How a family office uses Sharesight to track clients’ net worth

Company snapshot
Kangas Consulting
Family office
Using Sharesight since 2021

The need
Find a consolidated view of wealth for high-net-worth families

The process
Upload historical data
Set up consolidated reporting
Transition all clients’ investment portfolios to Sharesight

The results
Clearer understanding of overall wealth
Better insight into asset allocation
Proactive customer service

Kangas Consulting is a Canada-based virtual family office helping high-net-worth families with the ongoing management of their wealth. These families typically have investments across multiple asset classes, locations and tax regimes, creating a complex portfolio of wealth that is difficult to manage and track.

"One of the biggest challenges my clients face is how to get their head around where their money is," said Stephen Kangas, President of Kangas Consulting.

"They have money in multiple different places, making it near impossible to get an overall view of their position."

It’s a struggle that Stephen’s new client found especially challenging after experiencing a significant liquidity event. The client needed a clearer understanding of their position, so Stephen began looking for a better solution.

Finding the holy grail of consolidated reporting

The client had recently come into a material amount of wealth but had no clear view of their new wealth position or exactly where all their money was invested. Their assets were spread across public and private assets, held via different holding companies and based in different locations, making visibility an issue.

"The holy grail was to find a way to put all this reporting together," said Stephen.

"I was using spreadsheets, but the process was manual and getting that single view of reporting was a challenge. I wanted a solution that could aggregate their portfolios, allow me to pull performance and asset allocation data, and be user-friendly for my client."

Stephen began looking into solutions recommended by his network and others he discovered searching online. He quickly found none were the right fit, being either cluttered with too many features, unable to cater for private investments, or not user-friendly.

It was the automated dividend tracking in Sharesight that first caught Stephen’s eye and prompted him to start a free trial.

Material wealth consolidated in a single view

Stephen began trialing Sharesight by creating a free sample portfolio of 10 holdings from his own investments and cross-checking the results against his own calculations. He then began testing some of the private equity funds held by his new client, followed by some real estate assets.

Stephen explained there was a learning curve when adding the private assets and he worked though this with some help from the Sharesight customer service team.

"I created a consolidated report and tagged all the assets I wanted to include. It churned away for about 30 seconds, then all the information was right there. It was brilliant!" – Stephen Kangas, President, Kangas Consulting

Since the free trial, Stephen has transitioned his clients to Sharesight and has uploaded data going back multiple years. It’s helped him realise several benefits including:

Client-friendly reporting

"I use the diversity report a lot. I’ll run it at month or quarter-end and send it to clients with the click of a button. It’s a great way for them to get a regular, updated view of their position and can also be a conversation starter about their investment strategy."

Identifying over-exposure

"The consolidation allows us to see where the client has the same or a similar security held across multiple accounts, so you can clearly see if a client is overweight in an investment. This can easily happen when a client has multiple accounts but it’s often something clients aren’t aware of or may have forgotten about."

Better visibility on total returns

"So many people get caught up in the holding price of an asset and don’t consider the income. I love how total returns are broken out as a percentage of capital gains and dividend income, so clients get a complete picture of the value of that investment."

Educating clients

"Because of the detail in the reporting, I can better teach clients, explain our investment strategies and show why we recommend certain approaches."

Stephen is now using Sharesight every day and any new clients are automatically added to the platform.

"You get more choices, more data, and you can add more categories," said Stephen.

"It means I spend far less time on reporting and can focus more on the investment strategy my clients need and want."

Track clients’ wealth and performance with Sharesight

Join thousands of professionals using Sharesight to track their clients’ wealth and get the full picture of their investment performance. Sign up for a free trial so you can:

• Track all your clients’ investments in one place, including stocks, ETFs, mutual/managed funds, property and even cryptocurrency

• Get the true picture of your clients’ investment performance, including the impact of brokerage fees, distributions, and capital gains with Sharesight’s annualised performance calculation methodology

• Run powerful reports built for investors, including performance, portfolio diversity, contribution analysis, multi-period, multi-currency valuation and future income (upcoming distributions)

• Run tax reports including taxable income (dividends/distributions), capital gains tax (Australia and Canada), traders tax (capital gains for traders in NZ) and FIF foreign investment fund income reports (NZ)

Put Sharesight to the test with a free 30-day no-risk trial – there are no billing details or credit card required and you can upgrade, downgrade or cancel at any time.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute a specific product recommendation, or taxation or financial advice and should not be relied upon as such. While we use reasonable endeavours to keep the information up-to-date, we make no representation that any information is accurate or up-to-date. If you choose to make use of the content in this article, you do so at your own risk. To the extent permitted by law, we do not assume any responsibility or liability arising from or connected with your use or reliance on the content on our site. Please check with your adviser or accountant to obtain the correct advice for your situation.

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