European Wealth Management Technology Vendors: Evaluating Front-to-Back Office Technology

In the face of ongoing challenges, European wealth managers have focused on lowering costs and reducing turnaround times, while improving efficiency and creating a holistic view of clients. A pillar of this strategy is the integration of data, channels, people, and processes via wealth management platforms that cover front, middle, and back offices.

The report European Wealth Management Technology Vendors: Evaluating Front-to-Back Office Technology is the second in a series of three reports that evaluate European wealth management vendors. This study examines the leading European vendors of front office platforms. The following vendors are included: Advent Software, Bravura Solutions, BSB, Comarch, FNZ, Focus Solutions, GBST, Objectway Financial Software, Polaris FT, PROFILE Software, SEI, Temenos, and Third Financial.

The European technology market is a crowded one. Celent breaks vendors into three distinct categories: front office platform providers, front-to-back office providers, and core banking providers. This report features vendors that focus on providing front-to-back office support.

“The key for these vendors is flexibility. Very few firms will rip and replace all front and middle/back office components at once. As such, vendors need to emphasize their platform’s modularity and play the long game. They need to demonstrate their efficiency over time, and then firms will be more willing to add on more modules and take advantage of the full platform,” says Alexander Camargo, Analyst with Celent’s Securities & Investments Group. “Flexibility also means the ability to adjust between discretionary and non-discretionary investment services, as well as having the functionality to implement in a number of different markets with different regulatory requirements.”

This report features a detailed profile for each wealth management platform vendor, identifying its strengths and weaknesses. Also included is a vendor comparison section, which evaluates each solution’s features and functionalities and further compares vendors based on various functionalities. Celent provides an ABCD Vendor View, which shows at a glance the relative position of vendors in the following categories: Advanced Technology, Breadth of Functionality, Customer Base (number of clients), and Depth of Client Services on two separate X/Y scales.. The last section includes Celent’s considerations of where the market is headed.

In the other two reports looking at the European market, Celent focuses on front office platforms and core banking vendors with wealth management offerings. These reports are titled European Wealth Management Technology Vendors: Evaluating Front Office Platform Vendors and European Wealth Management Technology Vendors: Evaluating Core Banking Vendors.