February 16, 2011
Financial institutions continue to wrestle to find new efficiencies and meet stricter governmental regulations—all while keeping costs down and operating within increasingly tighter budgets. To help grow their businesses in the current environment, broker-dealers need to identify additional sources of asset-driven revenue so their investment professionals will be even more productive.
Asset consolidation is an important strategy to help firms achieve these objectives by capturing more of each client’s assets and accessing them through a single brokerage account. This streamlining process reduces the costs and time associated with day-to-day operations, simplifies account record keeping, storage and archiving, and eases supervisory compliance oversight.
Investors also view asset consolidation as an attractive benefit. Maintaining all assets in one brokerage account is considered a valuable time-saver—from having access to all accounts in one place to having one simplified, year-end tax reporting statement. Additionally, broker-dealers can respond to investment-related inquiries more quickly because the they can access one desktop solution to view all clients’ holdings.
Over the last two years, Pershing has built an end-to-end asset consolidation process supported by our NetX360™ technology. This transfers clients’ assets onto a comprehensive brokerage platform, with one user ID and password. By viewing all client positions through a single lens, it is easier for investment professionals to manage portfolios and to trade same day, moving money between funds systematically. At the same time, they can access a full complement of investment products, market data and research that enhance client service levels.
Another significant enhancement afforded by our consolidated platform is a state-of-the-art breakpoint calculator that looks across all of Pershing to give the investment professional the best price possible. The advisor-vetted asset consolidation process is ideally suited to opening new accounts and integrating smoothly with existing accounts.
We work directly with you to gather all the data needed to move your clients’ positions to brokerage accounts on the Pershing platform, and we have a library of marketing material to help you learn more about the asset consolidation process. We have also created a full range of communications tools and brochures to help investment professionals and clients thoroughly understand the benefits of asset consolidation and why your firm chooses to participate.
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Maura Creekmore
Director, Asset Consolidation
Pershing LLC