Over the years, many financial advisors have complained long and hard about the quality of their firm’s client account statements. Regardless of the business model or distribution channel, advi-sors grumble about client statements that omit information, have confusing layouts and use industry jargon that leaves clients puzzled rather than informed.

However, although many advisors feel they are stuck with the statements their dealers or mutual fund companies mail out, there are a number of tools and options that allow advisors to take matters into their own hands.

Many back-office providers give access to reporting tools that allow advisors to customize their own client portfolio summaries. Toronto-based Univeris Corp.provides mutual fund and insurance dealers with client reporting tools already bundled in the purchase of a back-office package, and are aware of the growing concern among advisors when it comes to statements clients are receiving.

“Many statements that are popped in the mail are out of the advisor’s control,” says Richard Binnendyk, executive vice president with Univeris. “Corporate statements are usually produced with one goal in mind: to meet regulatory requirements around client reporting with a basic statement.”

It is for this reason that Univeris provides two types of client reporting: corporate statements, which a dealer is required to produce annually or quarterly for regulatory purposes; and portfolio summaries, which are statements that advisors can produce themselves, at any time — particularly if they want to do their own mailings or provide an update at a client meeting.

“Part of what advi-sors can do with their front-end office is what we call ‘out of the box’ functionality,” Binnendyk says. “It allows an advisor to produce a portfolio summary that will provide a detailed and customized statement for their individual clients.”

When dealers purchase the Univeris platform, they are automatically provided with four portfolio-summary templates that ad-visors can access from their front-end offices. Advisors are then able to choose whether to produce an individual portfolio summary or a batch of summaries incorporating other features and information. These extras may include: graphical representations, such as pie charts or bar graphs; additional reporting information, such as rate of return or net investments and the transactional history of each investment or insurance policy; and personalized information in a message box.

“[The message box] is a great feature, in which an advisor is able to communicate announcements or reminders to their clients,” Binnendyk says. “It allows for personalized messages on things such as upcoming RRSP contributions or opening a tax-free savings account.”

Dealers can also add to the four templates if they have specific needs or would like to produce a more customized layout for the firm.

Winfund Software Corp., a back-office system based in Toronto that serves mutual fund and insurance distributors in Canada, also offers “out of the box” statements. Dealers can request additional items — such as visuals, charts, rate of return and book value — to be added to their corporate statements. Customized reporting is also available for firms that would like specific needs accommodated.

“A number of firms solicit feedback from their advisors and then approach us with the results,” says Andrew Campbell, sales and marketing manager with Winfund. “We are able to work with the firm to produce a statement that works well for them and their advisors’ needs.”

Although advisors are not able to tap into a front-end office to customize their own client statements, they are able to provide their dealer with feedback or requests for additional information to be provided on their clients’ statements.

For the more independent advi-sor, Montreal-based Portfolio1.ca
offers a Web-based portfolio-management tool that allows you to create individual online statements for each client account.

Jean Stuart, president of Port-folio1, founded the company An-net Web in 1984 to offer advisors alternative methods of reporting. The company was later renamed and expanded to cover the region from Quebec to New Brunswick; there are plans to expand the company nationally.

“I have been in the industry since 1975,” Stuart says. “And, as time went on, I was sad to see that no one had developed a software that could provide reporting tools that were easy to access for both advisors and clients.”

Unlike Univeris’s or Winfund’s platforms, the Portfolio1 system is accessible online at www.portfolio1.ca. The system has up-to-date encryption technology and firewalls to protect clients’ personal information while still allowing both advisor and client to access the database from anywhere in the world.

@page_break@This means advisors handling out-of-country clients, snowbirds or business clients who travel frequently can provide those clients with online access to their statements and discuss their accounts over the phone while both parties can see the same updated account information on their computers.

Advisors can choose from 30 client-reporting layouts, including those providing customized balance sheets or balance sheets upon retirement and death. The Web-based tool also provides the cash position of estate summaries and a statement of income and expenditures.

The Portfolio1 system tracks each client’s account on a daily basis, with automatic updates through various online networks, including Toronto-based FundSERV Inc. ’s.

The system can also provide up-to-date balances on clients’ life insurance, disability insurance, annuities, mutual and segregated funds, and guaranteed investment certificates. IE