After a few years of partnering for automated bank/trust Web services for wealth management offerings, SunGard has decided to bring that partner in-house. SunGard has acquired fellow Philadelphia firm Financial Technology Integrators for an undisclosed sum and will integrate FTI into its wealth management unit. FTI’s key strength was piecing together the financial data from disparate legacy systems into a Web-based application that streamlined portfolio management, pre-trade compliance, regulatory compliance, reporting and modeling.
SunGard had FTI’s tools previously integrated through “pre-acquisition” agreements, according to Mark Volker, SunGard SVP of global strategy and services for the firm’s wealth management business. The Web portion of the business is becoming one of the fastest-growing segments for trust services to banks, which are migrating to software-as-a-service (SaaS) platforms and wealth/trading automation to serve a wider swathe customers—from high net-worth to emerging affluent customers.
“We see many of our customers expressing a preference for solutions that are quick and easy to deploy, and that leverage their existing technology investments, rather than imposing new requirements for new environments,” says Volker.
