Odyssey rolls out on-boarding tool to global client base

Private banking and wealth-management software developer Odyssey Financial Technologies has made its Client On-boarding & Maintenance application for more efficient and automated account opening available worldwide.

The product was previously only available to Odyssey's US wealth management clients, and supports more streamlined data gathering processes, assembly and pre-filling of contracts, as well as automated compliance checks for name verification and anti-money laundering requirements. Document management, graphically designed workflows and business activity monitoring are also included.

Craig O'Neill, president of Odyssey's North American business, explains that Client On-boarding & Maintenance was developed in response to ongoing challenges wealth managers had to deal with when opening new accounts.

"What we were seeing in the industry was firms struggling with the issue of account opening in terms of being agile enough - responding to regulatory and business changes - and to do that cost-effectively," O'Neill says. "We've seen reports where firms are spending huge amounts of their technology and operational budgets dealing with the churn and change around account opening, so we felt there was an important need in the marketplace for this to make them faster, more agile and to save them money."

Odyssey first identified this need among its US clients, according to O'Neill, and rolled out the product in that market six months ago. The Client On-boarding & Maintenance module was developed in partnership with Swiss technology firm Numcom Software, whose Appway tool for managing process-drive web applications powers the Odyssey product.

Wealth managers can either implement Odyssey's new offering as a stand-alone tool or add it to their existing components of the vendor's platform.

"The overall offering has various modules that can be turned on according to client needs, so the client on-boarding module is something they can switch on as well," says O'Neill. "If you're looking at an existing portfolio in Odyssey's other modules, the client on-boarding tool can start a new workflow to create a new account, and as you run through that workflow all of the information the system can gather based on existing client and account data will be pre-populated and checked," he says. ><

Stewart Eisenhart

Bottom line: Odyssey's Client On-boarding & Maintenance offering will enable wealth managers worldwide to take on new business more rapidly and affordably