Using Orion to Track Alternative Investments

Collections have come a long way from the treasured baseball cards and commemorative stamps.

Take billionaire Philip Niarchos for example, whose personal art collection is valued at over $2 billion, boasting pieces by van Gogh, Picasso, and Andy Warhol, among others.

Let’s say you’re a wine collector. A bottle of 1947 Chateau Latour, one of the most expensive wines in the world, will run you about $30,000.

And if you own a 1913 Liberty Head nickel, you’re looking at a value of $3.7 million.

Maybe instead of century-old artwork, exclusive wines, or costly coins, your clients have a stake in real estate, hedge funds, or venture capital. These alternative investments can represent a large portion of your client’s investment portfolio.

As an advisor, tracking alternative investments allows you to see and report on your client’s full financial status.

In today’s post, we’ll look at how you can use Orion to track alternative investments.

Alternative Investments Aren’t so ‘Alternative’ Anymore

Interest in alternative capital is growing. It made up about 12 percent of reinsurance market capital with nearly $69 billion in alternatives as of September 30, 2015. At that rate, alternative capital should reach $120-150 billion by 2018.

Increasingly, clients are showing greater interest in alternative forms of investments and starting to realize investing goes beyond the traditional stocks and bonds. When markets fall, alternative investments are typically unaffected – adding an additional layer of diversification to your client’s portfolio.

From art collections and car collections to private equity and annuities, if your client owns it, you need to have it available for reporting and financial planning. By tracking this information, you have a full picture of your client’s finances, ultimately providing more value and better advice to your clients.

Orion’s Alternative Investment Solution

Our app for tracking alternative investments is the Private Asset Platform.

Orion’s Private Asset Platform allows advisors to maintain alternative investments in a structured database and get out of Microsoft Excel. The Private Asset Platform also allows firms to provide one consolidated statement with both public and private investments while maintaining core reporting necessities on alternatives like capital commitments, contributed capital, and individual position IRR on the alternatives while providing Orion’s core reporting on the public investment side. Let’s take a quick look at how simple it is to maintain your alternatives.

Adding a new security is as easy as selecting Security on the left menu and choosing the Actions drop down. From here, you have the ability to name the security and choose properties on the security such as classifications and the manager of the investment.

Once you have added a security, you can create the asset by selecting “Holding” from the left menu. From the Actions button, you can add records. Adding a new holding record allows you to enter alternative investments and select their categories and classifications as well as what security the client is invested in.

Now that you have added your securities and holdings for that particular investor, you can now be off and running on creating transactions to reflect events such as capital commitments, return of capital, and partial redemptions. To edit an existing asset, check the box on the far left of the desired row. Go to the Actions button, and select “edit row.”

How to Run Reports with Alternative Investments

With the Private Asset Platform and your alternative investments, you have two ways of generating reports. You can quickly generate an ad hoc alternative investment report inside of the Private Asset Platform by choosing ‘Validate’ and selecting any one of the 16 reports available to you inside of the platform.

The second option for generating a report with your alternative investments is running any client facing report out of the Orion reporting suite or Report Builder tool.

Alternative Forms of Tracking

In addition to the Private Asset Platform app, you can track held-away assets with our integration with aggregation partners like Quovo.

You can also capture a client’s total Balance Sheet with the Wealth Access Client Portal integration and even embed the integration in your Client Portal so clients have access to view their full investment portfolio from within your branded client login.

Whatever you need to accomplish, Orion integrations allow you to embrace your independence and customize your accounting platform to fit your own unique needs.

Do you have questions about tracking alternative investments and integrations? Contact Orion today.

 

0250-OAS-6/30/2017

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About Adam Palmer
Adam Palmer is the VP of Strategic Product Development at Orion Advisor Technology. Adam oversees Orion’s product management and development projects that impact the end-client experience along with all things Orion integrations. He is responsible for ensuring a unique, intuitive experience for clients when they view their portfolio in Orion. Adam is focused on enabling advisors to exceed client expectations and helping to promote each firm’s brand through Orion’s technology. When he is not at the office, Adam loves to spend time outdoors. He enjoys golfing and mountain biking.