It's Sunday evening, and you're still at your desk wrestling with Excel spreadsheets, trying to reconcile custodian data for Monday morning's client meeting. Sound familiar? You're not alone. 

Across wealth firms, Capgemini reports that front office staff spend about two-thirds of their time on administrative tasks, with reporting consuming a large chunk of this.

Meanwhile, your clients are checking their banking apps, trading platforms and investment accounts in real-time. They expect the same immediacy from their wealth manager – but your quarterly PDF reports and manual processes can't deliver.

The Hidden Cost of Manual Reporting

Trust is fragile. One calculation error, one outdated valuation, or one delayed report can undermine years of relationship building. Yet manual reporting processes make these risks inevitable:

• Data fragmentation across multiple custodians and systems creates reconciliation nightmares
• Excel-based workflows introduce the risk of human error at every step
• Time lag between data updates and client delivery damages transparency
• Regulatory complexity around MiFID II, SFDR and local requirements adds layers of manual compliance checks

The result? Portfolio managers trapped in administrative cycles when they should be focusing on investment strategy and client relationships.

What Modern Clients Actually Want

Today's wealth management clients – whether private individuals, family offices or institutions – have fundamentally shifted their expectations. They demand greater transparency with clear performance data, benchmark comparisons and regulatory compliance documentation as fundamental requirements rather than nice-to-haves.

Modern investors also expect personalisation over generic templates. Reports must reflect individual investment mandates, ESG preferences and specific financial goals.

The firms winning new clients are those delivering on these expectations without compromising accuracy or compliance.

The Automation Advantage: How Technology Transforms Reporting

Automated portfolio reporting isn't just about efficiency, it's about competitive advantage. When Infront's Assetmax handles the heavy lifting, portfolio managers can shift from data compilation to strategic advisory.

From Data Chaos to Clean Reports

Before generating any report, accurate portfolio data is essential. Yet for many portfolio managers, data preparation represents the most time-consuming part of the entire process. Teams spend hours each cycle manually downloading files from different custodian banks, comparing holdings across multiple systems and investigating discrepancies.

Assetmax transforms this by automatically aggregating data from multiple custodians through standardised connections, including multi-custody consolidation via FIX connectivity. The platform also manages non-bankable assets like private equity, which traditionally require manual data entry. This eliminates the manual reconciliation that typically consumes hours each reporting cycle.

Intelligent Report Generation

With templates ranging from one-page summaries to comprehensive valuations, and over 40 informative components to build them with, Assetmax transforms how reports are created.

Build customised templates once based on a client's specific needs, then reuse them repeatedly with data automatically populated from the portfolio management system. What previously required hours of manual compilation now takes just a few clicks to generate and share client-ready reports.

The system can produce detailed portfolio overviews including profit and loss statements, asset allocation breakdowns, exposure analysis, top positions, and performance winners/losers. Depending on the report you can choose to show different time periods such as monthly, quarterly and yearly performance, contribution analysis, transaction histories and cost breakdowns – all generated automatically from your portfolio management system with just a few clicks.

The platform also provides multi-language support across English, German, Italian, Spanish and Russian.

The Cost of Standing Still

Technology is increasingly defining competitive advantage in portfolio management. Firms still relying on manual reporting processes face mounting disadvantages:

• Talent retention challenges as skilled professionals seek roles with modern tools
• Client acquisition difficulties against competitors offering superior digital experiences
• Operational risk exposure from manual processes and potential errors
• Regulatory compliance burden that grows heavier with each new requirement

Meanwhile, firms leveraging automated reporting can redirect their most valuable resource – experienced portfolio managers – towards activities that genuinely differentiate their service: investment research, client strategy and relationship building.

Transform Your Reporting Process

Portfolio managers face a clear choice: continue wrestling with manual processes or embrace automation that frees up time for what truly matters. Every moment spent on manual processes is time not invested in client relationships and business growth.

Infront's Portfolio Management & Advisory solutions over 500 clients managing €200 billion in assets across Europe's leading wealth management firms.

Ready to reclaim your time and elevate your client service? The technology exists today to transform your reporting from a time-consuming necessity into a competitive advantage.

Discover how Infront can streamline your client reporting processes. Request a free demo to see automated reporting in action.