Client Spotlight: Wetherby Asset Management
Canoe Intelligence talked with Theresa Arroyo, Senior Manager of Financial Operations at Wetherby Asset Management about her experience managing alternatives documents and data, and how Canoe has helped the firm automate traditionally manual workflows and support business growth.
Wetherby Asset Management is a wealth advisory firm dedicated to helping clients achieve their goals by providing exceptional investment management and financial planning services. From their offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York, their 80+ person team works with wealthy individuals and families throughout the U.S. Wetherby Asset Management offers objective, unbiased, and thoughtful financial counsel centered on each client’s unique needs and priorities. Putting clients first guides the firm’s decision-making and culture, and allows them to build long-term, caring, and trusted relationships. As of January 1st, 2022, Wetherby Asset Management joined forces with the highly regarded Seattle-based Laird Norton Wealth Management, to further expand and enhance their expertise in a variety of wealth management disciplines.
Tell us about your experience with alternatives documents and data management before using Canoe. What challenges did you face? How did you spend your time?
Prior to Canoe, our team spent a significant amount of time gathering event PDF notices and translating the data from those PDFs into Excel templates that we then upload to our reporting software platform, Advisor View.
Canoe has helped in two main ways. First, our team was initially responsible for gathering the event PDFs. Originally, we received most of our PDF notices via email directly to a designated inbox, however over the last few years as security concerns have heightened in our industry, most private fund managers have moved away from the ‘push’ notification workflow to ‘fetching’ from web portals. Of course, while we appreciate this heightened security on behalf of our clients, it does however add time to the gathering process to log into the various web portals to access and download the PDFs. Canoe’s technology now accesses many of these PDFs directly.
Second, once we had the event PDF notices, our team then read through them and translate the data to the Excel templates. This translation was very manual and time-intensive. Using Canoe technology eliminates this manual translation and has withstood the scrutiny of our data reconciliation process to be fully accurate. Our team is now able to review and upload much more quickly to our main reporting software platform.
Why did you choose Canoe as your partner for alternatives documents and data management? Did you evaluate other solutions? Which Canoe features stood out to you in your evaluation process?
In the beginning, we looked at three potential vendors. We landed on Canoe because we liked that it was a technology-based solution as opposed to a people-based solution. As our clients’ alternative positions grow, we believe this technology-based approach will lead to more sustainable scalability. We also see the potential of Canoe’s document vault and its ability to help us standardize document naming conventions.
As we continue our onboarding process, we expect to further integrate Canoe with our portal and streamline the delivery of important documents such as K-1 tax forms to our clients and CPAs with increased efficiency. Additionally, with Canoe Connect we hope to reduce the time spent logging in and fetching event notification PDFs as Canoe will do this for us automatically.
Since implementing Canoe at Wetherby, has your time spent on alternatives documents and data shifted in any way? How does Canoe perform relative to your expectations?
Since onboarding Canoe, we have seen improved turnaround time for updating alternative statement data to Advisor View. Canoe has also opened new opportunities for system integration and internal process efficiencies. It is starting to free up time for our staff so they can participate in other areas, projects, and committees leading to enhanced client service, offerings, and employee job fulfillment.
How has automating your alternatives documents and data workflows with Canoe supported your firm’s growth?
In the last few years, we have had consistent growth in the number of alternative positions we are tracking across our client base. Canoe has helped us manage this growth without needing to add additional human resources, keeping costs predictable and allowing us to scale.
What is the best part of your Canoe experience so far?
Our Canoe service team and the relationship we have established. We feel that the culture and responsiveness that we’ve received from the team at Canoe align well with the service and culture that we provide to our own clients.
Theresa Arroyo, Senior Manager of Financial Operations
After college I started my career at Investors Bank and Trust (IBT) on the Data Management and Reconciliation team where I learned attention to detail is paramount. I spent about four years at IBT and ended my time there as a Senior International Fund Accountant. I then joined Wetherby Asset Management in 2007 and am now the Senior Manager of Financial Operations. This team works across a wide breadth of areas including data management, alternative investment accounting, quarterly reporting, billing, performance, project management, and system implementation/integration. Our team works hard to ensure data accuracy so our Client Service team can have confidence in the information they are reviewing to advise our clients and help them reach their financial goals.
Wetherby Asset Management announced its engagement with Canoe Intelligence in January 2021.