Trust & Corporate Services Software Update

Blog: Solitaire Consulting Blog

In this post I’m providing a mid-year update on core administration software (aka ERP systems) serving the Trust & Corporate Services (TCSP) market. This market is an important but niche area of financial services, heavily regulated and traditionally ‘behind the curve’ when it comes to investments in technology – certainly when comparing to other areas of financial services.

The structure of this article follows the format of my White Paper “Trust & Corporate Services Software Guide“, published in January this year. Under each section I list, in alphabetical order, updates from the various vendors. I make no claims on the completeness of this information as I can only publish information I have been made aware of.

Market Leading Providers

There has been little change at the top in the last six months with the market still dominated by TrustQuay and Viewpoint. Both vendors have released new versions of their flagship products and are investing in similar areas of development namely; client portals, regulatory enhancements and process automation.

TrustQuay

TrustQuay continue to position themselves as thought leaders with regular surveys, industry reports and articles on their website. Development effort has continued at pace with their main focus being RegTech enhancements and the development of TrustQuay Portal. The 2.0 release, showcased in their recent customer forum on 6 July, introduced functionality for self-service client onboarding with integration into both NavOne and 5Series.

Behind the scenes, TrustQuay have put 40man years of development into 5Series, NavOne and their Portal products over the last 6 months. 5Series has seen a raft of minor enhancements and fixes plus the development of a new Regulatory Reporting module released in July 2021.

NavOne has almost been rewritten to take advantages of the improvements in the underlying Microsoft Business Central platform. The release of BC17 means that for the first time all the functionality of NavOne is now available from a browser. This is becoming increasingly important for clients moving away from traditional desktop builds.

Viewpoint

Viewpoint may not shout as loudly as their competitors, but this year we have seen a rebrand, with a new website and repositioning of their product suite. Viewpoint Connect is the core back office administration system working alongside Viewpoint Engage, which is the browser based version serving a dual purpose for light usage internally and as a rich client portal.

The key development in the last six months has been the launch of Connect v8. Initially launched as a beta in Q2 it now has more than 500 live users. According to Viewpoint’s website “The introduction of powerful and highly customisable dashboards, HTML summary screens including context-relevant Business Process Management, streamlined navigation, and simplified look and feel, make for an unparalleled user experience which has been widely praised by all that have had a preview.”

Challengers & Niche Providers

BlueMeg

This growing Singapore business has launched version 3.0 of the BlueMeg console in 2021. The solution is pre-approved under the Productivity Solutions Grant (PSG), a joint initiative between the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) and Enterprise Singapore (ESG), which aims to assist businesses in their transformation journey. Eligible new clients can receive up to 80% funding support when subscribing to the BlueMeg Console.

Fusion Acusoft

Fusion Acusoft’s focus over the first half of the year has been the development of the Flyingboat Jersey Registry Tools. This automated Registry filing solution is designed to save time and money by automating the initial upload of registry data and provide press button Annual Confirmation Statement filing as well as on going Registry update filing and filing fee management. The product can be operated as a standalone application or integrated with Fusion Acusoft’s back office systems or those from third party providers.

It is also good to see the Guernsey Team expanding with announcement of 2 new recruits.

SalesForce (Comnexa)

Comnexa are working with Salesforce., promoting their Financial Services Cloud (FSC). FSC is a managed package that extends and enhances the functionality of Salesforce’s core CRM products – Sales Cloud and Service Cloud – to better meet the needs of wealth management firms, insurance companies and banks. Financial advisors and wealth managers can take advantage of FSC to have a holistic view of their clients and adapt their sales strategy to best serve them.

Comnexa works with a number of clients in the financial services industry and specifically with offshore fund, trust, wealth and asset managers.

thewealthworks

The latest release of WealthWorks+ includes a number of improvements to Compliance and Client Administration as well as an initial release of Client Accounting functionality. This means that WealthWorks+ now meets the needs of the majority of users within a typical TCSP business. The legacy Troika product is still needed for some bookkeeping tasks, but the team hope to be able to finally retire this application within the next v2 or 3 development cycles. Note: support will be maintained for Troika, for those clients not wishing to move to WealthWorks+

Over the last six months the business has also expanded with new clients in Asia via a partnership deal with Octad Solutions in Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia. thewealthworks have also seconded one of their senior team to Mauritius to help grow their client base in this important region.

