News

SAGE Group: A Leading Software Publisher Dedicated to the Wealth Management Industry

One of 10 Most Trusted Asset & Wealth Management Solution Providers of 2017

By Insights Success

Wealth Managers traditionally work in an exceptionally unpredictable and competitive environment. This complexity originates from the constantly changing regulations that they should comply with, and has inherited cost as they have to alter procedures and execute innovations. Further intricacy is included by market instability and historically low yields, making it hard to find the appropriate risk-return combination.

With the technological advancements taking place rapidly, the landscape is getting more dynamic. Besides traditional competitors, the industry is seeing disruptive actors, for example, Robo Advisors entering the market. Other than expanding rivalry, they are additionally changing the tenets of the game, and putting pressure on conventional players to reevaluate the way they do business. Since these actors are bringing more modern and proficient methods for getting things done, clients hope to have the capacity to play out any activity related to their funds anywhere, at any time and for the lowest possible fee. These increase strain on existing players, not exclusively to enhance their level and speed of service, but also to bring down their charges. What’s more; we should not overlook that the last crisis is still exceptionally present in customer’s psyches, so they additionally expect Wealth Managers to have solid risk mitigation processes.

Recognizing this difficulty, SAGE Group was founded in 1986 to help Wealth Managers serve their clients better. Emerged from the hard work of Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO – who joined SAGE in 1995 – and his aim to put clients before everything else, today, SAGE Group is a global financial technology company and banking software provider dedicated to Wealth Management industry. He has transformed what was initially a service company doing bespoke software developments in Switzerland into a software publisher specialized in finance.

Along with a comprised team of Banking and Fintech specialists who believe today’s smart technology can change the way High Net Worth Individuals (HNWI) interact with their Wealth Managers, SAGE helps Wealth Managers make their task simpler and serve their clients better.

SAGE’s clients rely on its smart technology to manage complex financial operations in the most cost-effective and efficient way. They implement SAGE’s solutions to be able to serve their clients better, leading to superior client retention and improved margins. SAGE offers out-of-the-box digitally-enhanced client relationship solutions that can be implemented fast. It helps improve front office productivity to bring more value-added services to the clients.

Managing Complex Financial Operations in the Most Cost-Effective and Efficient Way
Jean-Luc started developing bespoke ERP applications for many industries such as retail, subscription management and banking. This was an important phase because it allowed him and the team to broaden their perspective and come up with more creative ways of approaching the problems that they helped resolve. Jean-Luc, then, decided to transform the company into a true software publisher and focus on one single niche where he felt SAGE had the most added value.

However, getting clients to trust their strategic wealth management business with a new system from a small self-financed company with very few references was the biggest struggle ‘The Team SAGE’ had to face. But, the team was very fortunate to count Merrill Lynch as an early adopter of Prospero for their Global Wealth Management activities (later sold to Julius Baer). They helped the company to come up with the right value proposition but also to grow its user base.

Being Available to Clients Whenever, Wherever Required
For more than last three decades, SAGE has been treating its clients with the same level of attention and personalized service as Swiss Private Banks do with their customers. Offering a unique combination of Swiss Wealth Management expertise and local presence in the markets, SAGE prides itself on being available to clients whenever wherever required.

Unlike its competition that offers separate solutions that they connect to cover all requirements, SAGE offers a truly integrated solution that combines all the features needed to manage investment portfolios and funds administration.

As a result of its simplified system setup and a rules-based logic that offers great flexibility without having to code, helping managers to better meet the increasing expectations of their clients, SAGE takes much lesser time to market than its competition.

Prospero, Founding Block for Wealth Managers
Among its varied range of innovative solutions, SAGE Group’s Prospero system is the founding block that Wealth Managers require offering the level of service their clients expect. With Prospero, customers can achieve operational excellence by automating compliance verification and by executing and processing orders in true Straight Through Process. Prospero has a high level of automation while still allowing managers to tailor services for their clients. They can do so by offering multiple channels to interact with their clients such as traditional channels like head-office, branches, IVR and more modern channels like Chatbots, Web and Mobile Apps and Robo Advisory.

