Efficient and Accurate Performance Calculations With Integrations
Performance calculation and reporting marks the end of the wealth management life cycle. Assessing, planning, research, and implementing/trading all come before, so all the data that goes into these steps is vital to create an accurate and efficient performance calculation for you to review and report on. If that data is misleading, incomplete or just wrong, so too will the performance numbers. The old adage is “Garbage In - Garbage Out” and its very relevant here.
Efficient and Accurate Performance Calculations With Integrations
Investment performance calculation and reporting marks the end of the wealth management life cycle. Assessing, planning, research, and implementing/trading all come before, so all the data that goes into these steps is vital to create an accurate and efficient performance calculation for you to review and report on. If that data is misleading, incomplete or just wrong, so too will the performance numbers. The old adage is “Garbage In - Garbage Out” and its very relevant here.
The data we use to accurately calculate investment performance usually comes from either a trust accounting system or the Custodian directly. Zephyr has long standing integrations with many of these providers that have been developed and tested over several years. Zephyr has direct feeds with a number of vendors including FIS, SEI, Schwab, Fidelity, Infovisa, Cheetah, Fi Tek and others. In addition to these direct feeds Zephyr also works with a third party (Digital Finance), who can receive data from almost any custodian or vendor and provide us the data we need in a format we can accept.
Each of the integrations is different, but all have the same main data points the make investment performance reporting consistent. That is client account information, asset/security details, holdings and transactions per account. It's not enough just to get this data and import it, it’s how we handle this data that is important. The data in those files allows Zephyr to classify client assets, allows Zephyr to handle corporate actions appropriately, reconcile client transactions to their holdings etc. All these steps are important in ensuring client data is accurate for performance.
However, even with the best data partners, there are still times when data may be missing and or incorrect. While understanding our data partners as well as do, helps us significantly, we still need to have a process in which we catch and identify data issues during the process so we can correct them and make sure the returns and reports are accurate. The Zephyr team has a proprietary process in which we can handle large amounts of data automatically while identifying the possible data issues for review. This allows our team to process over eight million transactions every month on over 1.4 million positions for our clients accounts. We are proud of our data accuracy and and this would not be achievable without great third-party partnerships and integrations.
Zephyr is also looking at how we can work with these same partners and others to integrate performance data and reports back into their systems for both the advisor and their clients. Most vendors have a client portal for clients to sign into directly and possibly document vaults. We are working on building API’s that allow us to send performance reports directly to those client portals, so clients can sign in and see performance on demand from anywhere. This is just another way we are managing integrations to appear as seamless as possible to wealth managers.