Securities administration and tax reporting specialist consultancy KA Watson Consultancy Limited (KAWC) has launched a new tax reporting and planning solution that will transform the way wealth management companies understand and manage this function, allowing them to enhance their relationships with clients.Combining a modern approach with decades of industry knowledge, TIARA aims to simplify and significantly de-risk the tax reporting process, helping wealth management firms and family offices to improve how they work, potentially cut costs and focus on delivering value to clients.
Significant savings will be generated from the inclusion of business functions within the solution that go far beyond the tax calculations. By incorporating key data reviews to identify calls to work, a new breed of automation can finally be brought to the tax function. Additional savings for implementation are possible due to the extensive KAWC experience of data migration and the additional functionality built into the solution dealing efficiently with common issues faced by all customers when on-boarding data to a new software.
TIARA is the first technical solution for tax reporting on investment portfolios that is truly built with seamless plug-and-play into existing systems. TIARA enables the automation of many of the data validation tasks that should take place as standard, ensuring that the reports are accurate with much less user intervention. Additional logic is built into the reporting suite, making a complex reporting area much simpler, more automated and more importantly, less risky due to the enhanced tracking around report versioning and data updates.
The launch of TIARA comes amid a period of significant change in the industry, with tax legislation updates on the horizon and tax simplification under sharp focus. The Office of Tax Simplification (OTS) has found a concerning disparity between Capital Gains Tax (CGT) and income tax rates, often distorting financial decision-making. In addition, many firms are operating legacy systems and do not have the expertise and technological capabilities to realise the potential from data, leaving them vulnerable to compliance risk.
Karrie Tilburn, CEO and Founder at KAWC, says: “A lack of in-depth understanding of CGT data, the historic workings and how different systems handle data means this unregulated function is a ticking time-bomb, especially when you consider the interaction with income tax that is often overlooked. With potential tax reforms on the way to claw back some of the government deficit, it is imperative that firms get ahead of the game and ensure their data is accurate. A fresh approach is required to ensure the full tax consequences of the investments is represented to the underlying investors with confidence. We believe in simplifying tax by utilising the technology available to us, removing the risk and administration burden so firms can focus on delivering value to their clients.”
KAWC brings decades of hands-on industry experience (and frustrations) with legacy system challenges. Having worked with firms such as Kleinwort Hambros, Brown Shipley, Raymond James, C Hoare & Co, Praemium, Avaloq, Brown Advisory among others, and on many software implementation projects, we have been embedded at the heart of this function since inception. KAWC has built TIARA based on a positive understanding of the many challenges clients face, with clear objectives around improving how the tax reporting function is managed.