BlackSwan, Constantly Evolving and Back-tested Financial Platform
Due to its BlackSwan Portfolio Optimization and Risk Management System, SAGE lets managers build trust with their clients. Additionally, it supports alternative asset classes such as Private Equity, Structured Products and Derivatives so managers can offer more diversified products.

With its BlackSwan System that uses advanced quantitative finance models, SAGE also helps institutions make better investment decisions, reduce risks and increase returns. Then it helps them by offering a digital self-service platform for their clients, allowing them to perform all types of operations 24×7 from the comfort of their home, also provides dashboards and automated workflows for client-facing staff to improve their service. Furthermore, it provides the solid back-end system needed to be able to offer innovative products and services 24×7.

Continuing Investing into Building Smart Products
To tackle the ever-growing competition in the Wealth Management industry, SAGE’s main strategy is to continue investing in building smart products that are better at helping clients run their business. The company has hired professionals with both wealth management and technical experience to develop and implement its innovative solutions to the industry’s pain points. Besides, SAGE wants to make the system affordable to as many institutions both regarding implementation and on-going operation. This has prompted SAGE to develop an intelligent system configurator that performs most of the system setup automatically using business logic rather than code or scripts as required by similar competing systems.

Jean-Luc believes the industry is facing historically low yields combined with higher regulation and compliance costs. Second, although we see new and disruptive fin-techs entering the market, there is little true innovation as far as financial products are concerned.

“Clients generally have less trust in financial institutions to preserve their wealth and beat indexes which can push clients to settle for cheap products such as ETFs with a good asset allocation and low fees as offered by Robo Advisors. So in our point of view institutions that want to preserve their margins, need to invest in their user experience, breadth and quality of service and democratize alternative asset classes,” Jean-Luc asserts.

Future Roadmap
Going ahead in the future, SAGE’s primary focus is to automate the back-office operations further. “We believe they can be fully automated with better communication between the actors. To speed up the process we are focusing on using Artificial Intelligence technology and we are currently exploring practical use of AI such as document processing, investment suitability, transactions exception detection and resolution, asset allocation and profiling, and tackling compliance and fraud issues. Then, as mentioned above, we want to make the system as affordable as possible. So, we will continue making the system simpler to operate and implement to make it affordable even to boutique institutions such as small fund managers or small family offices that are faced with the same complexity as large organizations but can’t afford a large team,” Jean-Luc concludes.

About the Key Executive
Mr. Jean-Luc Freymond serves as the Chief Executive Officer of SAGE Group. Jean-Luc used to be one of the significant architects of Prospero, SAGE’s suite of financial services software solution. Before joining SAGE, Jean-Luc worked for Swiss banking giant UBS and has more than 20 years of experience in systems development and the management of banking projects. He has implemented several projects of considerable scope and led several teams of developers and analysts. He has lectured on banking technology at the University of Lausanne and contributed to several industry expert panels and webinars.

He started his career at UBS in commodity finance. He is also a self-taught developer and during his studies, he was freelancing by doing bespoke development for businesses in Switzerland. That puts him right at the intersection of finance and technology. He received both his BA in Management and his Postgraduate Diploma in European Law from the University of Lausanne, and received his EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program from MIT.

*This article first appeared in November’s issue of Insight Success: 10 Most Trusted Asset & Wealth Management Solution Providers 2017.

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For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +41 653 64 01 (Switzerland) or +65 6827 44 28 (Singapore)

TOAP Annual Summit 2017

Date: 17 – 18 October 2017

SAGE Group SA will be at the Trust Officers Association of the Philippines (TOAP)‘s annual summit to be held at the New World Makati Hotel from October 17-18.