Eco-System Products

BankClarity / Cygnetise

BankClarity and Cygnetise have announced a partnership to deliver embedded signatory and bank mandate management tool for all clients.

BankClarity and Cygnetise have responded to significant client and Banking partner demand for integrated banking solutions by agreeing to embed the Cygnetise blockchain signatory-management solution within BankClarity’s end-to-end banking hub technology.

The two award-winning Fintech’s have signed a formal Strategic Alliance committing resources to continuously develop the synergies between the businesses for the benefit of mutual clients. This means that BankClarity’s users will be able to holistically manage all of their banking relationships and signatories via one interface.

Laserfiche (MBS)

At the beginning of the year MBS announced another partnership with TrustQuay, integrating Laserfiche with NavOne. This builds on the existing integration with TrustQuay 5Series.

Laserfiche launched version 11 in March 2021. This new release includes a host of improvements designed to support digital transformation. Process automation is now a key goal of leading organisations and there are many improvements to help develop more rapidly and effectively. This sees Laserfiche further develop on their core document and records management functionality with tools to automate and integrate Laserfiche into an organisations IT eco-system.

In addition, the system has been re-architected to enable Cloud developments to be released more rapidly in self-hosted systems, plus to support hybrid Cloud architectures. This is important given the exponential growth in adoption of Cloud solutions worldwide. The updated architecture enables you to benefit from Cloud capabilities while retaining your on-premise system. It also simplifies your migration path to Cloud if and when your organisation decides to adopt Cloud. So while your organisation may not wish to adopt Cloud now, it gives you the peace of mind to know you have the ability to do so in future.

Laserfiche Cloud has been available in the USA and Canada for some time and has proved very popular with both new and existing Laserfiche users. Laserfiche has confirmed that Laserfiche Cloud is coming to Europe and will be available for clients this year. The operation will be based in Dublin and hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) within the European domain. This will be important for organisations who have policies requiring information to be held in Europe.

MBS Engineers are already using Laserfiche Cloud and working closely with Laserfiche to be able to provide more information with details of go-live dates and services later this year.

Risk Screen

RiskScreen the AML solution from KYC Global Technologies continues to develop. In addition to their ad-hoc and batch screening solutions, RiskScreen now provide real-time customer verification and onboarding using their RiskScreen Onboard product. As well as automating the acquisition of customer details using eIDV the solution provides initial onboarding and regular screening of KYC and KYB.

RiskScreen’s AML compliance platform can be taken in modules or installed as a fully integrated solution.

Vega Solutions

Vega Solutions have soft-launched their new Digital Client Hub. The Hub provides a seamless way to engage Clients with Relationship Managers and Client Servicing teams through configurable paperless Client Experience (CX) journeys on their mobile device. This is done by providing a platform that seamlessly connects Vega’s task based user journeys to third party security, ID Verification, Address Verification and eSign technology partners.

Initially, the system is being offered as digital onboarding system to automate collection and validation of client details. However, the product design includes the ability to configure any interactive process that involves the collection of ID and data from clients. Typical use cases include fund investor subscriptions, pension applications, and self-certification processes.

Vega’s technologies are flexible supporting integration into various back office administration or core banking platforms and support the use of multiple third party eID providers including those from GBG and Refinitiv.

All of the vendors and systems included in this article are known to Solitaire Consulting and have either been implemented, replaced or upgraded by our consultants on behalf of TCSP clients. Please contact us if you would like any advice on your current system or if you have plans to upgrade / replace.

Note: the inclusion of a system in this article does not imply any endorsement or recommendation. Conversely, any system / vendor omitted will only be because I have not been provided with any updates.

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