2023 Trend: Supporting the Client Through Data and Digitization

Angela Centeno, CPA

Director

Angela Centeno joined Cutter Associates in 2015, bringing more than 20 years of experience in financial services. Prior to Cutter, Angela worked for The Northern Trust Company in multiple roles managing enterprise market data, investment operations outsourcing, vendor relationships, and custodian relationships. She previously held senior positions in operations management, project management, data management, and solutions implementation.

Angela earned a bachelor of science in accounting and a bachelor of science in business administration from the University of Kansas, as well as an MBA in finance from DePaul University. She is a registered CPA.

Recent research assignments and publications include the following:

Asset Management Trends: 2022 and Beyond
Market Data Administration
An Introduction to Vendor Management
Best Practices for Developing a Vendor Management Program
Vendor Management: Trends ─ And the Tools that Can Help
Data Cataloging Tools
Rethinking Research Management
Alternative Investments
Managing Benchmark and Index Data

Dru Holmquist

Consulting Principal - Distribution and Client Operations

Dru Holmquist has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has developed expertise across asset management distribution, investment management, and wealth management technology and operations. Dru is a successful senior leader with a deep track record of collaboration initiation, strategy design, team building, program management and process innovation. He has conducted strategy programs for CRM, client mastering, data architecture, client reporting, client onboarding, trading, research, and portfolio management capabilities. His knowledge spans the equities, fixed income, municipals, commodities, private debt, private equity, real estate, farmland, agri-business, and timber management sectors, as well as the following vehicle types: Mutual Funds, Closed-end Funds, ETFs, UCITs, UITs, Institutional Separate Accounts, SMAs (traditional, dual contract and models), LPs, 529 Plans and REITs.

Prior to joining Cutter Associates, Dru served as Managing Director of Technology for Nuveen Advisory Services, the business organization responsible for delivering the investment and asset management expertise of Nuveen. Dru was responsible for all business applications and technology that supported the Sales, Client Service, Marketing, Product and Fund Administration business teams. He oversaw the deployment of Salesforce as a CRM application, that unified multiple investment manager affiliates by redesigning the lead generation process, sales pipeline stages, sales reporting, distribution analytics, marketing analytics, and client engagement model. In addition, Dru implemented a product and account master, and initiated the business case to begin a client master effort. He was the technology leader that owned the business transformation efforts for the advisory services organization.

Jan 30, 2023

The following blog post is one in a series of Cutter 2023 Trends that provide insights into industry challenges and considerations for our clients and member firms in 2023 and beyond.

For their client communications strategies, asset managers have personalized and digitized the client experience. And while this has been an area of focus for several years now, asset managers now find it even more imperative to enhance their client interactions. Given the volatility of the current economic environment and market conditions, client servicing teams feel the increasing pressure. Today’s clients want to concentrate on their asset allocation and look for transparency and insights on exposure ─ meaning more touchpoints between the asset manager and their clients.

Asset management firms still identify managing custom requests as a common challenge faced by client servicing teams. And since asset managers typically view client reporting as a key differentiator in their client relationship program, they tend to support client customization requests at any cost. But to meet these demands, asset managers have often relied on one-off unscalable processes.

Therefore, we expect asset managers to continue enhancing the client experience ─ specifically by investing in portal functionality and data quality. Many asset managers offer dashboard functionality in their portals, which, among other things, can provide exposure information to clients. But asset managers will continue to go deeper by bulking up portal functionality by persona, so that users receive access to information and can complete tasks based on their role. We expect portals to support documentation like letters of direction.

With increased focus on asset allocation, we also predict a corresponding increase in demand for RFPs and RFIs for asset managers and product development as firms expand their push to sell globally. To support these efforts, asset managers will build out additional portal capabilities, such as product and client onboarding functionality. Meanwhile, firms continue to work to get their data in order. They want a single source for presenting all types of client data and information with the proper disclosures for prospects and existing end clients.

Ultimately, as part of their client communications strategies, asset managers find themselves needing to accomplish all the tasks associated with supporting the client in a personalized way, with fewer people and less effort. And their continued investment in data and digitization will help them get there.

To learn more, read Client Reporting Systems and Client Portals Are Driving Better Experiences for Investors. Can Institutions Do the Same?, or contact us at [email protected].