The theme for this year’s summit is “Driving Change” with the 2-day program focusing on the Philippine Pension System and the Collective Investment Scheme Law (CISL). The introduction of the Philippine Equity & Retirement Account (PERA) to the local market late last year compelled the industry to take a hard look at the Philippine pension system in its entirety. The CISL, if enacted, shall change the CIS framework of the unit trust, mutual funds and insurance. In its path, both developments shall provide pros and cons to be faced by the stakeholders.

Philippe De La Clergerie and Kimberly Espiritu will be representing SAGE at this event.

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For more information on this event, please contact SAGE or call us at +65 6827 4428 (Singapore).

Philippines: Market Trends

Customer-centricity and advisory using technology

By Kimberly Espiritu, Regional Sales Manager

Assets under management by robo-advisors in Asia is expected to grow to $2.2 trillion by 2020, with target market segments ranging from the average investor to high net worth individuals (Hartung, 2017). Regional and global foreign banks, apart from local competitors, have also made headway in the Philippines, aiming for a share of revenues across different business lines. With recent banking campaigns focusing on HNW/ UHNW customers, private banking is undeniably recognized as a fast-growing business. The rising demand for wealth management has even attracted latecomers to this segment even without decades of experience to guide their journey.

One of the strategies being used is to apply an ‘economy, business and first class’ service for existing clients. Market segmentation allows new players to easily identify target markets that will respond well, reducing challenges from competition since the attack is carefully executed for their existing clients. New players are already strong in the retail business line, making more sense for them to look at their existing clients first before targeting new ones who are tied with the leading banks.

It is, however, not as easy as it seems. Retail banks will have to do more heavy lifting than the entrenched players. Using technology in the form of robo-advisory could be employed as compensation for late entrance. Another strategy is partnering with well-known global private banks. Introducing customized solutions mixed with global expertise has received a good market response in its initial stages.

Bigger banks face the challenge of having to adopt robo-advisory in a much slower pace compared to the others due to the difficulty in modifying the behavior of an already demanding client base, and the presence of legacy system challenges. Project requirements are currently at different stages, directed towards adopting trends like robo-advisory and customer-centricity. These trends, often materializing slowly, demands flexibility in doing business from the software vendor standpoint.

A key advantage of robo-advisors is that customers receive independent investment advice and more choices at a fraction of the cost of traditional financial advisors (Hartung, 2017). This element of robo-advisory, combined with a competitive software vendor landscape, has resulted to banks requiring non-traditional licensing proposals as to make their capital investments smaller – another takeaway to justify their business case to implement technology solutions. The SaaS pricing is a trending business model we can expect from the market. This kind of pricing model demanded by clients is quite a recent behavior, given that banks were always accustomed to strictly perpetual licensing models only.

Another new business requirement, at least in the Philippines, is the cloud implementation model. This was only introduced about a year ago, although it is an option that requires more study. Banks were always open to this idea for its advantages but are discouraged because of the strict guidelines of the central bank, particularly along the lines of security and client data privacy. The most that banks have gone for cloud models is ensure that certain software can transition from on-premise to a cloud implementation once they are ready to do so.

These market trends, behavior and timelines we have identified at this stage should help both banks and vendors alike to take the right approach for the opportunities and good challenges ahead. Incoming BSP (Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas) Governor Nestor Espenilla, who started his new role on 5th July 2017, aims to improve efficiency of transactions among and between banks, as well as other entities that provide financial or payment services (Rimando, 2017). One of his main goals is to make the Philippines a leading market for new mobile banking services and implementing ‘fintech’ or financial technology. To cap it off, the BSP’s support for new technology and innovations in the financial sector makes us expect the banking sector to be highly active.

References:

• Richard Hartung. 2017. The Asian Banker. [ONLINE]
  
• Lala Rimando. 2017. Who is new BSP governor Nestor Espenilla? [ONLINE]

Appointment of SAGE Group SA’s Regional Sales Manager for South East Asia

SAGE Group SA, publisher of the Prospero software solution for global private banks and financial institutions worldwide, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Kimberly Espiritu as Regional Sales Manager. Kimberly will be responsible for business development for the banking and financial services industry in the Philippines and South East Asia out of SAGE’s Manila office.

