A client calls asking why their portfolio is down 3% this quarter when markets are flat. Two days and a data pull later, the answer arrives. By then, the relationship has already taken a small but real hit.
This is the moment most relationship managers (RMs) recognise. It is also the moment that defines whether a wealth institution feels like a trusted advisor or a slow back office.
The good news is that the operational pattern needed to answer questions like this on the call — not two days later — is now well established. Below is a practical guide to building it.
Three forces are pushing private banks, trust companies and wealth managers toward continuous, on-demand client insight.
Client expectations have moved. Quarterly reporting was never a regulatory requirement, but for years it was the default. Clients today expect the same fluency from their RM that they get from any other digital service: an answer when they ask, not a report when it is due.
Portfolios are more complex. Multi-custodian relationships, currency overlays, private equity, real estate, structured products, alternatives — every additional asset class adds reconciliation effort that gets in the way of advice.
Reporting cycles consume RM time that should be spent on advice. Days of preparation per client review is not unusual. That is time not spent in front of clients, not spent on portfolio construction, not spent on retention.
The shift is from reactive reporting — backward-looking documents distributed on a fixed cycle — to proactive advice powered by a live data foundation.
A real-time RM operating model rests on four layers, which in Sesame are designed to plug into existing systems rather than replace them.
Sesame Data — the consolidated source of truth. Daily, standardised feeds from over 500 custodians, banks and investment managers, plus open banking access to thousands of additional cash accounts, all delivered through a single REST API in one normalised schema. No more banking portals, no more manual data entry.
Sesame Doc AI — for everything custodians cannot reach. Capital call notices, NAV statements, quarterly investor reports, K-1s, bank statements: Doc Inbox automates collection, Doc Studio enables fast review, Doc Intelligence extracts the data points without manual entry, and Doc Chat lets you query a document directly. The result is that alternatives flow into the same portfolio view as listed positions.
Analytics — institutional-grade, on demand. Performance, attribution, exposure, factor decomposition, parametric, historical-simulation and Monte-Carlo VaR, stress testing and "what-if" scenarios — all powered by MSCI BarraOne and RiskMetrics, available as embeddable services through the Analytics API.
Reporting and delivery — templated and premium. Templated Reporting generates consistent, branded client packs at scale on schedule or on demand. Premium Reporting moves beyond static PDFs to live, interactive dashboards that RMs and clients can explore together.
The layers are modular. Firms can adopt them individually and expand over time, without replacing core systems.
Different moments demand different surfaces. The pattern that works in practice combines five.
The rule of thumb: Templated when the moment is scheduled, standardised and scaled; Premium when it is interactive, ad-hoc and advisory-led; Mobile and alerts when something has just changed and someone needs to know now.
Pick three to five KPIs to anchor the programme. The most useful in practice:
Five dashboards cover most of an RM's day. Each can be deployed as a Premium Reporting view, embedded inside an internal system via the Analytics API, or reflected on mobile.
Sesame is built to plug in, not replace.
APIs. The Sesame Data API exposes positions, transactions, valuations and analytics in a single normalised schema. The Sesame Data Developer Portal provides documentation, token management, API call logs and a self-guided walkthrough — designed to compress integration time.
CRM and internal-system embedding. The Analytics API embeds Sesame's performance, allocation and risk insights directly into the firm's existing systems and digital experiences, scaling across client segments. RMs see the right slice of analytics inside the tool they already work in.
Event-driven notifications. The monitoring engine drives instant push and email alerts on limit breaches and pre-warning levels, with rules customisable across performance KPIs, risk, exposure and regulatory limits.
SSO and role-based access. Single sign-on for secure user access. Granular role-based permissions let administrators control exactly what each user can view, edit or manage. Spaces allow separation between client groups, families or fund teams within a single account. IP whitelisting protects API access.
The reference architecture separates ingestion, intelligence and delivery, which is why a CRM integration or a new portal does not require re-engineering the data layer.
The realistic expectation to set is near-real-time, T+1 across custodied positions, with intra-day responsiveness on analytics queries against that dataset. Specifically:
Quality comes from rigorous data validation protocols, a normalised schema across every custodian, and the firm's own physically isolated database. The combination is what makes the dashboard the RM trusts in front of the client.
A realistic 90-day pilot plan looks like this.
Weeks 1-3: Discovery and design. Confirm pilot scope, RM team and client cohort. Map current systems. Engage CIO/CTO, security and data owners early. Define the 8 to 12 week proof points.
Weeks 2-6: Data layer. Connect custodian feeds via Sesame Data. Configure Doc Inbox for unstructured documents. Set up by-position portfolios for non-feed assets. Configure Spaces and validate data quality against client statements.
Weeks 4-8: Analytics and dashboards. Configure the five RM dashboards. Define limit rules and pre-warning levels aligned to the IPS framework. Stand up Templated Reporting for the standard client pack. Deploy Premium Reporting for the pilot RM team.
Weeks 6-10: Surfaces and integration. Configure SSO, role-based permissions and IP whitelisting. Embed analytics into the CRM or advisor desktop. Roll out the mobile app to pilot RMs. Where in scope, configure the B2B2C client portal with the bank's branding and authentication.
Weeks 8-12: Enablement and measurement. Train RMs and operations. Baseline the KPIs. Run a structured client review cycle on the new surfaces. Capture quantitative and qualitative evidence ahead of broader rollout.
A French-based family office advisor cut monthly reporting from roughly 3 days to 3 hours after assessing two alternative providers and selecting Sesame One on the basis of reporting flexibility, strong analytics and clear product momentum. The RM consequence is direct: monthly packs stop being a multi-day operations exercise, and the freed-up time becomes available for advice.
Accuro, a trust and private office company, consolidated trust-held and personal assets across real estate, private equity, financial investments and collectibles into Sesame and now reports approximately 80% reduction in report preparation time and T+1 data across consolidated holdings. Stephen Weaver, Head of Client Accounting and Family Office at Accuro, describes engagement with clients becoming richer, with the platform giving the team consolidated data to substantiate discussions about wider wealth strategy and to anticipate and proactively mitigate portfolio challenges.
That is the shift this operating model is designed to produce: from reactive reporting to proactive advice, from days of preparation to answers on the call, from a back-office function to a front-office advantage.
Ready to give your relationship managers real-time portfolio insights?
Book a Demo to see how Sesame Data and Sesame One can be deployed in your firm — without replacing your core systems.