Overview

client-Assyst is a simple to use yet comprehensive client database / back-office system developed specifically for financial services professionals. The system allows you to:-

• Store Fact-find data for all of your clients - including their policies, assets, liabilities, employment details, attitude to risk, income, outgoings, objectives, etc
• record all client Appointments and Contacts
• Manage your "to-do's", client, and policy reviews through the comprehensive Reminder List
• Utilise electronic Document Management giving instant access to existing saved reports, letters, and scanned documents. client-Assyst will file new letters and reports in the client's document folder
• use powerful Search facilities to analyse your data for research, identification of groups of clients for mail shots using almost any field, or combination of fields in the database
• Manage Client Investments through direct Instant Contract Enquiry Valuations with 9 or more providers. Those supported today include Aviva, Fidelity / Funds Network, Friends Life, Friends Provident, Legal & General, Skandia Life, Skandia Investment Services, Standard Life, Transact. Optional additional Fund Price Feed. Various client facing reports including Portfolio Report showing growth since inception and /annualised
• very simply Produce Letters for individual clients or Mail-shots to groups of clients
• print client Factfind prints pre-populated with the data you have stored in your database in the formats required by many networks, or, we can develop a 'custom' fact-find print specifically to your requirements
• reduce duplicate data entry by automatically creating your New Business Register
• manage your Pipeline and define automated case tracking actions for standard reminders for different types of business
• organise your business in the most efficient way by allowing you to run the software stand-alone, networked, or for offline working, or remote access via the internet

client-Assyst will run under Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7.

You will need at least 512 MBytes of memory, preferably 1 GByte or more.
You need MS-Word 2003 or better for the letter writing and mail-merging.

Database Content

• Individual database stores any number of clients
• Each client has sections for:-
• personal information (name, address, etc), plus partner and dependant information
• assets, liabilities, policies with complete payment histories, withdrawals, and fund holdings
• income and outgoings
• attitude to risk and objectives
• other addresses
• client and policy reviews at any frequency, plus add-hoc client reminders
• time spent
• notes
• Absolutely no limit to the number of clients, investments, policies, notes, etc that can be held.
• Review dates for each client, and each of their policies, assets, and liabilities, at any frequency
• Policies include pensions, life, general, income protection,investments, health, etc.
• Assets include properties, bank and building society accounts, shares, unit trusts / PEPs / ISAs, personal assets
• Liabilities include loans, mortgages, credit cards, hire purchase, leases, etc.
• Time for each client automatically captured for use as a basis for fees or simply to record time spent.

Searching / Extracting

To maximise the use of data in your client database for marketing or mail-shotting purposes, client-Assyst has a powerful search capability:-

• Search on any field or combination of fields to create 'extract lists' of clients that match specific criteria
• Further refine these searches / extracts by performing 'extracts within extracts' any number of times
• Pre-defined searches already present for common requirements
• Define and 'memorise' your own search criteria for ease of regular use
• Export of all reports to Word and PDF
• Export of all data to TXT and XML files

Letter Production / Mail-Merging

To simplify customer contact and facilitate mail-shots and label printing, client-Assyst allows you to link exported name and address information to Microsoft Word* for letter writing and mail-merges.

• Can be used for the whole database, an individual client, or 'extract lists' of groups of clients
• Standard letter templates are provided
• You can use these to help create your own templates, or you can turn your existing standard letters into templates with a quick 'cut and paste'
• client-Assyst automatically links to MS-Word and populates your letter(s) ready for printing
• Letters are automatically saved to the client's document folder

*   You need MS-Word 2003 or better for this feature to work.

Reporting

client-Assyst provides many 'standard reports' to allow you to manage your business more effectively:-

• address lists
• phone lists
• case listings by provider, status
• various review date lists
• appointment / follow-up lists
• new business register (automatically produced based upon the new business you add to your database)
• pending business (pipeline) report
• time recorded

For each client you can print:-

• Fact finds (various formats including the formats required by many of the major networks)
• policy schedules
• investment schedules
• portfolio valuations
• case listing
• time recorded
• client summary sheet
• contact history
• case audit trail

Fact Find Example
Detailed Policy Schedule Example

New Business Tracking

To enable you to track your pipeline cases, and the actions required to ensure a case goes into force, client-Assyst will:-

• Store details of all 'pending' cases (policies, investments, mortgages)
• Automatically add the default actions you want to track for each type of business.
• Allow you to enter additional actions and progress against these pipeline cases
• Provide feeds into the Reminder List so you can easily manage / follow up these actions to ensure a case goes 'in-force'
• Produce a Pending Business report, by consultant, showing all pipeline cases and their outstanding actions.

Investment Management

client-Assyst allows you to store an unlimited number of investments - PEPs, ISAs, Unit Trusts, Bonds, etc. for each client.

For each investment, you can store details of funds, number of units, unit price, history of payments and withdrawals, giving you and your client a complete picture of their investments on the portfolio report.

Automated links to provider websites allow quick updating of client valuations - 20 seconds for a single case as opposed to possibly 3 or 4 minutes?

(This assumes a) logging onto their website (20 secs), b) entering your user id and password (10 secs), c) searching for the client (20 secs), d) requesting the valuation (10 secs), e) printing the information (30 secs), f) keying the updated valuation into client-Assyst (2 mins))

All of this is done for you automatically within the 20 second window detailed above.

Portfolio Valuation Example

Reminders and Follow-ups

client-Assyst has a number of places where you can record reminders or follow-up dates to ensure you don't miss those vital client contacts:-

• any number of ad-hoc appointments / reminders for a client e.g. "Call me in a few months to talk about investing my bonus"
• a client annual, or more frequent, review
• case (policy / investment / mortgage) review dates - e.g. reminders of option or maturity dates, or end of fixed period dates for mortgages
• 'action' dates, for pending business. These can be defined by you for each type of business as part of your set-up and automatically added to new business cases
• plus, birthdates for clients, partners, dependants

The Reminder List feature consolidates all of those 'reminders' to produce a display / printout showing what is due in the next 7 days, next month or whatever period you wish to define.

This can be produced for your complete client list, for a single consultant within your business, and you can select or de-select which types of dates you want to be reminded about.

You can set the Reminder List to automatically open first whenever you go into the
client-Assyst system.

Document Management

To give you instant access to your client documents each client record in client-Assyst can be linked to a document folder for that client. If you already have a structure of client document folders, you don't need to change the way you work. In this case, you simply point client-Assyst at your existing folders.

These document folders could in future hold:-

• Word, Excel documents that you have previously created for your client
• Letters and reports that client-Assyst has created - good for archiving the client fact-find or portfolio report, produced on a particular date
• Documents that you have scanned into your computer - letters, quotes, etc. - that you have received either from the client or from the provider about their policies / investments etc.
• Documents (quotes, key facts, etc) that you have downloaded from a portal.

Once client-Assyst knows about a client's folder, it will:-

• allow you to see all documents with a simple double click
• automatically file any letters produced for the client
• allow you to electronically file any report that you create for the client

There could be no need to keep paper copies. And certainly no need to print and scan letters and reports produced by client-Assyst.

You also DO NOT NEED costly scanning and document management software. client-Assyst and Windows between them can fufill all of your document management needs.