As a sales professional, Kimberly has gained a broad and detailed knowledge of retail, wholesale and investment banking business across multiple topical areas including Risk, Compliance, Trust/Wealth Management, Transaction Banking and Lending. Combining this with her clear understanding of how new and traditional technology solutions can enable banks to achieve their strategic and tactical ambitions make her the advisor of choice for banks pursuing technology-led business strategies.

Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO of SAGE Group, states “Kimberly has a strong track record creating value for the clients she has worked with in the banking community. She enjoys an excellent reputation that lets her cultivate a strong network of relationships within the industry built on trust and respect for her professionalism.”

Kimberly has years of experience in the field of banking technology, previously holding the position of Regional Sales Manager for multiple software and consulting firms including AGDelta, CRMNEXT and Kris FinSoftware.

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For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +63 2 555 5442 (Manila).

Fund Management: How to select the right provider in 2017

7 things to look for

by Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO of Sage Group SA

Fund Administration is an essential service that presents an increasing importance and sensitivity in the financial industry. Institutions offering this service bear mounting responsibility as a result of more complex pricing methodologies, taxes and fees, as well as stricter regulations.

Historically, such service has been organised in silos with many human resources involved, and it has been a widely-accepted fact that Net Asset Value (NAV) validation requires a high volume of manual work. At the same time, the industry is getting more competitive and the pressure to increase margins requires fund administrators to increase their productivity while continuing to fulfil their tight Service Level Agreements (SLAs).

Attempts to automate this system have often failed due to cultural and human obstacles as well as the lack of scalability and flexibility of the systems that were proposed. Organizations looking for systems to help them automate this process need to look for solutions that address both these issues by retaining simplicity in user interaction despite the complexity of the task while simultaneously providing the required flexibility to adapt to each fund’s specificities.

Reduce costs and risk
Generating Net Asset Values and unit prices is a time-critical process which requires a high degree of control and efficiency to meet pre-set deadlines. Only an effective end-to-end process with appropriate controls and automation can guarantee the consistent level of performance required.

Portfolio accounting
The ability to keep the fund’s portfolio inventory up to date is a critical function to look for. While it is expected that most systems will perform this function, organizations need to ensure the adequate handling of all the asset classes that their funds are invested in.

Corporate actions
Systems should also offer the possibility to automate and dramatically simplify the time-consuming and error-prone process of manually tracking, calculating entitlement, and processing of corporate actions. An integrated and comprehensive corporate actions solution that can process all corporate action types and is flexible enough to allow the definition of new types, is the best option.

Pricing of instruments
Pricing of financial instruments is a key process where systems differ in their level of efficiency and accuracy. Mark to market prices need to be fed automatically into the system from major data feeds. Quality and plausibility checks should be available to minimize the risk of errors and reduce the time to investigate pricing issues originating from the price source.

Fees processing and accrual accounting
Organizations should also ensure the system has the ability to automate the calculation, accrual, and posting of all types of fees. Performance fees are generally more complex and few systems fully automate more advanced functions such as equalizations.

Reconciliation
A key step in fund administration is the reconciliation of daily trade information, settlement data, transactions, and positions. Systems need to be able to automatically download this data from the custodians and perform the reconciliation and highlight discrepancies.

NAV validation and publication
The transfer agency function also needs to be fully integrated in the system to simplify the process and avoid heavy and potentially costly interfaces. It should be possible to automatically import subscriptions and redemptions from external systems or capture them using the system’s UI.

This article first appeared in Bobsguide.

For more information on this news, please contact SAGE Group SA at +41 21 653 64 01 (Switzerland) or +65 6827 44 28 (Singapore).

TOAP Annual Convention 2017

Date: 3 – 5 March 2017

SAGE Group SA is returning to the Trust Officers Association of the Philippines (TOAP)‘s annual convention for 2017 which will be held this year at the Pearl Farm Beach Resort in Davao City from March 3 -5.

The event usually gathers more than 100 delegates from the Trust industry and its primary regulator, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Central Bank of the Philippines).

