Five Reasons to Use an Outsourced Bill Pay Service

Why Family Offices and Financial Institutions are Partnering with Outsourced Bill Pay Providers

For a high-net-worth family, managing expenses is not always black and white. In many cases, families pay taxes on an array of domestic and international properties. They use local contractors and vendors to maintain these homes and they engage various accountants, attorneys, financial advisors and administrative staff to support them – all of which requires a sophisticated expense management process to track and pay for these complex expenses.

For financial institutions tasked with handling these activities on behalf of high-net-worth families and individuals, the process can be even more complex, the list of merchants can be exceedingly long and the amount of transactions can be overwhelming.

As a result, these institutions are looking to outsource parts – if not the entirety – of the bill payment process.

Why Outsource Bill Payment?

Outsourced bill pay providers typically offer a variety of bespoke products and services that oftentimes don’t exist inside of financial institutions today.

Ranging from invoice collection and electronic document storage to high-tech accounting software, mobile client portals and comprehensive expense reporting, these products and services allow private banks to enhance their suite of concierge services and deliver a bill payment offering that helps their clients better manage their expenses. Here are five ways outsourced bill pay providers add value to your HNW service offering.

#1 - Streamlined Automation

To facilitate the bill payment process, many outsourced bill pay providers leverage sophisticated technology specifically designed for wealthy families. The most sophisticated providers are able to offer electronic payment approvals, automated payment initiation and on-demand mobile expense reporting. This degree of automation eliminates the need to seek verbal or written approvals from your clients resulting in a quicker, more secure bill payment process.

#2 - Broadened Accessibility

Through advanced client portal technology, advisors and their clients can securely access their electronic accounts payable information and documents anytime, anywhere. Acting as a central repository for their aggregated bill payment details and important billing documents, end-clients gain a quicker view of their consolidated spending behavior.

#3 - Extended Scalability

Reputable outsourced bill payment providers employ teams of highly-trained accounting professionals. Ideally, wealth advisors get access to a dedicated team of subject matter experts that operate as a seamless extension of your organization. By allowing a team of industry professionals to manage the end-to-end bill payment process for you, you can put time back in your day to focus on your clients.

#4 - Improved Consolidation

Trying to manage and track all of your client’s expenses across bank and credit card accounts can be difficult. Through purpose-bill tools and electronic data feeds, outsourced bill providers not only collect expense and payment information from an array of sources, but they aggregate and reconcile the expense activity to ultimately deliver clear, insightful reporting.

#5 - Enhanced Analysis and Reporting

Given the inherently complex expenses of wealthy families, it’s important to stay in tune with the frequency and magnitude of your client’s spending. After all, preserving their wealth is one of your primary responsibilities. Outsourced bill pay providers maintain a sole focus on measuring and reporting on cash inflows and outflows, which ultimately gives you the tools to perform sophisticated cash analysis and gain insight into your end-client’s spending behavior.

Outsourcing bill payment gives financial institutions the opportunity to differentiate their service offering to their HNW clients through purpose-built technology and a dedicated team of accounting professionals. More importantly, it helps financial advisors deliver clear, meaningful insight into their client’s spending behaviors and provide better cash management advice.

Are you ready to build a customized bill payment solution with an experienced service provider?

Find out how our outsourced bill pay service can help you and your financial institution streamline your bill payment process so that you can refocus efforts on what really matters: servicing your clients.