Founded in 1992 by a small group of families and business owners looking for a more personalized experience than typical large financial institutions, Trust Company of the South works with families of all shapes and sizes to build, protect, and preserve wealth. By shifting focus to the future via integrated planning and forward-thinking investments, Trust Company’s goal is to preserve its clients’ legacies for generations to come.
Leveraging Technology to Augment Operations Team
As part of that dedicated service focus, Trust Company relies on advanced technologies to provide an outstanding client experience while driving advisor and staff productivity. According to Leah Jane Barnwell, Strategic Initiatives Manager, “To deliver on our personalized service promise, we are always looking for the best technologies that can scale with our growth.”
Trust Company of the South is one of the pioneering users of SS&C Innovest, an accounting and reporting platform. To supplement its growth, the firm was in search of comprehensive, integrated CRM and performance reporting tools to provide broader investing and wealth management services.
“We were in the process of searching to add these new capabilities when SS&C acquired Innovest, and we immediately knew that the ability to consolidate our technologies under one company would be extremely advantageous,” Barnwell notes. “Particularly being able to work with Black Diamond and Salentica Engage checked all the boxes for us, most importantly, because of the ‘boundless customization’ we could access.”
Innovative communication tools
One key ‘out of the box’ feature that Barnwell and her team looked for was the Engage feature called InTouch which would provide alerts to predict client communications and ensure a proactive approach to client service.
“We have defined service levels with corresponding client communications, and based on meeting notes, phone calls, and client preferences loaded into Engage, InTouch would automatically remind advisors and staff to reach out to clients for follow-up, which provides us with a proactive, consistent and reliable service experience.”
Eliminating manual workarounds
For Barnwell, one of the biggest wins this year is her initiative to create one central area and process to manage tax returns and payments. “As a trustee, we handle all aspects of taxes and help manage the tax process by coordinating with our clients’ CPAs, tracking returns, making estimated payments, and more,” Barnwell says.
“So, at tax time, it becomes a highly stressful and risky process to stay on top of everything. By creating a central, automated hub in Engage, we now have a beautiful record of transactions and no longer need to rely on spreadsheets and paper. The efficiency gains have been unbelievable, and for the first time in 15 years, staff have been able to work a normal 8-hour day in April.”
In the future, Barnwell is looking to integrate a new, cloud-based document management system into Engage. “This will enable us to have fewer tabs open, fewer places to go, and ultimately to reduce the distance eyes must go to get stuff done. Particularly for our admin and compliance staff, it will be transformational. At a glance, they’ll be able to get a line of sight into contribution data, withholding elections, wire transfer confirmations, and more.”
To drive further adoption, Barnwell is developing a series of internal training sessions, partnering with the team at SS&C to bring advisors and staff up to speed on the many aspects and advanced capabilities of Salentica Engage, Black Diamond, and Innovest. “The service from our SS&C relationship manager has been critical to us, particularly with some of our legacy clients who have more than 20 years of history,” Barnes says. “Having all our core technologies under one roof simplifies so much.”
To learn more about Trust Company of the South, please visit their website at trustcompanyofthesouth.com.
And to learn more about our Trust Suite of products, please visit our page at https://www.advent.com/solutions/ssc-trust-suite/.
