About Portfolio Management Software (PMS) |
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We get calls and e-mails asking for portfolio management software (AKA PMS) and customer relationship software (AKA customer contact software, or CRM). So this page will help you figure out what this is, who has it, what it does, and what it costs. Please note that we do not sell any of the portfolio management or CRM software listed below. You're probably looking for magical investment software that does all, or most, of the following: • Keeps track of basic client data like, names, address, and phone numbers. AKA client database software (CRM). • Will allow you to make investment trades with your custodian through their custodian software interface. • Reminds you when it's time for appointments, to send out correspondence (like birthday or anniversary cards), and when it's time to make required minimum distributions from IRAs. • Has a database of pre-BD approved marketing text and similar materials. AKA Text Library Systems. • Keeps track of client portfolios, and has online download features to keep everything current with daily prices and all transactions. • Will allow you to print a report in seconds that will answer the client's question if they call or show up in your office without an appointment, asking how much the portfolio is up since the account opened two years two months and two days ago. • Will allow to you print out statements with all of their accounts combined (and tons of other things clients want to see). • Will display portfolio statistics like correlation coefficients, average / median / minimum / maximum rates of return over the selected time frame, along with standard deviation of monthly returns, Beta, Alpha (Jensen), R-squared, Treynor Ratio, and Sharpe Ratio, and all of that. • And other similar features.
You're in Luck! Such Software Exists from Several Vendors But you still can't get it all from just one vendor. Software that performs the functions below is called Customer Relationship Management software (or CRM software, AKA client contact software, or customer database software - it's all pretty much the same thing). It: • Keeps track of basic client data like, names, address, phone numbers. AKA client database software. • Reminds you when it's time call or send out correspondence regarding meetings, events, and birthday cards. • Maintains a history of client contacts. • Tracks someone's progress as they go from suspect to prospect to client. • Has a database of pre-approved marketing text and similar materials. AKA Text Library Systems. • In theory, CRM ensures you know what you need to know about each client, and you're staying in contact. • It can automate tasks and analyze how much work is being done, by whom, for whom, and at what cost. This will help determine if the client is worth their fees. • Service and marketing programs. • Compliance and suitability. There are about a dozen vendors that specialize in CRM software. Old vendors go under all the time, and new vendors pop up all the time. So the list that was here was deleted. Portfolio Management Software Software that does the rest is called Portfolio Management Software (PMS). This type of investment management software: • Will sometimes allow you to make trades through their interface with your custodian (e.g., Pershing, Schwab, Scottrade, TD Ameritrade, etc.). • Will allow you to print a report in seconds that will answer the client's question if they show up in your office without an appointment, asking how much the portfolio is up since the account opened two years two months and two days ago (any oddball time frame down to the day, if it's any good). • Will allow to you print out statements with all of their accounts combined (and lots of other things clients want to see). • Will display portfolio statistics like correlation coefficients, average / median / minimum / maximum rates of return over the selected time frame, along with standard deviation of monthly returns, Beta, Alpha (Jensen), R-squared, Treynor Ratio, and Sharpe Ratio, and all of that. There are only a few vendors that sell portfolio management software. Morningstar bought dbCAMS+ in Sept '09, and integrated it into their platform. In the 90's the main man at dbCAMS died, and the biz passed to his son, who was overwhelmed and was unable to do much with it. As with CRM, there was an old list of vendors, but it was deleted. So you'll have to search to find who currently does what in this market. No matter how you look at it, if you want this kind of functionality, you have to pay up. Prepare to spend $3,000 to $10,000 a year. Not only that, you'll have to spend so much time maintaining the download process that you'll almost need to hire a person full-time to keep everything working right if you have more than a 200 clients. We've never seen an advisory practice that maintains real portfolio management software, and keeps it updated with daily downloads, that did not have an assistant of some kind spending most of their time keeping it running. As time goes on, the Mom and Pop office just goes without. Some Broker Dealers have contracts with Axys and offer their Reps a shared "lite" version with limited functionality. This turns out to work okay, but as you would expect, the BD is going to charge you a lot for it. Only firms that can afford to spend $25,000 - $75,000 annually (for the software and people to maintain it) have real fully-functional portfolio management software that's updated and maintained correctly on a daily basis. So to help, we made a lame way to get some of this information (portfolio statistics) for a low price on the two far right sheets of the Asset Allocation Software. There's also a very simplified time-weighted and a dollar-weighted rate of return calculator on the TVM Financial Tools product. We don't intend to make anything that competes with people that are already doing this. There was really nothing in between what we did and minor vendors for a reasonable price (although there could be now, we don't keep up). Why? Because every time someone makes something better, and charges less than minor vendors, Axys just buys them out so there won't be any reasonably-priced competition. Examples of this are Blue Streak in the late 90's and TechFi in the early 21st century. Both had portfolio management software that was both better and cheaper than Axys Advent, and ended up getting gobbled up by Axys. So this is where your money goes if and when you decide to pay up for Axys Advent. This should not have been allowed to happen, but the anti-trust regulators were either asleep at the wheel didn't care or have been paid off or whatever, so don't expect this to change next time. Then to add insult to injury, Axys just stopped supporting TechFi, so users couldn't even pay to import their TechFi data into Advent. So even the most loyal totally with the Axys program user that was willing to pay through the nose to migrate from TechFi to Advent was shut out. |
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