Best Investment Manager Software Platforms

Posted by Robert Reece on April 17th, 2021

Investment management is a highly specialized field and requires specialized investment management software to help RIAs perform investment management activities efficiently. The process of determining the best investment software is very time-consuming, there are just too many options out there. If you end up implementing a platform that is incompatible with your firm’s unique processes, it can cost you money as well as business. To help you in selecting the right investment management platform, we tested different investment manager software platforms available in the market and took feedback from the industry players and experts regarding the efficacy and usefulness of the platforms they are using. Based on our findings, we have compiled a list of the 5 best investment manager software platforms. In this article, we will discuss the top 5 investment manager software platforms along with their pros and cons.

1-  AdvisorEngine

Pros

1. Digital client onboarding
2. Funding account with Automated Customer Account Transfer Service & Automated Clearing House services (ACATS & ACH).
3. Advanced financial planning tools
4. Customizable investment frameworks and investment models
5. Cutting-edge trading, portfolio rebalancing, and compliance features

Cons

1. A somewhat overwhelming number of features
2. So far supports only Schwab, TD Ameritrade, Fidelity, NFS, National Financial and Pershing.

AdvisorEngine ranks number one on our list of top 5 investment manager software platforms because of its distinguishing features, tailor-made for fulfilling the requirements of investment managers. From client onboarding, financial planning models, to portfolio trading, rebalancing, and management, AdvisorEngine seems to have a module for basically everything.  

Here is what we liked the most in AdvisorEngine:

AdvisorEngine provides a quick method to open clients’ accounts with its digital client onboarding feature. Because of this useful feature, clients are no longer required to make frequent trips to the financial advisor’s office to complete the endless process of documentation and signatures. The dashboard is sleek and modern. Thanks to its e-signature ability, an investment manager can easily get the digital signatures of clients on the custodian and firm’s documents for account opening purposes. The clients can get ACATS & ACH services for seamlessly shifting the securities from one brokerage account to another.

Apart from facilitating clients, AdvisorEngine also facilitates investment advisors in performing their day-to-day tasks. The platform provides advanced and interactive financial planning tools that create personalized plans and help investment advisors to present the plans in an interactive way to the clients. With AdvisorEngine, investment managers can customize investment models and frameworks based on the risk appetite, financial goals, and other relevant aspects of the client. Ther eis quite a bit of advanced functionality, allowing you to rebalance and manage portfolios with great control, ensuring that the portfolio remains on track to achieve the desired financial objectives keeping in view regulatory compliance.

AdvisorEngine is best-suited for investment managers and wealth management funds as the platform has been developed keeping in view the unique needs of investment managers and wealth management firms. The only downside is that the platform provides so much information and features that a new user may feel overwhelmed by the array of useful features, so much so, that new users can struggle to understand the complete list of features. However, they do offer training and we were impressed with the customer support. With little practice, even a beginner user can get familiar with the user interface and use the platform to its full potential.

Unlike some of the other platforms we looked at, AdvisorEngine (and its CRM Junxure) are open technologies with lots of integrations. That means if you’re using some other system for some tasks, you can integrate them together and get the best of both worlds. This is really important in a field where people are mixing software on a regular basis and need it all to work together.

2- Axia Suite by Profile Software

Pros

1. Mobile, web, and cloud platforms
2. Feature-rich client management tools
3. Sophisticated risk management and compliance tools
4. Interactive reporting tools

Cons

1. Focused too much on client management & risk management
2. Limited portfolio management and rebalancing tools

Axia Suite by Profile Software ranks second on our list of top 5 investment manager platforms. The platform is available for use on mobile, web, and cloud platforms, providing ease of access to investment managers.

Let’s discuss the key features that we liked the most in Axia Suite:

Axia Suites provides client management tools in its investment management platform, which allows investment managers to manage clients and investments simultaneously. The platform has powerful and advanced risk management tools that help investment managers accurately measure and manage the risk within tolerable limits. Regulatory requirements can be easily met with the platform’s sophisticated compliance features.

Axia Suite is predominantly a client-centric platform, with the majority of features facilitating client management. Axia Suite’s investment management platform also supports digital client onboarding. The platform’s digital client portal allows clients to view comprehensive reports about their fund’s performance and can access their accounts 24/7 without relying on their investment manager for information.

While Axia Suite does provide investment management features to handle most of the portfolio and investment management tasks, it focuses too much on risk management, compliance, and client management. The platform aids investment managers in financial planning, asset allocation, risk analysis, compliance with local and international regulatory requirements, client management and reporting, etc. Also, the platform falls short of adequately performing portfolio management and rebalancing tasks, which is where the platform needs a lot of improvement.

3- Investera

Pros

1. Plenty of investment management tools
2. Interactive investor portal on mobile and web
3. Document management with encryption feature
4. Workflow management

Cons

1. Lacking in compliance and  risk management features
2. Complex portfolio rebalancing feature

Investera ranks third on our list of top 5 investment management platforms. With its robust investment and client management tools, Investera has attracted many clients and its client base is growing. Let’s discuss the features that we liked the most in Investera.

Investera gives plenty of tools to investment managers for managing portfolios of their clients. Investment managers can build and manage investment structures easily through a user-friendly interface. Complex investment structures can be easily visualized that facilitates investment managers in analyzing and understanding the critical aspects of the investment. The platform gets securities pricing feed from different vendors, enabling the investment managers to accurately value the public securities any time.

An interactive and easy-to-use investment portal gives clients access to detailed reports and graphs about the performance of their investments right on their mobile devices. Investment managers can even configure the portal to add or restrict some features as per the needs of the clients.

Another important feature that we liked in Investera is its encrypted and secured document management platform. Investment managers can store their documents securely with encryption. With its document management platform, investment managers can get another layer of security for their confidential documents by setting up a password key. The platform also has categorization, search, and tagging features to access the required documents quickly.

Investment managers can customize the workflows of their processes and assign tasks to the nominated employees at each step in the workflow, resulting in streamlining the processes according to the needs of clients and the organization.

Although the Investera platform has excellent features, there are also a few downsides that we discovered while testing the Investera platform. Let’s discuss the weak areas of Investera where it can improve.

The software has weak portfolio and compliance management features that can negatively impact the returns generated by investment managers for their clients and can create trouble for the managers and organizations in case of breaching the regulatory requirements.

The portfolio rebalancing feature in the Investera platform is complex and difficult to use. This is where Investera needs to improve to compete with other rival investment management platforms.

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