European Wealth Management Vendors

After providing a ranking of the North American weath management platform vendors, I have been looking at vendors across Europe. There are a number of interesting findings that will be discussed in greater detail once the report is released. Here are a couple of the initial findings: 1. European vendors by-and-large have strong functional support of discretionary wealth management; however, there is less funtional support around advisory models. That is to say, front office modules often focus on portfolio management and order management, whereas few vendors provide deep financial planning functionality. 2. However, vendors are identifying financial planning as a key area in which they need to invest. With structural reforms being pushed through several European markets, it seems likely that financial planning will become an increasingly important service for banks to offer. 3. Core banking solutions are emphasizing front office functionality for private banks. 4. The wealth management platform seems to be a more mature concept in Europe. That is to say, many vendors are offering a single infrastructure and STP for a number of channels and users. This is likely due to the longer history of universal banks in Europe. I'm interested to hear from vendors playing in both North America vs. Europe as to what they see as key differences as it relates to technology and functionality demands. Any thoughts are welcome!