Asset Administration and Custody Services are challenging functions for all degrees of wealth management firms. To perform them effectively requires a combination of skilled operational personnel, and technology, equally adept at risk management, straight through processing, reporting, and exception handling procedures.
FNZ offers a single, scalable and powerful family office solution tailored to our customers’ precise business needs. Integrating back and front-office, our system utilises best-of-breed proprietary technology to produce a complete investment platform with functionality tailored to each customer.
With a whole of market offering, we give family office professionals the tools they need to successfully manage their client portfolios. Each family office can choose their individual set-up from a comprehensive list of components. In so doing, each implementation is tailored to support their business across a range of core functions such as portfolio management, order management and execution, compliance, risk management, documentation and reporting.
As a critical requirement, the family office solution includes an integrated portfolio management module. The portfolio valuation service is designed to provide detailed performance analytics, alongside a base of attribution data. The service can be applied today to a range of asset classes including exchange traded instruments, fixed income instruments, managed funds, term deposits and even some non-traditional income bearing assets, such as commercial property and structured deposits. Reporting templates form part of the service and support white labelling as well as a combination of system and non-system data, analytic and commentary.
The deployment of the wealth management application can be accompanied with portfolio management to support both model and non-model based portfolios, both of which are available with a number of different execution facilitation models. For many wealth managers, MIFID compliant execution via a global broker may be a sufficient solution, alongside with direct execution for Managed Funds. Family Offices, with a broad array of execution relationships can also utilise a broader order entry and routing via different execution pathways.
The Family Office solution has been designed to be cost effective, as well as highly efficient for the family office. The managed service model is deployed for the family office as a multi-tenanted approach in a fully hosted arrangement achieving lower costs without compromising data protection or risk management requirements.
Accompanying this wealth platform is a fully integrated suite of back office and custody services. The service offering is designed to cover the mandatory solution set from both a regulatory and operational perspective. As a regulated custodian operating in the UK, as well as a back office asset service provider operating offshore, FNZ has developed its asset service approach to be an extremely flexible one. This flexibility exists in terms of regulatory responsibility, as well as in terms of service provision, and translates into an array of commercial models for the end customer to use. For most wealth managers within family offices, partnering with a full custody and asset administrator in an onshore capacity will probably be the preferred option. This model can be deployed as part of an agency dealing relationship, if desired, and covers off the provision of valuation services, clearing and settlement services, and complete security service support.
Valuation services are supported by a range of on-line electronic reports, as well as alerts and notifications that can be pushed to different types of mobile solutions. These reporting services are not only there to support client service requirements between the family office and each individual family member, but also to ensure regulatory compliance to TCF and suitability mandates.
Valuation and related safeguarding services and arrangements, including administration of non-traditional asset classes for example, are part of asset servicing as is full securities processing. In this area of the business, FNZ’s operational units, both onshore and offshore based, handle all of the post-trade functions. This would be expected to involve corporate actions, trade/account allocation, as well as payments & transfers. In the later fees & charges can be automatically applied, and then reported on a completely transparent basis, supporting any type of regulatory or client service requirement.
FNZ believes that the primary role of the family office professional is to be a specialist in advisory and discretionary investment management. In the same way, a family office’s infrastructure should be provided and managed by an equivalent specialist. This is where FNZ comes in. Put simply, FNZ’s speciality is providing your complete investment operating environment together with supporting infrastructure and services to thus enable the family office professional to get on with the business of managing your client’s money.
