Insights / Industry Perspectives / Case study: Building a next-gen digital wealth management platform 

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Case study: Building a next-gen digital wealth management platform 

Project: Bringing enterprise modernization to a legacy system 

This HTEC client is an industry-leading independent wealth management and financial services company. A major part of its services is providing proprietary technology solutions for business and investment portfolio management to financial advisors.  

Operating in a development environment with both internal resources and multiple vendors created challenges with one of the client’s digital platforms. The firm decided to collaborate with HTEC to improve the platform’s overall stability and performance, update a range of features, and kickstart the monolithic legacy system’s migration to a modern microservices architecture.   

Challenge: Transforming an outdated system into a modern digital wealth management platform 

“While it was challenging, it was also incredibly interesting to work in a multi-vendor environment. We stepped into the project at a critical moment and took on a significant amount of work from other vendors. Our team grew from five people to 50 in less than two months. Although it was hectic at times, it was a great opportunity for our engineers to shine and demonstrate their technical expertise.” 

Nemanja Timotijevic, engineering and delivery manager 

With its legacy platform lagging and unable to keep up with growing user demands, the client tasked HTEC with adding new and improved features to the platform that would streamline working processes and allow the platform to scale more easily.  

The firm’s primary objectives were to resolve instability and performance issues, speed up onboarding of new clients, advisors, and firms, and ensure data synchronization between multiple database instances and external sources.  

Working alongside the client’s teams, HTEC operated across three separate yet interconnected lanes: 

Technology assessment:  
A thorough evaluation of the platform’s present state to identify and optimize all available resources — both organizational and technical. The HTEC team also logged the client’s technical debt. This tech assessment served as the foundation for HTEC’s platform updates.  

Platform enhancement: 
Improvements to the existing platform’s features and the introduction of new ones to address growing user expectations. 

Development of a new system: 
Rewriting the most critical aspects of the legacy platform to incorporate microservices architecture and other contemporary software development practices.  

Solution: A user-friendly, data-driven, and scalable digital wealth management platform 

“We took a complex and challenging part of the client’s system, modernized it, and improved the platform’s look and feel in less than a year.”  

Lazar Milosavljevic, engineering and delivery lead

In less than a year since the start of the client’s collaboration with HTEC, the team introduced a next-generation digital wealth management platform with improved, optimized, or newly developed features, including:  

  • Client onboarding 
  • Account establishment and management 
  • Advisory activities 
  • Data forms 
  • Digital document signing 
  • Core services optimization 

Enhancements to the onboarding process had the most impact.  Onboarding clients became a faster, more convenient and efficient process compared to the legacy system. These improvements were recognized at the Wealth Management Industry Awards, where the client’s platform won first prize for its ability to reduce onboarding time for professionals, their staff, and clients by 75%. 

Another highlight of HTEC’s work with the client was creating the Advisor Insights portal for data-driven decision-making. The new tool offers live report functionalities and allows users to access data quickly and generate various graphic reports within the portal, removing the need for any additional tools.  

Success: Enterprise modernization as the foundation of future success 

“It was a pleasure working with the HTEC team—they are all amazing. We built something that we can be proud of, a platform that will truly impact our company and customers. It’s a small world and I hope to be fortunate enough to work with HTEC again in the future.” 
 

Team leader, financial services company

The client’s partnership with HTEC led to the creation of a greatly improved, flexible, reliable, fast, and modern digital wealth management platform that supports the business operations of financial advisors. With new and updated features baked into the platform, the client can meet the growing demands of its customers, gain a competitive edge in the market, and continue to expand its reach.  

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