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A Paperless Office for Vestra Wealth.
Using FIGARO fully integrated with Invu’s document and information management and storage system means Vestra Wealth does not waste money on extra staff and storage space.
Vestra Wealth was set up in 2007 to offer financial planning, stockbroking and private banking in an environment that allowed investment managers to work collaboratively, without paper, and offer transparency to clients.
The choice of systems was key to the realisation of this vision and Peter Brooker, head of IT development and a partner at the wealth management company, wanted technology that enabled effective handling, sharing and storage of information within a paperless environment.
“Cutting labour-intensive methods of handling documents and having a prestigious central London location that did not waste expensive space with unnecessary filing systems were key drivers for our technology choices,” says Brooker.
FIGARO from JHC was selected as the core stockbroking system and Invu as the firm’s document and information management and storage system.
“FIGARO is integrated with Invu and allows fund managers to know everything about a client on one screen, so they don’t have to go in and out of different ones,” says Brooker.
Vestra Wealth has been using the system for nine months and it now holds more than 100,000 documents, with 10,000 more added each month. All documents are scanned into the system and the originals are boxed at cheaper, offsite premises.
Focusing on clients is fundamental to the company’s approach and clients can access their whole transaction history held on the system through a secure online portal.
“Clients can look at all their transactions, fees or commissions taken. If this process were not automated, it would be too expensive, but offering such knowledge to clients and this level of transparency promotes trust, which is part of our philosophy and an important competitive advantage,” says Brooker. Likewise, it allows fund managers to know their clients.
“If a client says he only wants to make ethical investments, for example, this is noted on the system and he will not be asked about an investment to which he is opposed. If we don’t know our client, we are not doing our job properly,” says Brooker.
The system creates a document archive that can be easily searched and provides an audit trail, which aids compliance with Financial Services Authority (FSA) regulations.
“We have an obligation to keep proper records and Invu stores all client communications as well as emails so we can answer any questions asked by the FSA. Trust, transparency and data security are taken care of,” says Brooker.
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