Portfolio insight with the combination of Mendix and Qlik Sense

At E-mergo, we love sharing the great projects we've had the chance to work on for our customers. This time, we're sharing the custom ‘Family Office’ solution we built. We spoke about it with Luuk Bouman, the E-mergo consultant who helped develop this solution.

Three years ago, E-mergo got in touch with Amace (since acquired by Ruitenburg). They asked us to help think through a solution for administering, and gaining up-to-date insight into, the assets managed by Family Offices. A family office is a (financial) service provider that supports one or more wealthy families in managing their private wealth. The request for such a solution came from one of these wealthy families.

The challenge

Amace wanted to provide insight into the investments and returns of this family's portfolios with a user-friendly digital solution. This was quite a challenge, because the data first had to be enriched to make it truly insightful. The data comes in from banks and asset managers at an accounting level (for example from Exact). It consists of complex transactions and a highly diverse, international portfolio. The family's assets were held both privately and in many legal entities.

Luuk: “Combining data from the various administrations wasn't possible in Exact, and there were no other solutions for a complete overview either. As a result, it wasn't easy for the family to see the complete portfolio. They only got a full overview once a year, when the accountants prepared the annual accounts containing the results and the returns achieved.”

During the year, insight into the return on the assets was highly fragmented and based on reports from banks, private equity funds and so on. Simply reading out the data doesn't give the family enough insight. They want to be able to see, for each investment, which projects or shares it involves. This cannot currently be seen from the accounting figures. So the data first has to be enriched to make clear which projects and shares have been invested in. Amace quickly discovered that no off-the-shelf solutions were available for this and therefore got in touch with E-mergo.

The solution: a Family Office data portal, built with Mendix and Qlik Sense

E-mergo was chosen as a partner because of its specialist knowledge of combining data analytics technologies and low-code application platforms. This combination provided the answer to the challenges, because it made it possible to bring data entry and data visualisation together. The Family Office data portal that was created meets the needs of the family office (and therefore the family) and, secondly, of various professional service providers such as the accountants and tax advisers from several other firms.

The solution for the service providers

Mendix was chosen to make it easy to collect and enrich data. The Mendix application loads data from Exact, and this data is then enriched in Mendix through a purpose-built interface. Users can add the data they need that isn't available as standard from the accounting software.

Luuk: “This is data about the portfolio and the ‘asset types’ within it, such as shares, private equity, funds, direct investments and real estate. Smart checks and balances have been set up in the Mendix application to make the data enrichment as user-friendly and accurate as possible.”

Various exchange rates and prices are also loaded to show the correct value. Besides entering data, users can also search through the data in Mendix and run checks. This is very handy for the accountants, as they would otherwise have to combine all this by hand. As a result, fewer accountant hours are needed, which saves the family money. To make checking the figures even easier, a Qlik Sense dashboard was also created and displayed in the Mendix portal. In it, the accountants can check whether the enriched data is complete and correct. This Qlik Sense dashboard was developed following a Dashboard Design workshop in which a data strategist and a designer from E-mergo worked with the family office and the family on a user-friendly design.

The solution for the family

The Family Office data portal provides insight into the family's portfolio at any time, on any device. This makes it easy for the family office to view and analyse the total portfolio. This is, of course, far more user-friendly than the annual presentation of the figures.

Luuk: “The great thing about this solution is that it offers a complete overview of the portfolio, but also makes it possible to drill down to detail level, to look at specific transactions on a given date. The family can also filter by asset type and category. For example, they can see how many investments have been made in tech assets.”

For the family office, this means they now always have up-to-date data, giving them insight into the portfolio so they can make data-driven decisions about it. With this constant insight, users can make decisions about investments. Based on insights from the dashboard, they can ask the private equity firm involved to make changes to an investment. Think of deciding whether to make an additional investment, taking part in a new investment round or deciding to expand investments within a particular sector.

Because the prices are also shown in the data portal, the family office can make sure that purchases and sales of assets are well timed, and that the most up-to-date value of the portfolio and its value development are shown correctly.

Private Wealth Services (PWS)

The family for whom this solution was designed noticed that there was more demand for the family office solution. That is why Private Wealth Services (PWS) was launched. The finishing touches are now being put to the solution to ensure it fully complies with the ISAE 3000 standard, after which it can be brought to market. PWS and E-mergo are bringing the solution to market together, and several packages have been developed for this. Each newly connected family office will then have its own data portal. This is of interest to, for example, wealthy families, accountancy firms and banks.