The integration of Winfund’s account-management and trading tools with GlobeAdvisor ProStation provides advisors with access to one of the most comprehensive free software tools available in the marketplace today.

Winfund, a back-office software package offered by Ottawa-based Winfund Software Corp. , a wholly owned subsidiary of Mackenzie Financial Corp. , provides advisors with real-time access to client accounts and the ability to execute transactions.

Developed to simplify and reduce advisors’ workload, Winfund allows you to manage your business electronically by enabling all the key steps in the financial planning life cycle — from managing prospects, clients and their portfolios to trading, commission processing and reporting, and analysis.

The integration allows you to export your client account information securely from the Winfund system directly into ProStation, allowing clients to take advantage of ProStation’s extensive research, asset-allocation and portfolio diagnostics capabilities in making investment decisions.

“GlobeAdvisor ProStation has the performance data, research, portfolio and presentation tools to help advisors understand how their clients are doing,” says David Keith, vice president of digital media for theGlobe and Mail, which offers GlobeAdvisor ProStation. “Winfund has the back-office capabilities to help advisors monitor client accounts and make transactions.”

ProStation’s “research centre” allows advisors to locate and produce reports on more than 5,000 mutual funds, 8,500 Canadian and U.S. companies, 16,000 stocks and 200 indices. Advisors can also access comprehensive information, including charts on funds, stocks and companies.

Winfund is designed specifically for mutual fund advisors. The insurance component of this software is not part of the integration, and you wouldn’t be able to get information on individual companies and stocks when dealing with clients.

But you can filter investment funds based on a range of criteria, including return, risk, size, geographical exposure and management expense ratio.

The “portfolio diagnostics” feature facilitates analysis of a specific or multiple portfolios. The “close gap” feature helps you close the allocation gap between a model portfolio and a selected portfolio.

Applying client data from Winfund, you can select the portfolio’s holdings and make asset-allocation decisions as a percentage of the portfolio or as a dollar amount.

The software’s “allocation slider” can help you vary the asset class weights in a particular portfolio to come up with a mix of assets that matches the client’s risk/return objectives. Or you can use the “portfolio optimization” feature, which uses risk tolerance as a guide to select the best possible allocations.

When prospecting or making a presentation to clients, you can use the ProStation database to create hypothetical “before” and “after” portfolios. The “portfolio head- to-head diagnostic” report can be used to compare two portfolios in the same report, using criteria such as historical performance, volatility, and sector and geographical breakdown. This feature allows customized reports that include performance measures and market/style analyses.

The “portfolio presentation” report can be personalized under a client’s name, providing comprehensive information on portfolio holdings, including a correlation report that shows the relationships among holdings in the portfolio. A personalized investment policy statement can be generated in a format that is ready to be signed.

The integration enables any advisor who uses Winfund as a back-office system to have access to the necessary information and tools to build a business and serve clients.

Paul Regan, manager of business development for Web products and solutions at the Globe, says the integration brings the four pieces of the puzzle together for advisors:

1.  What do my clients own (Win-fund)?

2.  How are they doing (Pro-Station)?

3.  What should the advisor do? (ProStation)?

4.  Execute the transaction (Winfund).

“This is groundbreaking, because no one offers this for free today,” Regan says. (Morningstar Canada’s PalTrak and BellCharts offer similar analytical tools, but at a price.) The GlobeAdvisor Web site is financed mainly through advertising revenue.

You can register for Pro-Station at www.globeadvisor.com. IE