Discover how a London-based multi-family office upgraded from an Excel-based ledger system to Sesame, saving days each month on data consolidation and reporting that could be reallocated to business growth initiatives.
With the previous system, staff were manually updating transactions and valuations across hundreds of accounts. This left little time for high-touch client interactions and business development and the intensive workload meant reporting only covered net worth and not profit and loss.
Now, the family office receives an automated feed of consolidated data from all associated banks and custodians, refreshed daily. Client reports can be produced at the click of a button and tailored on the fly, meaning the team can now focus on strengthening client relationships and expanding business development.
About the family office
A London-based multi-family office, managing wealth for clients with a minimum of £50 million in investable assets, was looking to expedite its business growth. Historically, it was reliant on an Excel-based ledger system to record client positions across multiple asset classes and ownership structures. This meant staff were spending days each month on manual data consolidation and producing investment reports. To support its growth ambitions, the firm wanted to automate the data consolidation and reporting process.
The Challenge
Too much time in spreadsheets, not enough time for the business
The Excel-based ledger system the family office had been using to book client positions and generate reports was labour-intensive and highly susceptible to manual error.
Staff had to manually enter all the account valuations and cashflows across hundreds of accounts. Whenever a transaction occurred, analysts needed to book both the transaction and the updated valuation resulting from it. This operational bottleneck restricted the update of custodied investment portfolio valuations to a monthly cadence.
The system also struggled to provide the granularity of reporting that clients had come to expect. Clients wanted a clear picture of their drivers and detractors of performance, but valuations were limited to the investment account level, rather than for positions within the investment account. Consequently, the family office could only report net worth, not profit and loss.
The manual processes meant staff were spending days each month on data consolidation and reporting, leaving less time for the high-touch client interactions and business development initiatives that were needed for the business to grow.
Staff were spending days each month on data consolidation and reporting.
The Solution
Streamlined reporting through automated data consolidation
Landytech’s investment management platform, Sesame, provides a secure platform that covers both public and private assets. It consolidates clients’ positions across all asset classes to give a clear view of overall wealth; provides granular monitoring of fees, costs, income and liabilities; generates accurate, independent performance calculations; and delivers automated and fully customisable reports.
Leveraging Landytech’s extensive network of custodian connections, rapid data pipelines were established with all associated banks and wealth managers, enabling automated daily feeds of the latest positions and transactions in client accounts.
The family office also adopted Sesame’s portfolio management system for non-custodied assets. The system allows bulk input of transactions and valuation updates for any private or alternative assets, significantly reducing manual input time.
With data feed automation and a dedicated tool for managing private and real assets, the family office has gone from spending days a month on producing reports to having them ready at the click of a button and scheduled automatically. Where changes to reports used to involve manually reworking an Excel model for every underlying client, the team can now make bulk alterations on the fly.
Reports now go into the level of granularity required by clients and include exposure analysis by country, sector or market cap; performance analysis (including in different reference currencies), GIPS-compliant performance reporting, and performance contribution and attribution by different categories; stress tests and scenario analysis; exposure to risk factors; and liquidity analysis.
The family office has gone from spending days a month on producing reports to having them ready at the click of a button.
The impact
Days each month reclaimed for strategic growth initiatives
Transitioning from manual to automated processes has not only transformed the family office’s client reporting process but also fostered a more scalable operating environment. Eliminating manual tasks has left staff less stretched in addition to delivering more timely and tailored reporting to clients, with greater confidence in the accuracy of data. With manual tasks now significantly reduced, the family office can now allocate more time towards strengthening existing client relationships and amplifying business development efforts.
