Wealth manager signs with Advent to streamline back office

DALLAS – Symmetry Capital Advisors, an investment advisor with $125 million in assets under management focused on wealth management, has implemented Advent Software’s Advent Back Office Service (ABOS) hosted system for more efficient reporting, portfolio management and reconciliation capabilities.

The ABOS product provides Advent’s Axys portfolio management functionality via ASP, as well as outsourced data management and daily reconciliation services. The system targets managers wanting to focus their energies on front-office and client services rather than on back-office maintenance.

David Stalnaker, president and chief investment officer at Symmetry Capital, reveals that the ABOS implementation has facilitated more efficient quarterly report generation at the manager, as well as reduced operational costs – to the tune of $40,000 in annual savings – through lowered overhead and in-house staffing. According to Stalnaker, the Advent hosted system’s scalability has enabled his firm to avoid adding staff to handle expanding accounting and reconciliation requirements despite an increase of $100 million in assets under management from 2002.

"I wanted us to focus our energies on constructing portfolios and serving clients, and saw the creation, maintenance, staffing, management and funding of a back-office operation as a distraction – and still do," Stalnaker says. The official explains that Symmetry Capital had been working with Advent Axys in-house prior to the ABOS installation, and is now able to outsource most of its back-office operations to the vendor. "They handle almost every back-office-related task for our firm, including daily downloads, reconciliations, corporate transactions and updating performance and index data," Stalnaker says.