D&S Business Solutions  

UVEST Investment Services, Inc

Industry: Financial and Investments
Location: Charlotte, North Carolina, USA
Web Site: http://www.uvestfinancial.com/

UVEST Financial Services has dedicated its business strategy to serving community banks and credit unions for more than 22 years. As a premiere provider of third party brokerage (Full Service and Discount), insurance, mortgage, trust and wealth management services, fixed income, and more, UVEST delivers customized solutions in a consultative environment.

When UVEST first contacted us, they required some data extraction work for the purpose of providing more complex reporting. They also requested we analyse their existing system and make any recommendations for improving performance and expanding its information gathering potential.

We recommended and implemented the following changes:

Re-designed the daily process of importing account and transaction data

Each day a member of staff would download SDF (System Data Format) files from the transaction-processing provider Pershing ® LLC and import the account and transaction data into their database.

  • We re-designed the existing system, using a data-driven approach, to promote flexibility and extensibility.
  • We automated the process through a scheduling system and reduced processing time, thereby reducing system down time.
  • Added exception and error reporting during the import process to increase data integrity.

Centralize data and re-designed the existing software system

UVEST had stored much of their business data across multiple systems (FoxPro and MS Access databases and Excel spreadsheets) and wanted to centralize it and increase the data gathering capabilities.

  • We re-designed their existing database, moving most of their data into a Visual FoxPro database.
  • We designed and developed a complete object-oriented based, multi-user, client-server solution that currently provides a graphical user interface (GUI) for over 100 employees.

    The system assists in the daily administration of the brokerage accounts, including maintaining client contact and broker information.

    The system also tracks broker and client institution compliance with U.S. trading regulatory agencies such as NASD, (National Association of Securities Dealers), the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and various individual state agencies.

  • The system provides over 100 reports and data exporting to various formats including Excel Spreadsheets, Comma Separated Values (CSV) and System Data Format (SDF) and databases.

Create a new billing and payment system

UVEST was using Excel spreadsheets to calculate their monthly transaction billing and subsequent payments to their client financial institutions, which had become cumbersome as their business grew and they acquired more clients. There was also the problem of working on a copy of the data (copied into Excel) as opposed to the live data from the database.

  • We designed and developed a software system that used the live data to calculate the billing and payouts due clients each month. The system implements the concept of data-driven "schedules" that can be reused across clients or customized for the specific needs of an individual client.
  • The system interacts with the accounting system to manage the invoicing against services provided to the institutions by UVEST.
  • The system generates the monthly reconciliation reports and invoices that are sent to the client along with the applicable checks

Create client institution software

We designed and developed two software solutions for UVEST to distribute to their clients.

  • A Prospect Management tool used to track potential clients (investors).
  • A Trade/Account tracking tool that allows their client to maintain a copy of their data on their site that is updated via daily imports. This enables them to add their own data and create their own custom reports.