What's a 'Tech-Enabled' Broker-Dealer?

At WealthForge, we often refer to ourselves as a “technology-enabled broker-dealer”.

But what does that mean exactly?

Many broker-dealers in the industry use the same outdated, paper-based methods to provide dealer manager and other back-office services. Since our founding, WealthForge has used technology to transform the way we operate our broker-dealer business. It has helped us streamline sponsor and investor processing, registered representative supervision, advertising review and transparency—allowing our services to be provided in a fast, efficient and nearly error-free manner.

SPONSOR REVIEW AND OFFERING DILIGENCE

There are multiple facets of our business that benefit from technology. The first is sponsor operational review and offering diligence. Once an offering is reviewed and approved, the offering’s attributes loaded into our proprietary technology during the review process are used for the entire life of the offering, accurately reporting fees and reducing human error. The sponsor review and ongoing diligence tracking are simplified, and historical and real-time data retrieval supports downstream audits and validation.

INVESTOR OPERATIONS

Additionally, WealthForge’s intelligent technology deployment significantly simplifies the investor operations function. Investor diligence begins with a secure web utility integrated into the data room, designed to receive investor documents directly from the investor. This ensures all documents are organized, consistently stored in one place and are easily retrievable. The funds distribution process uses the data for selling commissions and due diligence fees captured during offering diligence to provide accurate distribution breakdowns. Commissions are calculated, reviewed and paid to syndicate members directly without additional data entry required.

REGISTERED REPRESENTATIVE SUPERVISION

Registered representative supervision is reinforced with WealthForge’s technology integrations. Reps use a web portal to initiate the firm’s Regulation BI process. With minimal entry, the rep knows that their client has received the proper forms and disclosures and has accepted electronic delivery with confidence. Additionally, the supervisory portal simplifies the public appearance reporting process by allowing the user to submit required forms for review. The email review process tracks email volume and any changes that would warrant escalation or increased supervision. A rep’s state registrations are maintained so that when subscriptions are reviewed, appropriate state registration is verified. Historical and real-time data retrieval of all rep data support annual firm audits and periodic FINRA sales cycle examinations.

ADVERTISING REVIEW

Advertising review is more accessible with a portal and dashboard that allows clients to follow the status of their content to determine what review stage it is in. This also allows each individual submission to receive a unique identification number for easy tracking across multiple versions.

OFFERING STATUS

Finally, our transaction activity dashboard provides transparency and real-time visibility into the status of an offering helping clients eliminate the phone and email back-and-forth, allowing them to focus more on being asset managers rather than data collectors.

Technology development and integration is an investment that we believe enables seamless processes and better service to our clients. The benefits of integration – reduced data entry, reduced reconciliations, faster access to data to support decisions, increased accuracy, faster execution, transparent data access – allow our clients to scale their business by eliminating back-office inefficiencies and headaches.

*Special thanks to contributing authors Lauren Prieur, Alex Pauliukonis and Jathan Jackson.