In this guide 6 sections
Buy a ready wealth platform if its back office already covers your products and reports. Consider a custom layer once family records, review dates, agreed actions and fees still live in Excel around it. GullySystem builds that layer around your existing platforms. Execution and compliance stay where they are today.
What a ready platform usually does well
Ready back offices are built around transactions. They import statements, show holdings and produce standard reports. Many advisers need little more.
If your clients hold mostly mutual funds and your reports come from the platform, stay with it. Adding software beside a working tool adds a login and little else. Check that honestly before any custom work.
Where the gaps usually appear
Gaps show up around the platform, not inside it. A family spans husband, wife, parents and an HUF, with holdings across several platforms and banks. The review pack is stitched together by hand each quarter.
The second gap is follow-through. A switch or a nominee change agreed in a meeting lives in a notebook. Two months on, nobody is sure it happened.
- One family spread across several PANs and platforms
- Review dates pushed back in tax season
- Agreed actions with no owner or due date
- Documents in email, a shared drive and a cupboard
- Fees matched to families by hand at year end
What a custom layer adds
A custom layer does not replace your platform. It sits around it. It holds the family record, the review calendar, the action tracker, the document vault and the fee ledger.
Holdings and folios are imported from a CAS or your back-office export. Orders are still placed on the platform you use today. The layer records what was agreed and whether it was done, with proof attached.
Questions that settle the choice
Take your last few review packs and note how long each took to assemble. Then count last quarter’s agreed actions that cannot be shown as done. Those two figures frame the decision.
Ask also whether you want a family portal of your own, or a link to your CRM and books. A ready product rarely bends to those. If every answer is no, a ready platform is the simpler path.
- How long does one review pack take?
- How many agreed actions lack proof?
- Do you want your own family portal?
- Must it connect to your CRM or books?
Access, logs and who carries compliance
Client files hold PAN copies, KYC forms and bank mandates. Whatever you choose, decide who sees which family. Partners may see everything. Each relationship manager sees only the families assigned to him.
A log of who opened each file helps when a query arrives. It does not make a firm compliant by itself. That responsibility stays with you and your compliance officer.
Platform gap worksheet
A two-column sheet listing the tasks your current platform handles and the tasks still done in Excel, notebooks or chat. Add how often each manual task happens. A long right-hand column points toward a custom layer.
Open a blank worksheet to printQuestions owners ask
Does software make an advisory firm compliant?
No. Software can record what was done, when, and who opened each file. Compliance stays with you and your compliance officer.
Can the custom layer place orders?
No. Execution stays on the platform you use today. The layer imports holdings and tracks what was agreed.
Can a junior relationship manager see every family?
Only if you allow it. Each manager sees assigned families, partners see all, and every file opened leaves a line in the log.