How to choose analytics software for wealth managers: questions, data and traps

Most buying decisions for analytics start from a feature list. For wealth firms the better start is the questions that come back every month, the files already on hand, and the traps that make a tool look right in a demonstration and wrong in the first board meeting.

Start from the questions

Any tool you consider should answer these from your data, not from a sample. Ask to see it.

The data you already hold

• Cash movement file
• Asset file
• Fact-find and review records
• Client master
• CRM
• Fee ledger
• Service model costs
• Activity

If a vendor needs a warehouse built before it can read these, count that in the cost and the time.

Ten questions to ask any vendor

1. What does it need in place before the first answer? A warehouse, a data model, a modelling language, a partner? Ask for the list and the typical weeks.
2. Who does the setup, and who maintains it? Your team, the vendor, or a partner, and what that costs after year one.
3. Does the AI calculate figures, or choose from computed ones? A language model that writes queries or code can produce a plausible wrong number. Ask what it is allowed to do.
4. Does every total reconcile to a control figure? Ask to see a bridge that does not sum and what the product does about it.
5. Can every figure be opened to its rows? An answer nobody can check becomes a debate in the meeting.
6. What does it cost in the first year, all in? Licences, consumption, implementation, modelling and training, not only the seat price.
7. How does data arrive, and who holds credentials? A file your systems already export, a scheduled drop, or a live connection with the vendor holding keys.
8. What happens to the data, and where is it stored? Residency, retention, deletion, and whether names can be replaced with identifiers.
9. Can we see it on our own data before we sign? A demonstration on a sample dataset tells you little about your own.
10. What does the tool do when it cannot answer? It should say so. A confident guess does more harm than no answer.

Checks specific to wealth managers

Ask whether the tool enforces these, and what it does when they fail:

• Assets: Opening assets + inflows − outflows + market movement − fees = closing assets
• Households: Accounts = linked to a household + unlinked
• Concentration: Adviser assets sum to the firm total; each client has one lead adviser
• Reviews: Due = completed on time + completed late + overdue

The traps

Net new assets without the market. In a rising market every adviser looks like they are growing.

Held-away assets. Recorded in a fact-find, never totalled, never ranked.

Next-generation coverage. The largest predictable outflow a firm faces, and rarely on any report.

Measures to leave out

Assets under management as a growth measure. It is mostly the market.

Number of clients. Counts a household three times until consolidated.

Meetings held. Replace with recency by value and review completion.

A scorecard

Where Covirage fits

Covirage reads the exports above, answers the questions with figures our tools compute and check, and is set up for you within a week. See analytics software for wealth managers compared, AI analytics for wealth managers and Covirage for Wealth managers.

For the measures in full, with formulas and exports, read Client KPIs for wealth managers.