This year’s theme is “The Trust Industry: Moving towards Digital Convergence” and our CEO, Jean-Luc Freymond, will speak on Digital Wealth Management on March 4.

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For more information on this event, please contact SAGE or call us at +65 6827 4428 (Singapore).

SAGE launches its new corporate identity

SAGE is an international leading software publisher for global private banks and financial institution which in 2016 celebrates 30 years of success. To mark the occasion, SAGE is launching a modernized visual identity and customer experience for its brand.

The new corporate identity and product branding has been designed to reflect both the SAGE objective: “simplifying the world of finance” as well as its vision for the future. The new identity thereby embraces the potential of a modern, minimalist and professional aesthetic.

This new identity is being applied to all aspects of the enterprise, including marketing support, businesses solutions and other business initiatives.

Marketing support
SAGE ’s new website, brochures and flyers offer a modern, clear and intuitive overview of the company, as well as its products by line of business and opportunities. To learn more, visit sage.ch

Prospero 365
we believe that a minimalist, well designed application which is truly proactive is essential to reach the excellence that we strive for. In this way we are redesigning each and every module to not only be more elegant and aesthetic, but more functional, flexible and intuitive than ever before. To do that, we started from scratch, redesigning and reorganizing each essential feature as a part of a completely immersive enterprise-oriented solution. Everything you need is there just the way you want it. Coming Soon.

“Our objective is not only to celebrate 30 years of success, but more importantly to offer our customers the quality of services they deserve and to allow them to attain excellence through a modern, flexible and efficient solution, which is aesthetic, easy to use and truly proactive.” states Mr. Jean-Luc Freymond, CEO at SAGE.

Contact us to learn more

Let data guide your decisions

“The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” Carly Fiorina, Former CEO of HP.

Our proactive libraries help our customers to create new growth opportunities and strategies.
Prospero uses the latest Self-Service Business Intelligence Technology to offer a built-in Dashboards and Report Creator, which has been designed for total efficiency. It enables you to design reports and dashboards with drill up/down and slice/dice capabilities, either from scratch or by using pre-defined templates. Now you can manage entire libraries of analytics for without the need for IT competences, as these functions used to require. Keep it simple: now you can drag and drop data interfaces to create dynamic reports, visualization and dashboards just the way you want them.

Create your personal dashboard

SAGE gives you the ability to tailor your own personal custom-made product to each of your analytical needs .Our vision is to bring flexibility to your analytical needs, whether you are a bank, a finance company, one ‘ family service ‘ or one ‘ asset manager ‘ or a small independent brokerage.

We have the capacity to develop your dynamic dashboard which reflects your specific needs, both in terms of display as infrastructure of data.

Our catalog of performance indicators (KPIs) is rich and varied and allows an extremely fast integration in our dashboards. Thanks to our experience, we are capable of quickly and effectively developing new indicators to allow you to pilot your activity according to your reality.

Or use one of our dynamic dashboards

Dynamic Dashboards for Executives
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards for Executives is a powerful tool which takes your enterprise’s organizational structure into consideration and allows you to pilot activities in a very precise way. It emphasizes any of your specific needs in terms of management and activities follow-up. Our solution comes with all the indicators that you follow every day such as asset under management, team performance, budget allocation and your clients’ portfolios positions.

Achieving profitability is an integral part of our solution; our Profitability Management module includes indicators for income, costs and other data you need to analyze your profitability such as RoA and CoA.

Dynamic Dashboards for Portfolio Managers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards for Portfolio Managers comes with a comprehensive, synthetic overview for all the portfolios you manage. Everything you need is included, from potential of earnings / risks of losses and variation of your assets under management to penetration of your funds. Users have the possibility to drill down to a granular level of analysis. Now you have the opportunity to compare, simulate and build up a relevant vision of the current situation for any specific portfolio under your control.

