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Finance

Automating Trade Reconciliation, Account Opening, and Tax Reporting for a Wealth Management Firm

automated workflows for trade reconciliation, account onboarding, and tax reporting in a wealth management firm

Focus Areas

Automation

Digital Transformation

Visual representation of end-to-end automation across trading, onboarding, and tax compliance operations in wealth management.

Business Problem

A wealth management firm was struggling to meet client expectations. Their use of manual processes caused operational delays for key activities such as new account opening, tax preparation, and trade reconciliation and resulted in errors and slow processing times. Busy times like tax season amplified the challenges faced by the company.

Key challenges:

  • Reconciling Trades: The firm’s approach took much time and effort, making it prone to errors. The absence of automation in reconciling trades with custodians also resulted in discrepancies that took significant time to resolve.

  • Account Opening: Opening new accounts was a very slow process which required employees to manually gather client data, review compliance, and coordinate with different departments. This delayed the onboarding of new clients, especially during peak periods.

  • Tax season: The company could not generate timely and accurate reports for its clients because of its manual approach. This resulted in an unsatisfactory experience for clients during a critical period.

  • Scaling: The operations could not be scaled effectively during peak periods because they required manual intervention. Due to this, the company suffered from bottlenecks, unhappy clients, and increased operational costs.

The Approach

The firm needed a solution that, without manual intervention from a financial manager, would enable better scalability during busy periods, streamline key processes, and reduce errors. Curate worked with the firm’s internal teams to understand the operational gaps in the workflows and designed a solution customized to their needs. This included a Trade Order Management System (OMS) to address trade reconciliation issues, automation tools to streamline the tax preparation and account opening process, and standardizing workflows across all processes for operational efficiency and scalability.

Key components of the solution:

  • Discovery and Requirements Gathering: To thoroughly understand the gaps in the current workflows, Curate carried out workshops and system assessments and interviewed key stakeholders from the firm’s operations, IT, and client service teams. Based on this, the following requirements were identified to improve operational efficiency:

    • Automate trade reconciliation to reduce delays and errors.

    • Streamline and standardize the account opening process to improve onboarding times.

    • Accelerate report generation and minimize errors by automating tax reporting.

    • Implement a system that could scale effectively during peak periods, especially tax season, and handle the increased load.

  • Implementation of a Trade OMS: Curate implemented a Trade OMS customized to the firm’s specific needs. This would help address the trade reconciliation issues faced by the company.

    • Automated Trade Reconciliation: To eliminate manual data entry and automate the reconciliation of trades in real-time, the OMS was integrated with the custodial platforms and portfolio management systems. This significantly reduced errors and improved the accuracy of client’s portfolios.

    • Discrepancy Resolution: Operations teams received alerts from the OMS’s automatic discrepancy detection feature when mismatches occurred in the trade records. This allowed the team to quickly resolve issues. Additionally, this streamlined reconciliation process also freed up valuable resources.

  • Account Opening and Tax: Automation tools were introduced to optimize the tax reporting and account opening processes.

    • Account Opening Workflow: Curate designed an automated workflow for opening new accounts which integrated with the firm’s CRM and compliance systems, and guided staff from gathering client data to performing compliance checks. This ensured consistency and reduced onboarding times by 50%.

    • Automating Tax Reporting: Using SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) and Power BI, the system could pull financial data from multiple sources and automatically generate tax reports for clients. This automated tax reporting process reduced the risk of errors and allowed real-time preparation of tax reports.

  • Standardization of Workflows and Scalability: Workflows were standardized across all processes to ensure scalability and operational efficiency.

    • Workflows: To reduce variability, minimize the risk of errors, and ensure that all departments follow consistent processes during peak periods, standardized workflows were developed to reconcile trades, open accounts, and report taxes. 

    • Scalability: Operations could now be successfully scaled during peak periods – the firm could handle a higher volume of transactions, account openings, and tax reports without compromising on service quality or overloading operations.

  • Stakeholder Engagement and Change Management: The project was carried out in close collaboration with internal teams and vendors to ensure a successful and smooth transition to the new system.

    • Internal Teams: Curate engaged with the in-company teams throughout to ensure that the new system met their operational needs and objectives. Regular feedback sessions helped address concerns and fine-tune the solution.

    • Vendors: To integrate the OMS and automation tools seamlessly with the current infrastructure, Curate collaborated with the firm’s existing vendors including custodial platforms and CRM providers.

    • Change Management and Training: Thorough training was provided on the new OMS and workflows. Change management workshops were also conducted to ensure all teams could fully utilize the new systems.

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Business Outcomes

Improved Operational Efficiency


The OMS and automation tools cut in half the time needed for account opening, trade reconciliation, and tax reporting. This allowed the firm to process more transactions and reports accurately in less time.

Minimal Errors


The accuracy of financial data was improved as errors in trade reconciliation and tax reporting were reduced by 80%. This also reduced compliance risks.

Improved Scalability


Operations could now be scaled effectively during peak periods, allowing the firm to handle a higher volume of transactions and inquiries without increasing the staff or operational costs.

Sample KPIs

Here’s a quick summary of the kinds of KPI’s and goals teams were working towards**:

Metric Before After Improvement
Account opening time 5 days 2 days 60% reduction
Trade reconciliation errors 15 errors/month 3 errors/month 80% reduction
Tax report preparation time 7 days 2 days 70% reduction
Operational capacity during tax season Limited Scalable (automated) 100% improvement
Client satisfaction (survey score) 6.5/10 9/10 2.5-point improvement
**Disclaimer: The set of KPI’s are for illustration only and do not reference any specific client data or actual results – they have been modified and anonymized to protect confidentiality and avoid disclosing client data.

Customer Value

Enhanced Client Satisfaction


With quicker responses to inquiries, more accurate financial reports, timely tax reporting, and faster account setup, client satisfaction and trust improved.

Sample Skills of Resources

  • Automation Engineers: IT automation, workflow optimization, and integration of financial platforms with automated processes.

  • Software Developers: Developing and customizing Trade OMS and account opening solutions.

  • Tax and Compliance Specialists: Automating tax reporting processes, ensuring compliance with financial regulations, and minimizing errors.

  • DevOps Engineers: Deploying automated workflows using Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment pipelines, ensuring scalability and optimizing performance.

  • Project Managers: Managing cross-functional teams, coordinating vendor relationships, and delivering complex IT automation projects on time.

  • Change Management Experts: Training internal teams, managing transitions, and driving adoption of new systems.

Tools & Technologies

  • Trade OMS: Custom OMS developed using ASP.NET, integrated with custodial and portfolio management platforms.

  • Automation Tools: Microsoft Power Automate, UiPath for automating account opening and tax reporting processes.

  • Data Integration: SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) for data migration and integration across systems.

  • Tax Reporting Automation: SSRS, Power BI for real-time tax reporting and financial analytics.

  • Collaboration Tools: Microsoft Teams, Slack for internal communication and coordination across departments.

illustrating how automation tools streamline trade validation, new account setup, and regulatory tax reporting

Conclusion

Curate helped the wealth management firm significantly improve their operational efficiency and client satisfaction by implementing the Trade OMS and automated workflows. Automating trade reconciliation, account opening, and tax reporting, helped the firm reduce errors, improve process speed, and enhance scalability during peak periods. This increased operational capacity and accuracy and ensured continued success for the firm.

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