Platform Adoption and Feature Utilization: How Black Diamond Serves the Family Office

The wealth management landscape is far from monolithic. SS&C’s Black Diamond® Wealth Platform serves a broad spectrum of investment-oriented businesses providing financial solutions to families and individuals. In addition to fee-based RIAs and independent broker-dealers, Black Diamond also serves a multitude of single-family offices. 

A single-family office investment portfolio is often complex as they manage highly diversified investments, which may pose many unique operational challenges. By leveraging Black Diamond, family offices can manage their businesses more efficiently.

1. Highly Customizable Client Portal
   
   

   Clients are seeing a significant user adoption rate of the Client Experience portal. Over the last six months, 48% of their clients have logged in to view their accounts. Over the past 30 days, 36% of users are logging in, or more than one-third of all clients. This activity demonstrates the effectiveness and stickiness of the Black Diamond Client Portal.

2. Client Communications using Timeline
   
   

   Black Diamond empowers firms to deliver messages in the right place at the right time. Our Timeline feature lets advisors detail memorable events and communications in a social media-stye feed. Today, nearly 70% of family offices on the platform use Timeline to communicate with clients in our Client Portal. 

3. Complex Reporting Requirements
   
   

   Advisory firms of all sizes have complex reporting requirements. Black Diamond reporting functionality lets advisors build customized reports for specific needs, and our family offices are taking full advantage of those tools. In fact, 87% of our family office clients created customized client reports in the last six months. 

   While our reporting tools have high adoption, we always look at ways to enhance our offerings. We currently have initiatives underway to allow firms to group data by any field beyond the standard grouping levels of Account or Portfolio. 

4. Alternative Investment Management
   
   

   Data shows a very high adoption of our Alternative Investments solution among our family office clients. In the past six months, 76% of our family office clients used our Alternatives platform to manage and report on these types of client assets.

   Family Offices tend to be active users of the platform’s Research tool and Transaction Management capabilities. They also show significant usage of the Allocation and Performance cards within the platform’s Client View application, underscoring the importance of monitoring portfolio allocations and the ability to analyze and explain performance to family members.

Additionally, as families expand and become more complex with each succeeding generation, family offices are well served by Black Diamond’s integrations with various CRM platforms, most notably SS&C’s Salentica CRM, to track and build more personalized relationships with each family member.

As a family office, advisors need deep, personalized reporting, including entity structures and the ability to present and visualize their client’s complete financial picture. Our customizable Client Portal and highly custom reporting options make this possible, enabling firms to focus on client relationships and demonstrating the value they provide.

To learn how the SS&C Black Diamond Wealth Platform can support your unique advisory firm, request your personal demo, call 1-800-727-0605, or email info@advent.com.