(1888PressRelease)
April 12, 2007 - By creating pre-packaged, pre-integrated solutions, NorthStar is speeding time to value for wealth management firms of all sizes.
Wealth management businesses, whether independent or within banks or broker-dealers, are undergoing significant change - from intensifying competition for clients and experienced advisors to increasing demands from savvy clients who want holistic advice and more sophisticated investment choices. Not surprisingly, product complexity has increased 60% in the last three years, according to a 2006 VIP Forum survey. However, adoption rates of previously purchased, unintegrated point applications remain low. As a result, two-thirds of advisors claim the time they spend on internal, non-client-oriented administrative activities has increased substantially, to almost one-third of their working hours.
To effectively streamline wealth managers’ tasks and drive productivity, NorthStar has specifically designed solutions, based on NorthStar’s service-oriented architecture, that ensure wealth managers and their firms can dynamically adapt to industry changes and differentiate their businesses.
“Wealth managers are overwhelmed with the sheer amount of new products and administrative tasks associated with doing their jobs. They want to and should focus more time on their clients and prospects to generate more revenues,” said Collin Cohen, president of NorthStar. “NorthStar’s solutions cut through the clutter and allow wealth managers to become much more client-centric and productive. At the same time, with these solutions, firms can deliver consistent and centralized views of regulatory, client, prospect and reporting functions.”
NorthStar is already delivering integrated wealth management products – on-premise and on-demand – to 5 of the top 10 wealth management firms in the U.S. The company builds on its momentum with the introduction of these four new pre-packaged solutions.
NorthStar Compliance Solution
As the industry’s first and only real-time, rules-based compliance system, the NorthStar Compliance Solution provides banks and broker-dealers a pre-packaged set of applications that automatically builds regulatory requirements into the investment policy process for multiple client portfolios. As a result, firms no longer need to do compliance on an account by account or product by product basis and can dramatically reduce regulatory risk.
NorthStar Client Acquisition Solution
The industry’s most comprehensive investment proposal workstation, the NorthStar Client Acquisition Solution offers best-in-class proposal generation and management specifically designed for wealth managers. Rather than using canned proposals, the NorthStar Client Acquisition Solution provides fully customizable investment proposal templates that were professionally designed in conjunction with Wechsler Ross & Partners, a leader in building financial brands. Since better proposals are one of the ultimate differentiators during the client acquisition process, firms can use this Solution to increase client close rates and grow their installed base faster than the market.
NorthStar Product Catalog Solution
The NorthStar Product Catalog Solution offers the industry’s first and only firm-wide catalog where advisors can become instant product experts by accessing talking points and marketing materials for up to 50,000 products, including banking, insurance and alternative investment vehicles. Advisors only have access to research reports and investments they are licensed to sell. Advisors always have access to up-to-date product information because the NorthStar Product Catalog is easy to administer and integrate to market data.
NorthStar Client Reporting Solution
The NorthStar Client Reporting Solution increases client loyalty by replacing traditional, transaction-based reporting with holistic, client-optimized reporting that discriminating clients say they want and need. Client-optimized reports and reviews include tailored analysis of a client’s holdings from a full net-worth view, combining portfolio accounting data from multiple sources, aggregated to family structures and legal entities, with manager and portfolio performance, economic outlook, research and manager updates.
About NorthStar Systems International
NorthStar is the leading provider of wealth management software to financial services institutions. It has a growing list of clients across market segments and sizes such as Charles Schwab, Citigroup, Legg Mason, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia and several national banks. NorthStar products, delivered either on-premise or on-demand, empower thousands of financial advisors and their teams with full lifecycle advisory capabilities to acquire, implement and manage client assets and liabilities in a compliant manner based on industry best practices. Please visit www.northstar.com.
Media Contacts:
Emilio Dabul
FastLane
908-822-7106
edabul ( @ ) fast-lane dot net
Christi Weidling
NorthStar
415-344-6140
cweidling ( @ ) northstar dot com
