How to Analyze Client Brokerage Statements Faster with AI

Published on
October 9, 2024
Contributors
Cameron Howe
CEO
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For financial advisors, analyzing portfolio holdings is an essential part of delivering value to clients. However, manually extracting and analyzing data from brokerage account statements and other documents can be time-consuming and tedious. This manual process can leave less time for higher-level strategic planning and client interactions.

The good news? Automation tools, like Investipal's IDP (Intelligent Document Processing) solution, can significantly speed up this process. Combining Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), the IDP tool helps advisors quickly scan, interpret, and analyze portfolio data from various document formats.

In this post, we’ll explore how Investipal’s IDP can help financial advisors analyze portfolio holdings faster and more accurately, so they can focus on what matters most—providing personalized financial advice.

The Challenges of Manual Portfolio Holdings Analysis

For most financial advisors, gathering portfolio data starts with client-provided documents—PDFs, scans, and even images of brokerage statements. Manually extracting data like security names, quantities, transaction dates, and prices from these documents can take hours.

Key challenges include:

  • Time-Consuming: Sifting through documents to pull relevant portfolio data can take hours per client, delaying analysis and reporting.
  • Risk of Human Error: Manually entering data opens the door to errors. A single typo or misreading of a document can lead to inaccurate portfolio insights.
  • Inconsistent Formats: Client documents often come in various formats, making it difficult to streamline the extraction process. PDFs, scanned images, and different report layouts increase the complexity.

Ultimately, these challenges reduce productivity and leave less time for high-value activities like client consultations, portfolio optimization, or business development.

Sample brokerage statement from Fidelity demonstrating the challenges with manually analyzing portfolio holdings

How Investipal’s IDP Tool Works

Investipal’s Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) tool combines two powerful technologies—OCR and AI—to streamline portfolio holdings analysis for financial advisors.

Visualization of brokerage statement automation workflow

OCR for Automated Data Extraction

The OCR feature within Investipal’s IDP tool scans brokerage statements, PDFs, and images of account documents, instantly recognizing key portfolio data. This includes securities names, quantities, prices, and transaction details. Instead of manually inputting data from multiple formats, OCR automates the process by converting this unstructured information into a structured, usable format.

For example, a scanned PDF of a client’s brokerage statement that might have taken hours to process manually can now be analyzed in minutes with OCR. The tool reads the document and extracts key data without any manual entry, eliminating the bottleneck of data extraction.

AI for Enhanced Data Interpretation

While OCR helps extract data, AI takes things a step further by interpreting it. AI in Investipal’s IDP tool enhances accuracy by categorizing and understanding the context of the extracted data. It learns from previous inputs, meaning that over time, the tool becomes better at handling complex formats and non-standard data.

This AI-driven process not only ensures greater accuracy in portfolio analysis but also flags potential errors or inconsistencies that might go unnoticed in manual reviews. Whether it’s detecting outliers in transaction data or identifying duplicate records, AI ensures the data you work with is reliable and ready for further analysis.

Uploading a brokerage statement PDF into Investipal for automated analysis

Key Benefits of Using IDP for Portfolio Holdings Analysis

  1. Time-Saving and Increased Efficiency
    • Investipal’s IDP tool dramatically reduces the time spent on manual data entry. What once took hours—manually sifting through PDFs and reports—can now be done in minutes. This allows advisors to focus more on high-value activities, such as engaging with clients or refining investment strategies.
  2. Improved Accuracy and Consistency
    • Manually inputting portfolio data comes with the risk of human error. Even the most diligent advisor can make a mistake when working through lengthy documents. By automating the extraction and analysis process, IDP eliminates these errors, ensuring that portfolio data is consistent, accurate, and ready for reporting.
  3. Seamless Integration with Portfolio Management Software
    • Investipal’s IDP integrates seamlessly with its portfolio management module, allowing you to instantly get a visualization of the client’s portfolio with key risk/return analytics, analyze holdings, generate reports, and provide insights more efficiently. This integration means you can update client portfolios in real time, run automated reports, and deliver accurate performance reviews faster than ever.
Portfolio visualization within Investipal

Getting Started

Manually analyzing portfolio holdings from client documents is no longer an efficient or reliable method for financial advisors. With Investipal’s IDP tool, you can automate data extraction and analysis, freeing up more time to focus on delivering personalized financial advice. Combining OCR and AI technology, IDP not only speeds up the process but also ensures greater accuracy and consistency in your portfolio analysis.

If you’re looking to streamline your portfolio analysis workflow, Investipal’s IDP tool is the solution you need. Book a demo today and see how it can transform the way you manage client portfolios.

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