A Look at FinFolio
A few weeks ago I went to Parker, Colorado. There I sat down with my friend Matt Abar, the CEO, of FinFolio. To those of you who do not know, or remember, Matt, he was the innovative force behind Techfi. Techfi’s Portfolio 2000 was the first portfolio management platform that maximized the Microsoft SQL environment to provide advisors and broker dealers with relational databases full of customer, position, transaction and security data for managing and reporting on clients. Included in that platform was the ability for advisors and broker dealers to manage their client portfolios, bill, and deliver reporting, including performance. Not so big a deal now, but then it was cutting edge stuff.
This was my first viewing of FinFolio. For the past six months Matt and Mike Benson, our development guru from Techfi, have been building first the database infrastructure, and then the front end of the FinFolio system. After a nice lunch, which Matt was nice enough to pick up, we sat down in their conference room to have a good look at FinFolio. After spending the past nine years working with portfolio management systems companies like Techfi, Investigo and Trust Company of America, I do consider myself an expert in the field. Here are my thoughts from Matt’s demo.
The system itself is visually appealing. If you are a fan of the new Microsoft Office 7.0 navigation logic using ribbons you will love this desktop application. For those of you that have not experienced the new navigation set the benefits of this application will be worth your efforts. After I had spent about an hour listening to Matt demonstrate the product I came to the conclusion that the system was far and away better than Portfolio 2000 ever was. The screens, the reconciliation tools, the reports all dramatically exceeded my last image of Matt and Mike’s work from the Techfi days. Since I believe a picture is worth a thousand words. I have included some screen shots. This first screen shot gives a view of a client dashboard that includes navigation, client profile, associated charts, and Errors and Alerts.
As a note the Errors and Alerts are one of the revolutionary items that FinFolio has come up with in helping advisors manage their reconciliation and client management.
The next screen shot highlights the elegant reporting window. These reports, to my eye, are head and shoulders above any portfolio reporting available today from a visual elegance and an ability to tell a clients investment story.
Without a doubt this offering can, and will add value to advisors that want a solution technology for their Registered Investment Advisor. A few items that I did not mention are that Finfolio has a re-balancing capability. As well, FinFolio within its infrastructure has built solid logic for integration of other best of breed solutions. Think CRM, Financial Planning.
Now I am going to change gears. I have two areas of apprehension. One area I came away unclear on is the point of platform residence. The system is built today as a desktop to sit on the advisors desk. As those that read my comments know I tend to lean more towards the outsourced, S-a-a-S, or cloud way of thinking. I also tend to look more at enterprise solutions, given our work with broker dealers. But in my discussions with Matt he assured me that FinFolio is able to provide the infrastructure for an enterprise or a hub and spoke model for advisors, super OSJ groups, and broker dealers. The other area of apprehension I have is in the data management itself. After sitting with numerous advisors and broker dealers over the years, I think that folks like their data processed for them. I even suggested to Matt that he look into a relationship with a data aggregator. His comment, “an interesting thought, let’s explore it.”
Summing up, I was impressed. I keep forcing myself to remember that FinFolio is only eighteen months old. Matt’s team, to date have done some great work. And I am sure there is even better work to come.