BNY Mellon’s Pershing (“Pershing”) announced a series of strategic initiatives to help clients accelerate digitization of their business models. The initiatives around automation, integration and digital experiences will transform the way financial professionals conduct business on the Pershing platform, helping them drive efficiencies and deliver a better client experience.
“Rapid advances in technology are changing expectations and creating new pressure points for our industry,” said Ram Nagappan, chief information officer of Pershing. “The need to operate with speed and efficiency is becoming more profound, forcing firms to modernize technology and digitize service. The initiatives we have underway are designed to help clients achieve their transformation goals and deliver on the promise of exceptional client experiences.”
A top priority for Pershing is streamlining the service experience to help firms become more customer-centric and drive profitable growth. To achieve that goal, Pershing is focusing on two main areas: 1) streamlining and digitizing the wealth management journey and 2) delivering differentiated experiences through open integration.
Pershing’s efforts around new digital solutions and advanced technologies will enable clients to spend more time delivering value-added services to investors. Among these initiatives are:
Streamlining client onboarding to enable advisors with multiple account opening capability, expanded e-signature opportunities and a client-centric framework for client-based versus account-based views. In addition, for firms looking to customize forms, Pershing is integrating a dynamic forms solution with fewer pages and signatures and increased flexibility. These enhancements will deliver advisors an industry-leading, end-to-end client onboarding experience that is simpler and more intuitive.
Delivering data driven insights to empower advisors and help them more effectively set and measure their business goals. Pershing is rolling out a new capability, Money in Motion Dashboard, which will help firms and advisors measure their overall business performance outside of the markets and identify trends in their business through net asset flows and key performance indicators (KPIs).
Adding digital engagement solutions to accelerate the service experience. Pershing will introduce click-to-call chat solutions for advisors, which will allow for real-time problem solving and screen sharing via the Pershing portal. Pershing will also launch a pilot of chat support on its Wealth Reporting solution this summer.
Further, the firm is building mobile alerts for cash disbursement authorization and verification. This feature will allow the advisor to send a notification to the investor’s mobile device to let them know that their request to move money is ready for approval. The investor can then log on to Pershing’s NetXInvestor® portal and approve the transaction with one click.
Exploring advanced technology to construct a digital assistant that will help clients drive increased automation and become more efficient. This year, Pershing is testing chatbots, artificial intelligence, simplified security and embedded robotics process automation.
Re-engineering operational processes to align with the new digital environment.Pershing is streamlining cost basis, billing, and corporate actions to make them more straight-through and intuitive to increase advisor-client service levels. Pershing is also planning to rollout digital e-delivery and voting capabilities for proxy and prospectus records, driving efficiencies and reducing costs.
Deliver differentiated experiences: Pershing is focused on delivering solutions that will enable advisors to create differentiated experiences, build their brand, and offer personalized interactions.
Delivering value with open integration: Seamless and meaningful integrations are critically important to firms and advisors. Pershing is expanding integration services for vendors and clients to make the integration experience easier.
Building the future professional experience: Pershing continues to make progress on delivering an enhanced, intuitive, and efficient professional experience, making a critical shift from an account-centric to a client-centric approach to help advisors better engage and manage client relationships. The firm is reimagining foundational elements of its platform, with the goal of supporting flexible firm hierarchies, streamlining the managed accounts process, and displaying asset classifications consistently across all products such as NetX360®, NetXInvestor, Statements, and Wealth Reporting in the longer term.
In addition, Pershing has enhanced a number of its existing screens, such as balances, holdings, activity, projected cash flow and search capabilities for advisors and front office users. Pershing is also making enhancements to single account order entry for equities and mutual funds. All these enhancements will be available within NetX360 (Windows and web versions) as well as the next generation of NetX360, called NetX360 Wealth.
Enriching the investor journey: Investors’ planning needs evolve as they go through different life stages and advisors need the tools to support them along the way. In response, Pershing is expanding capabilities in NetXInvestor to offer more self-service and wealth planning features for investors. Among the enhancements on the way are real-time fund transfers and a new earned income page, which will display daily taxable and non-taxable income. In addition, Pershing plans to add asset movement functionality for retirement accounts to empower clients to initiate money movement online and track the status of outbound required minimum distribution and tax election status.
“We continue to bring the latest technologies to the wealth management community to help them transform and digitize their business models. These efforts demonstrate our commitment to building an ecosystem that will support our clients’ changing business needs far into the future,” concluded Nagappan.
ABOUT BNY MELLON’S PERSHING
BNY Mellon’s Pershing and its affiliates provide advisors, broker-dealers, family offices, hedge fund and ’40 Act fund managers, registered investment advisor firms and wealth managers with a broad suite of global financial business solutions. Many of the world’s most sophisticated and successful financial services firms rely on Pershing for clearing and custody, investment and retirement solutions, technology, enterprise data management, trading services, prime brokerage and business consulting. Pershing helps clients improve profitability and drive growth, create capacity and efficiency, attract and retain talent, and manage risk and regulation. With a network of offices worldwide, Pershing provides business-to-business solutions to clients representing approximately 7 million investor accounts globally. Pershing LLC (member FINRA, NYSE, SIPC) is a BNY Mellon company. Additional information is available on pershing.com.
ABOUT BNY MELLON
BNY Mellon is a global investments company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Whether providing financial services for institutions, corporations or individual investors, BNY Mellon delivers informed investment management and investment services in 35 countries. BNY Mellon can act as a single point of contact for clients looking to create, trade, hold, manage, service, distribute or restructure investments. BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE: BK). Additional information is available on www.bnymellon.com.