How Technology and Innovation Fuels the Pathstone Family Office Growth

Using Technology to Grow and Scale

The industry has seen many multifamily offices struggle to grow after they’ve reached a certain size, usually between $1B-$5B in assets under management. Their growth stalls, because they can no longer rely solely on human capital and require an investment in technology and automation to unlock more capacity.

Today, Pathstone manages around $28B, but they weren’t always that large. In their early years, they went from $1.4B to $4B in a relatively short period of time. They were using a lot of manual processes and disparate systems, like Excel and Visual Basic to run their operations. As they grew and brought on more advisors, the challenge of handling larger volumes of client data made the automation of processes that were traditionally done manually a necessity.

“Eventually you have to take this leap from trying to do everything in-house to using a professional scalable software. One of the reasons we’ve had such a successful relationship with AgilLink, is because there’s no way we’re going to create a better multi-client bill pay and general ledger system that also combines imaging with custom rules and workflows.”

-Matthew Fleissig, President of Pathstone

The Proof is in the Capacity

The industry has seen many multifamily offices struggle to grow after they’ve reached a certain size, usually between $1B-$5B in assets under management. Their growth stalls, because they can no longer rely solely on human capital and require an investment in technology and automation to unlock more capacity. The best proof point for the boost that AgilLink brings to advisors is in their capacity for growth. Pathstone brought on an advisor that was previously managing $2M of revenue. He simply did not have the capacity to grow anymore, because he was too focused on chasing down data and completing lower-value tasks such as re-keying information into spreadsheets and searching shared drives for documents. By providing an integrated technology platform that includes automation workflow, this same advisor increased their capacity, and now manages $5M of revenue.

For Pathstone, the key to breaking through the terminal velocity was combining the right tools, with the “know-how” to make them work for their operations team. “Today, technology is core to Pathstone, It’s us,” Matthew Fleissig, President of Pathstone says, “It’s everything about scale and automation and what people can do."

Automating the Bill Pay Process

Pathstone has offered bill pay from the start; however, it has it’s recently become a major trend in the wealth management industry. These types of additional services are gaining popularity, as core services such as investment management become more commoditized. Bill payment provides an additional opportunity to help attract and retain clients.

By implementing AgilLink, Pathstone now has a singular system where their operations team can access their financial accounting data, along with document imaging, multi-client bill pay with custom rules, approval rights and full audit capabilities. Using AgilLink, Pathstone was able to process approximately 55,000 – 60,000 bills for clients last year. Fleissig says, “You may be imagining a giant bullpen of people signing checks and recording transactions, but that is not the case, because of the partnership that we have."

Opportunities AgilLink presented for Pathstone

When Pathstone first started working with AgilLink more than 10 years ago, Matthew Fleissig, along with Brian Kleinman, the founder of AgilLink, shared a common vision of connecting their general ledger with investment performance data to gain a 360 degree view of a client’s financial life. In 2017, it became both a reality and a turning point.

The ability to integrate AgilLink to Pathstone’s investment reporting system allows Pathstone to provide more comprehensive reporting, and arms their advisors with a truly holistic approach to advice, tax preparation and better decision-making.

About Pathstone:

Pathstone, the modern family office, is an independently operated partner owned advisory firm, offering families, family offices and select nonprofit institutions comprehensive family office services and customized investment advice. Pathstone’s objective is to help clients create, manage and preserve wealth across generations.

Pathstone integrates smart innovative family office services to provide customized solutions and leverage best practices to accommodate clients' unique needs.

About AgilLink:

AgilLink services the needs of family offices, business managers and sport management firms that offer pay bill and accounting services.

Our secure bill payment and specialized cloud accounting solution incorporates document management, approval workflow, investment data integration and online banking with City National Bank.

Founded in 1976, Agilink has over 45 years of industry leadership and expertise. AgiLink provides bill pay and accounting solutions to help scale your business while putting the proper controls and security in place.