Asset Vantage is a secure platform for high net worth families to control their financial data

Asset Vantage is a software platform for high net worth families with significant exposure to multiple investments to easily manage their assets. Essentially how it works is that the head of the family, or the family principal, subscribes to the service and can add other family entities and accounts. The platform is linked to the various assets and accounts. Other family members and financial advisors, auditors and chartered accountants can be given logins and access privileges only to the data that is relevant to them. The front end includes a personal URL with a secure web interface and a mobile application. Cash flows, wealth and asset allocations across time can be tracked with an easy to understand dashboard.  The application allows users to connect to the Asset Vantage platform in a very dynamic way. The app can be used to track things that change daily, which includes stocks, bank balances, income, expenses, alerts, and documents. RSS feeds can be configured for news publications and categories of news. News items can be shared with others from within the application. The App is available for free on Android and iOS, but requires a subscription to the Asset Vantage platform for users to realise its full potential. The Asset Vantage platform is a single front end to the whole product ecosystem that allows high net-worth families to track their investment & asset bases by capturing and gathering data across mutual funds, stocks, bonds, real estate, private equity, hedge funds, international investments and other investments.  We spoke to Chirag Nanavati, one of the founders of Asset Vantage and its Managing Director, about the privacy and security of such critical data. “For such high net worth individuals, security and privacy of the data is everything. What we do is that we never store any data on the application. The actual confidential data does not reside on the app at all, but in a private cloud license where they will be able to maintain all the information and track it. The app will allow authenticated users to securely pair with their private cloud setup. Instead of having documents in dropbox, email attachments or elsewhere in physical files and folders. All of this comes together in one place for the family.” One of the strongest security features of the system is that each family is given a private url, through which they can access their accounts. Elaborating on the security aspects, Nanavati says, “We are do not track private customer data, and re-sell it. Customer data and privacy is our top priority.” A problem associated with high net worth families is the complexity of data. Usually, multiple family members will have multiple investments in multiple accounts. There may be one family member, who will have four or five different account relationships. Across the family, the complexity increases. It is not just one bank account and one advisor. Nanavati says, “Typically, high net worth families have multiple financial institutional relationships to manage exposure risk. Some of these relationships are managed through advisors and some on their own. Asset Vantage platform helps them manage this increased complexity.” Nanavati goes on to explain, “Normally what would happen, if someone wants to handle their taxes, they will email their statements and ask somebody to file their taxes. We don’t do that with Asset Vantage. All the information is maintained on the platform. The CA will get a login to the platform. It is all organized in a place where the family can track, and the family can control access to the information. You can create user accounts and give them edit and view privileges, and access tiers. Even within a family, you can configure it in such a way that the kids can look at their own accounts but not other accounts. A CA can look at only the accounts of your company. Another CA can look at only personal assets. Another CA can look at only stocks and not other things. Exports, edits, view…. all different levels of access are available. Auditor would have access to view, but not to edit. CA can have edit access.” The application also supports alerts based on tracking price movements, asset allocation, maturity dates for investments and more. Asset Vantage also has a private and exclusive network of family principals known as the Vantage Club. There are up to three closed door meetings every year, where family principals can share their best practices and get connected to a network of their peers. There are three subscription models for the Asset Vantage service. These are the Family Edition, for individuals with investment portfolios, the Family Office Edition, for larger families with multiple accounts and assets and the Business Edition which is suitable for accounting firms and investment advisors. Interested users can request a demo of any of the three editions.