System Design.
a case study summary
“Outstanding client service lies at the core of our business; it’s what our clients expect and it’s what we have always delivered. We wanted to invest in a solution that would not only help us to institutionalise, scale and develop this process as a business, but would also enhance the client experience. I am pleased to say that with Point Group as a strategic technology partner, that is exactly what we have been able to achieve.”
– Ian Barnard, Founding Partner & CEO, CapGen
Outcome
We designed an agile and flexible wealth management operating system to support CapGen deliver the personal service of a family office alongside the rigour and capabilities of an institution.
Our design provides CapGen with the capability to scale client numbers and AUM without compromising client service or resulting in a significant increase in costs.
The new system will provide clients with sophisticated digital reporting; introduce secure process automation to release staff from low-value manual tasks; provide sophisticated portfolio modelling, management and risk management tools.
Our multi-vendor solution focuses on the efficient collection, management and exploitation of data and provides the foundation for CapGen’s future growth.
“Point Group’s methodology for analysing our business needs and ambitions, their knowledge of the industry and understanding of key technology solutions, have helped us to research, design and now implement a long term, scalable operating model to enhance our offering to existing and new clients. They have proved to be diligent and effective partners in this initiative, working with a good understanding not only of our business, but of the needs and expectations of our own client base.”
Richard Adams, Partner & Chief Operating Officer
Client
CapGen is an investment manager for families, endowments and individuals. They help clients who want to build portfolios that don’t just protect their capital, but put it to use. Together with their direct investment and real estate specialities, CapGen helps clients to create portfolios that are diverse, dynamic and built to last.
Challenge
Providing a highly personalised investment management service remains front and centre of what CapGen provides their clients, both established and new.
Looking to the future, CapGen knew that to serve their growing client base without compromising their unique value proposition they would need to invest in their technology.
Acting as CapGen’s operational technology partners we were asked to design an investment operating model that supported their vision to scale without incurring prohibitive costs; managed the inherent operational risks of looking after more clients; but above all, continued to provide clients of all sizes an unparalleled and personal experience.
Like many successful and growing wealth management businesses CapGen’s existing processes relied on manual processes that were barriers to growth.
As an example, CapGen’s reporting requirements are sophisticated and have historically relied on manual, time-consuming and resource intensive processes. In the future, CapGen expect to provide their clients with automated, high-quality and accurate multi-media reporting across multiple asset classes on demand.
Whilst CapGen’s reporting requirements were the most visceral and ‘visible’ challenge that needed to be addressed, the real challenge lay in the proper collection, management and exploitation of data across all business areas. Data that would not only feed into a best-in-class digital reporting solution, but also provide the business with the information required to make and execute timely investment and business decisions.
It was this ‘data problem’ that presented the core challenge and held the key to unlocking opportunities across CapGen’s business. Reporting, yes, but also portfolio modelling and management, risk analysis, product development and regulatory compliance.
Solution
We were engaged by CapGen to act as an extension of their team. We led on the identification, selection and design of the technology stack required to support their growth agenda. Our support to the CapGen team allowed them to exploit our market intelligence and deep practical understanding of operational technology, whilst providing them the time and space to continue to serve their clients.
Discovery
We began our work with a period of discovery to understand CapGen’s business challenges, their desired outcomes and above all their strategic intent. By conducting high-level business process analysis, we identified the core issues currently faced by the business; and worked alongside the senior leadership to map their capability gaps against what they needed to fulfil their vision.
Bringing the ‘data value chain’ to life
As a next step, we mapped the data the business required to operate. This was illustrated in a single, client-focused data schematic – the data value chain. This provided any easy to read overview of the data requirements of the business. Critically, it identified where CapGen could build on competitive advantage and where it could start to look to introduce efficiencies and unlock unrealised value.
Solutions design and vendor engagement
The data value chain work provided us with our core ‘homework’ – the data requirements set against which we needed to design the future wealth management platform. From here, we set out to understand which technologies – and which vendors of those technologies – were best placed to solve the requirement set for our end-to-end solution.
Relying on our market intelligence capability and understanding of emerging technologies and providers, we were able to quickly identify the most suitable vendors to suit this particular challenge. Once selected we then tested their capabilities against the data and operating requirements of the business through a series of increasingly demanding workshops.
This process allowed us to understand where gaps may exist within vendor technologies and services, and where we wanted to bring different vendors together to create an integrated.
Integrating the separate parts
We narrowed our analysis down to two solution models, each comprised of several different technologies and services anchored to a core vendor system.
These final two models were tested against real client data before the final proposed solution was tested against financial scenario modelling.
Our wealth management system design is not a single vendor-provided platform. Rather, an integrated solution incorporating several best in class technologies and services brought together via our in-house integration capabilities.