Fintech is essentially the new use of technology to solve old problems. The products are fast, easy to use, and convenient. But what happens when your FinTech vendor has an issue and is not providing the customer support to fix problems with their all-in-one solution? When one part is not working correctly, the other applications that are likely to work the way you need them are impacting. Or perhaps, you have an all-in-one solution with components that you do not use and still pay for?
Situations like these can make an advisor feel like they are ‘being held hostage’ when they decide to part ways with their provider. All-in-one providers seldom terminate contracts (with a refund) regardless of issues on their end or poor customer satisfaction.
At AssetBook, we often hear of the issues advisors experience when they try to break away from their all-in-one provider. Most FinTech vendor/customer contracting issues will be typical, but these are areas of concern to document and discuss during your negotiations to break away:
Issues arising from innovation: If the provider has innovated or is not innovating (often the case), a lack of up-front testing, product definition, and warranties may provide you an out from your contract.
Data issues: If the provider claims to have rights to data when they develop new products or sell their products to competing providers and are without the data you need, you have a right to leave your contract. Mergers and buy-outs can make data issues and data security potentially risky if data ownership is not clear. Secondly, if the data flow is not working correctly, and their tech teams are not resolving the issue promptly, you have the right to break your contract.
Mergers or buy-outs. When one FinTech company buys out another company or merges, how you are impacting as a customer does matter. If your all-in-one provider changes ownership to a competitor, does your technology change, or does it increase in price? Is there “downtime” as migrations occur? If any of these occur, you likely have a door opening for you to leave.
Regulatory supervision and compliance issues. In a regulated industry, when the FinTech provider has a negative audit, or a compliance issue on client information arises, the vendor can not force you to stay.
At AssetBook, we believe that being held hostage by an all-in-one technology provider should never occur. By utilizing component software, advisors build a stack of what they need and use. Additionally, when any of the above issues arise, the advisor can easily swap out the undesirable component without removing other parts. No all-in-one provider can do this- you either take the entire stack or completely abandon it.
Contact us to experience a demo of how our portfolio monitoring and reporting software, along with our partner integrations, can help you break free and leave your all-in-one provider behind.