Dynamic Dashboards for Relationship Managers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards allows Relationship Managers the entire follow-up of your customer’s activity on a daily basis. From the point of view of their investments/transactions to pure commercial activity (eg the number of visits), you will appreciate our dynamic, intuitive and ease of use Dashboards. Our solution comes with all of the indicators that you follow on a daily basis such as assets under management, objectives reached by budgets, customer’s portfolios, positions and activities.

Dynamic Dashboards for Internal Controllers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards allows Internal Controllers to guarantee the respect of your internal directives such as the conformity of your asset allocations models and exposures.

Our solution provides users with the ability to manage a multitude of aspects for your daily tasks. Now you can adjust thresholds tolerance and deviations, using comprehensive dynamic dashboards. Then easily drill down into context of your choose including customer portfolio, relationship manager and asset class.

Dynamic Dashboards for Profitability Managers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards allows Tax Managers to visualize the profitability by category, direct and indirect costs, RoA, CoA and profitability of your activities. Now you can analyze at a granular level the source of your incomes and costs; you so obtain a clear vision of your real performance, at any level of your organization (entities, RM’s, etc.).

Our Powerful tool, takes into consideration your organizational structure as well as the important axes of the activity, organized under the form of ‘ Dynamic Dashboards ‘, intuitive and ease of use.

Dynamic Dashboards for Tax Managers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards allows Tax Managers to quickly and automatically reconcile the positions held in your customer’s portfolios for whom a fiscal certificate must be emitted. Our solution identifies the incoherence between Prospero and the fiscal used tool such as Easytax.

In parallel, it provides you with the possibility to better identify the operational impact on the team through relevant indicators such as the number of portfolios “in error” and the level of complexity.

Dynamic Dashboards for Data Managers
Prospero Dynamic Dashboards provides Data Managers with everything they need to guarantee high data quality and efficient flows. Now you access to a synthetic view which allows a pushed analysis of your logs and a successful management of the anomalies.

At the operational level, our solution supplies a precise follow-up of changes and a qualitative and quantitative control of your data. You have nothing to do our solution notifies you as soon as certain tolerance thresholds are exceeded.

Contact us to learn more

Digitally-enhanced customer relationship

The wealth management industry faces significant challenges: competitive intensity is increasing, fees are being compressed, costs are rising, and investors expect traditional levels of return. These challenges require wealth managers to differentiate themselves.

At the same time the rise of technology has re-defined how we interact with others and the ability to access to information we need. Global digital titans, like Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon are continuously innovating to improve customer experiences with targeted features and services.

This wave of digital disruption offers private banks and financial institutions the opportunity to differentiate their strategy and offer their customers new services.

Five opportunities Prospero Mobile App offers to private banks and financial institutions

Provide Customers with the Transparency They Require
Give customers an amazing digital experience. Our web client platform and tablet application provide customers with a 360° overview of their portfolio valuation, performance, future cash flows and personal reports. Give customers access to your investment strategy. Our configurator lets you easily personalize the user experience, from the visual design to data visualization, and available reports and fact sheets.

Suggest targeted investment and customer trade orders
Prospero’s order management system simplifies the traditionally time-consuming process of filling out order books. Now, these are quickly and easily generated through pre-filled forms which are intuitive and easy to use. In addition, each time an order is being filled, the OMS runs a real-time compliance check to ensure the trade is compliant. Even financial advice is provided on that individual trade, so you’re covered from every angle.

Make the Customers Relationship a more personal experience
Provide each individual customer with an exclusive digital relationship experience, using the most modern features such as secured messaging and report sharing. We have designed each and every feature to lead customers to create their own uniquely suitable experience on the basis of their contact preferences.

Differentiate Yourself Through Customization
Just as no two wealth management companies are identical, no two software systems should be identical. Different enterprises will look for emphasis in different areas. Prospero’s white label solution allows you to increase your brand reputation with a high quality, easy to use digital application. You can customize the functioning, look and feel of your whole system with a few simple clicks.

• Visual Design
• Extensive Access Management
• Reports
• Data Visualization

Contact us to learn more