FOX Technology Showcase Recap, Day One

Tuesday’s Showcase featured the following speakers, and a summary of each session is included below:

• Welcome to the FOX Technology Showcase
  With FOX’s Kent Lawson, Director, Technology Integration Services

• The Cyber Landscape for Family Offices in 2021
  With Kate Brett Goldman, CEO and Founder, Cybermaniacs , and Angelo D’Agostino, Cybermaniacs Head of People and Founder, HCG Advisors
  • Cyber risk is exploding!
  • Hackers are targeting humanware – In 2020, work from home was up 53%, and phishing was up 300%
  • Having a security audit for your family is essential
  • Rule of thumb – if you can connect it, they can hack it – this includes routers and even Ring doorbells
  • Amazon neighborhood – opt out of this if you have a connected device
  • Beware of deepfakes – Check out the Tom Cruise deepfake on TikTok as a good example
  • Typically, established family offices are more at risk than newer family offices
  • Recommended book – ‘This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends”: this book goes into detail about how devices can be hacked

• Path to the Family Office of the Future
  With Phil Ierardi, Senior Vice President of Sales at Eton Solutions, LP
  • Drivers of change – Can you afford the cost of not taking advantage of new tech? How will you develop and recruit talent? Will you outsource if you can’t maintain internally?
  • Will take strong commitment to drive true change
  • Five Eras of Family Office Technology
    • Paper, Spreadsheets, Point Application Era, Integrated Platforms and Automation (Now), Intelligent Family Office Era (Next)
  • Keys to Prepare for the Future
    • Single Source of Data, Family Office Data Model is a differentiator, Data Model supported by Process Definition, Closed Loop Workflow

• Building a Family Office Technology Ecosystem: One Family Office’s Story
  With Rick Fowler, Director of Financial Systems at Petrus Trust Company, and Paul Freeland, Managing Director of SEI Family Office Services
  • Fireside Chat with Paul and Rick
  • Rick and his team built and ran an internal system for 20 years
  • They were ready for a more sustainable technology platform, and used a consultant to guide them through the selection process
  • Tried an integrated solution, but it wasn’t enough for them, as they operate like a complex hedge fund.
  • Decided on best of breed – Investment, portfolio accounting, and partnership accounting
  • Using SEI for family office accounting, Advent Geneva for investment side, Advent Geneva World Investor for partnership accounting, Addepar for reporting
  • Are they outsourcing? No. They want to be in control of the data.

Technology Demonstration Summaries:

• Demo 1 – Eton Solutions

             Phil Ierardi, Adam Little

• • Tech made for a family office by a family office
  • Built on process definition, based on a process decomposition context diagram
  • Empower your family office – Global accessibility, 24/7 availability, business continuity, cybersecurity, and data integrity
  • AtlasFive provides operational efficiencies, reporting efficiencies, insight efficiencies, governing efficiencies, access efficiencies
  • They maintain a family office specific data-model
  • Demo of the AtlasFive platform, as well as the client portal
  • AtlasFive uses transaction codes to memorize transactions and automate GL entries
  • Cannot be integrated with tax software currently, but it’s on the roadmap to explore integration with CCH
  • DocuSign integration is also on the roadmap

• Demo 2 – SEI

             Chris Rose

• • Archway is built around the general ledger
  • Utilizes a uniform chart of accounts for consolidated reporting
  • Classes are set up to run reports in different formats
  • Portfolio module – each entity can have one or many portfolios; a portfolio is a bucket of assets
  • Can track down to the tax lot level, with different inventory methods
  • Information comes into the system manually, uploads or via data feeds
  • The security master is at the enterprise level, which is across all entities
  • Data can be imported monthly or daily
  • Pricing comes through from custodians or a third party
  • New interface was released this year

• Demo 3 – Private Wealth Systems

             Craig Pearson

• • Demonstration of the newly released platform
  • New widgets on the dashboard, which can drag and drop
  • Accuracy of the data is the most important aspect
  • System power is proven over any system, but want to make the data convenient to access
  • Custom attributes for any asset, holding, entity or portfolio
  • Demonstrated how to easily build reports
  • Showed how easy it is to validate the numbers in reports and on the dashboard
  • System was built to be agile, light and nimble
  • Month to month contracts available
  • Can support complex and non-complex families
  • Staff – All employees are US Based; later this year an office will open in Switzerland

User Group Roundtable Summary:

• Eton Solutions

             Q&A:

• • It seems that bank/custodian feeds into AtlasFive is the primary data source. What if there is an error in the bank info?
    • The Eton team goes through a data cleansing process that will catch issues.
  • The project management aspect of AtlasFive is very attractive to a family office. Can you speak more about that?
    • AtlasFive came out of an MFO, and project management was a struggle.  The ultimate vision is that the system will alert you to what needs to be updated, instead of doing it manually. Can create projects and copy them forward from year to year.  Designed for client service planning, and to create reports showing valuable data.  They are also creating value added workflows, one of which is a Reg 9 workflow for trust companies.
  • Does AtlasFive have accounts receivable/billing functionality?
    • AtlasFive does have a fee billing functionality.  You can calculate fees and generate reports that can be sent to a custodian.  On the roadmap is an ability to actually generate invoices.
  • Is there a separate GL for each entity to one shared GL for all entities?
    • Best practice is to have one chart of accounts, although you can have them separate.  Having one COA makes reporting easier.
  • How does the system handle intercompany, for example if one entity pays bills on behalf of others?
    • This is entered as one transaction and the system books both sides of the transaction.  You can also tag this as a “on behalf of” type of transaction. Will create an AP/AR on the appropriate books.  They also have for partnership accounting, during a partnership distribution, you can set up different allocation methodologies and the system does the allocation and creates the different transactions on each side and can move money via an instruction template.
  • Is there integration with Bill.com?
    • Yes!  Releasing Q2 2021.
  • Regarding money movement, what custodians work with your system?
    • Via Bill.com, you will be able to move money through most any custodian. Will be able to initiate transactions within AtlasFive.
  • How customizable is client reporting?
    • AtlasFive has different groupings for reporting that allows you to slice and dice data in different ways.  Many configurable attributes within the system for reporting. They have also built a set of APIs where you can pull data out of the system into PowerBI or Tableau for your own customizable reports.
  • What is the cost of Eton?
    • Depends on a variety of factors. Number of accounts, entities, users, complexity.  Annual fee plus a one-time implementation fee.  Back office work, data aggregation is a separate fee.
  • Describe the implementation process? Is it AtlasFive cloud based?
    • AtlasFive is all cloud based.  The shortest implementation was 8 weeks, the longest was one year.  On average, they are taking about 3-5 months.  Configuration at the front end of the implementation – Asset classes, COA, workflows.  Many of the heavy lifting is done in Bangalore in a very cost effective way.
  • Are custom weighted benchmarks available?
    • Yes, they are.
  • How does Eton train clients during/after an implementation?
    • Configuration, stabilization (SCRUM methodology; use one representative household and implement from beginning to end), and a very hands-on training approach.  Classroom training isn’t as effective.
  • How many clients/users do you have and how does that compare to your competitors?
    • 26 clients.  They are a young company, but have doubled clients within the last year.
  • Who owns Eton?
    • Eton is owned 60% by employees and then by outside investors (clients, clients of clients, friends and family, angel investors). No institutional investors.
  • Does the system generate 1099s?
    • Yes, it does, on the vendor/bill pay side.