PCR Financial Aggregation

Wealth management advisors are experiencing increasing demand for high quality data to power the technologies that help them provide the best possible advice to their clients. Most advisors desire to become their clients “Alpha Advisor”– the advisor that is trusted with knowledge of all their assets. Increasingly, the data needed to satisfy this demand has expanded beyond traditional marketable securities and mutual fund vehicles to more complex alternative investments.

PCR Financial Aggregation provides a unique managed service that securely delivers high-quality investment data on marketable securities and alternative investments into an advisors’ critical client reporting and information systems.

“We have invested $30M over the past few years to create a state-of-the-art data aggregation platform that relies on automation, modern non-structured content processing and skilled global operations to deliver a total outsource to our clients”, stated Bob Miller, CEO of PCR Insights.

The company’s wealth aggregation solution is leveraged across the wealth and asset management spectrum serving over 300 firms globally.

Five of the top 10 US private banks and many large investment advisors implement PCR’s capabilities to aggregate their wealthiest clients held-away assets to deliver a consolidated reporting experience for these clients. In doing so they provide these clients’ unique value differentiating themselves from other advisors with less capabilities.

Many family offices use PCR to provide a single source of truth for all their holdings and leverage their data warehouse solution to implement a range of reporting and integration solutions including with tools like Microsoft PowerBI.

Finally, 20 wealth technology companies support integrations ingesting PCR aggregated data to enhance their reporting, analytics, and risk functions, thereby providing their end-clients the best possible experience based on the best quality data.

Independent of client type, the past few years have seen significantly increased allocations to alternative investment products such as Private Equity and Hedge Funds. Unlike marketable securities which report efficiently on custodial and institutional data feeds, alternative investment reporting is facilitated by the delivery of documents via portals and emails. This creates a significant operational burden for advisors, family offices and other parties that must manually collect the data, transcribe relevant financial information from the documents and enter the transactions into their reporting and accounting systems.

PCR has taken a technology-first approach to this complex operational problem. The platform delivers very high levels of straight through processing by leveraging modern process automation, natural language processes, AI, and machine learning. Incorporated into the system is detailed information on the reporting practices of over 2,500 managers including reporting lag times, portal configurations, accounting practices, etc. This information is used by the system to scan thousands of portals daily, read tens of thousands of emails, extract transactions, quality assure the information and automate the delivery of data into a client’s system.

The company’s global operations teams monitor all processes resolving issues and continuously teach machines to achieve higher levels of automation and quality. All activities are instrumented and the status of processing visible to PCR clients in a secure operations portal. Amongst the information available is real-time measurement of contracted service levels for accuracy, timeliness, completeness, and responsiveness of the service.

“For our teams this is more than a data problem. Our clients trust us to ensure that their data is protected and confidential. A significant portion of our investments have been directed at data privacy and global privacy directives like GDPR”, shared Mr. Miller.

PCR’s proficiency was on full display when a top 5 global private bank desired to provide their most valued clients with consolidated performance reporting across both the firms’ advised client assets and the client’s assets held-elsewhere. Using standard PCR capabilities, the service was deployed delivering consolidated data into the firms client portal experience. Hundreds of advisors and thousands of their end-clients now share a common view of client investments as the basis of shaping better investment strategies.

PCR sees itself as akin to a reliable cable company. “Nobody thinks about their cable provider unless they can’t watch their favorite show. We have laid a lot of ‘fiber’ connecting to thousands of institutions and fund managers which enables us to streamline a client’s data needs. Our vision is of a very reliable, consistent flow of data that requires minimal intervention by our clients”, states Miller.

By establishing an extensive network of thousands of banks, fund managers and fund administrators, PCR ensures uninterrupted access to valuable financial data. Its team of skilled developers and architects enhances the firm’s technological capabilities through automation, minimizing the need for manual intervention. Investing in technology and collaborating with various institutions allows PCR to maintain the highest levels of efficiency and reliability as it scales its services.