Captools/net software provides you with robust portfolio management at both a competitive and an affordable cost while allowing you to keep your valuable client data under your control on your computers.  This approach provides you with the ability to support accounts held at a wide variety of custodians, clearing firms and transfer agents, and enables you to service your clients in the customized way that higher net worth individuals expect.

YOUR DATA

We believe that for many money managers, maintaining control their data is an important issue.  With Captools/net your data is on computers under your full control, whether these computers are in your place(s) of business or are virtual machines you control which are on a cloud hosting service.   

Unlike with many third party service providers, with Captools/net you can easily manually enter data which is held outside the usual custodial system, e.g. securities held in trust and/or with a transfer agent, or with custodians that are not supported by a service provider.  In many such cases, through the use of customizable import templates such data may also be easily imported.

Although third party service bureaus or web-based application service providers may appear to provide a suitable alternative to reliance upon a custodian for record keeping and portfolio reporting, they subject you to a number of important drawbacks. First, your valuable client data (and your clients’ data) may be unnecessarily out of your direct control, and in some cases be even legally “owned” by the service provider (similar to the social networks that can “own” your virtual life), depending upon the terms of your agreement. And even if your store a copy on your server, you will be providing access to a third party whose interest is not necessarily aligned with yours (we have encountered firms offering portfolio record and reporting services who turned out to be affiliated with a money management firm, an obvious conflict of interest… would you want your data in their control?).

Furthermore, with a service bureau you will be totally dependent upon the service provider to make any data corrections and support you during audit situations. In this regard, their urgency to resolve data issues and meet your timeline requirements will never match yours, as you will only be one of many customers. Similarly, service bureau providers will tend to only offer and support only a limited range of “standard”, “one size fits all” reports, without due consideration to special reporting requirements amongst your client base.

YOUR DUE DILLIGENCE

Finally, expensive service bureaus or application service providers may not actually save you much in time and labor costs. The reason for this is that a service  bureau cannot assume your fiduciary “due diligence” responsibility to review your clients’ data and ensure that it is correct and in fact conforms to your instructions to their custodian on trades and other transactions; only your firm can perform this function.