rebalancing features
➢ Reporting for investment managers and clients
➢ Free/low cost version
➢ No regulatory compliance features
➢ No digital client onboarding
➢ No document management feature
Oranj ranks fifth on our list of top 5 investment management platforms. The platform, like other platforms, supports many traditional investment management functions. During our testing, we found many positive points which we will discuss below:
The platform has a comprehensive client portal that can be accessed by clients through mobile phones and web. The portal has a very interactive and user-friendly interface, and users can easily operate the platform to extract information and download detailed graphs and reports from it. A wide range of investment management features such as investment modeling, portfolio creation, trading, and rebalancing, etc. is available.
Oranj provides automatic reports on almost every activity that gives a bird-eye view of the performance of investment, allowing the investment managers to make the necessary changes to the investment portfolio. The reports can be easily shared with clients, if necessary.
However, Oranj’s regulatory compliance features are not up to the mark as compared to the other platforms. Also, Oranj does not support digital client onboarding, which is a necessary feature to attract customers in today’s competitive financial services industry. Another downside to Oranj's investment platform is its lack of document management features. Many other investment platforms such as Investera and AdvisorEngine provide advanced document management features with which investment managers easily sift through a huge vault of documents in just a few clicks. The document management feature can also lock confidential documents which can only be accessible to authorized personnel for maintaining secrecy and confidentiality of client’s information.
The investment management platforms we reviewed contain a diverse range of investment management tools. However, we have carefully reviewed and tested different platforms to determine the best platforms available for investment managers. The rankings in this article are based on the strong and negative points of the investment management software to help you make the best choice.