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5 Important Things Investment Firms Should Look for When Choosing a Custodian, Presented By Global Custody Solutions

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A custodian’s duties and responsibilities are numerous, including interacting with your clients, overseeing securities transactions, removing fees from accounts, posting dividends, and sending statements. In other words, they act as your business extension, reflect your RIA (registered investment advisor), and impact clients. Since their roles touch all aspects of a business, you cannot overlook the importance of selecting the most suitable custodian. Read on to learn five essential things investment firms must consider during your vetting process.  

The Importance of Personal Relationships

Every RIA understands the worth of a personal relationship. Most of your business’s success depends on the capacity to develop a robust personal relationship with your clients. However, custodians’ support and personal services are becoming hard to find, with some custodians choosing to route registered investment advisors through call answering services. This often translates into working with someone who knows very little about your practice. Moreover, it could take longer to receive the resolution and support you require. Therefore, it is paramount to understand your custodian’s strategy for service and ask the right questions before materializing a business partnership.

Key questions you could ask include:

  • Will you reach a seasoned team member directly, or will you be sent to a call answering agent?
  • Who will you contact should you have concerns or require support?
  • Can you have one-on-one meetings?
  • What is their average response time?

Assess Technology

Each custodian utilizes technology platforms. It is essential to examine every custodian’s solutions and flexibility for managing everyday transactions like portfolio management, trading, and financial planning. Some smaller custodians might not provide advanced technology platforms that allow you to access your accounts online. Ensure you select a firm that will assist you to do business seamlessly, and quickly.

As technology advances, it’s imperative you select a firm that adapts fast. Choosing a company that is slow to improve technology could result in future business frustration and losses. Choose a more technologically advanced custodian who will streamline your processes.

Compare Pricing

Financial institutions charge transaction and custodial fees for the maintenance and management of accounts. Often custodial fees are charged for management tasks, such as storing and collecting dividends and interest of your investment and sending statements. Please note, custodial fees could affect your business returns. Choosing a company with competitive pricing can help maximize your savings growth and investment returns.

Additionally, depending on how you want to use accounts, you should compare fees like paper statement fees, overdraft fees, account closure fees, and wire transfer fees. Although these costs might not be the basis of your final decision, remember to include them when evaluating all custodians. It will prevent surprises along the way.

Check Whether the Custodian Has the Right Services and Products

There are many custodians, providing a wide selection of specialties, services, and products. It is crucial to choose one that meets your business needs. Create a checklist of what you need, and then engage a firm that ticks the most boxes.

Many people are unaware of one-stop shops that offer trust services, banking, and custody and use several vendors for the services. If you take the time, you could acquire them all in one location at a competitive cost.

Understand the Firm’s Reputation and Stature

Since you trust your custodian with what you value the most, your business, you should know of their reputation in the market for offering outstanding customer care services and protecting financial assets. Check whether the firm has received any outside recognition for their services and how reputable they are in your sector.

Ideally, financial experts would collaborate and share business ideas, increasing your practice’s economies of scale, while still maintaining the capability to brand your business as a trusted institution. That was the concept behind the establishment of Global Custodian Solutions, and we will continue to execute this mission on behalf of our members. For years we have been dedicated to the success of investment advisors. We make decisions and use strategies that allow you to strictly prioritize your clients. Our experienced team innovates, collaborates, and works to deliver exceptional value and world-class services irrespective of your business complexity or RIA size.

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Wiz will pay $450 million to acquire Cloud Remediation Startup Dazz

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Wiz revealed on Thursday that it will buy channel-focused company Dazz in an agreement to add cloud remediation capabilities to the vendor’s cloud and AI security platform.

With features like application security posture management and continuous threat and exposure management, Dazz provides a remediation-focused cloud security platform.

Jared Phipps, a seasoned cybersecurity industry executive who most recently worked for SentinelOne, was hired by Dazz in February as its CRO as the business sought to expand its collaboration with channel partners. Presidio, situated in New York, has been one of the key partners.

Dazz said in July that it has raised a $50 million round of funding, increasing its total funding since its 2021 launch to $110 million.

Dazz provides a “industry-leading remediation engine,” according to a post published on Thursday by Wiz Co-Founder and CEO Assaf Rappaport, which will allow Wiz to “empower security teams to correlate data from multiple sources and manage application risks in one unified platform.”

This is Wiz’s third purchase overall and its second acquisition of 2024 after the company’s April acquisition of cloud detection and response provider Gem Security.

Wiz, a four-year-old startup, reported in May that it had raised $1 billion in new capital at a $12 billion valuation, citing its continued strong development in the cloud and AI security areas. Annual recurring revenue (ARR) for the business reportedly increased from $350 million earlier this year to above $500 million.

After making a number of management additions aimed at facilitating quicker partner-driven growth, Rappaport stated in February that Wiz would prioritize its channel operations moving ahead.

I“In cybersecurity partners are super, super important in the success of a company. So we’ve always [seen that] this has huge potential for us to tap into. I think there is so much more we can do,” he stated at the time.

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ProRata, an AI startup, Teams up with UK Publishers after reportedly Hitting $130 Million in Valuation

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A number of well-known British media outlets have joined ProRata, an AI firm that claims to compensate publishers for the usage of their work, in its expanding network of partnerships.

The Los Angeles-based firm announced on Wednesday that it has signed licensing deals with publishers such as Sky News, the Guardian, and the Daily Mail’s publisher, DMG Media.

In a recent Series A funding round, ProRata raised $25 million from investors such as the Mayfield Fund, Prime Movers Lab, and Revolution Ventures.

“ProRata’s founder and CEO Bill Gross said his firm’s AI technology is the only one that pledges to credit and compensate creators, while providing users with accurate search results.

“We have had hundreds of content owners and media companies reach out to us from around the world who are interested in piloting our technology. Stealing and scraping content is not a sustainable path forward,” he continued.

Similar alliances have previously been formed by ProRata with the German publisher Axel Springer, the Atlantic, Fortune, Time, and Universal Music Group (UMG).

Media firms are offered reasonable compensation by ProRata for the use of their content. The startup’s in-house technology may determine the proper amount of pay by evaluating the worth of the information used to create responses from an AI platform. This would make it possible to pay copyright holders for their work on a per-use basis.

Gross had previously said that AI platforms have been using “shoplifted, plagiarized content,” which fosters an atmosphere in which “disinformation thrives and creators get nothing.”

Gross is recognized for having created the pay-per-click model of internet search monetization with his business, GoTo.com, which was eventually acquired by Yahoo! in 2003.

In a recent blog post, Tige Savage, a cofounder of Revolution, stated that Bill Gross is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in monetization techniques.

“He’s attracted a world-class tech team led by AI luminary Tarek Najm to implement the vision and an accomplished business team, including Annelies Jansen and Jonas Lee to drive content and AI partnerships,” Savage continued.

The unpaid use of copyrighted materials by OpenAI and other tech companies to train their AI systems has led to litigation from media companies and other content creators.

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Film Bazaar Unveils an Interactive Cinema App from an Indian Tech Startup

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Arjun Nittoor, the founder of the Indian technology firm Vireza, disclosed at Film Bazaar that the company is creating a new mobile application that would transform the experience of watching movies in theaters by enabling viewers to engage with the films in real time.

The technology, which was created wholly in-house at the company’s research and development department in Bengaluru, allows viewers to use their smartphones to vote on important plot points during the movie. To keep up with the current screening, patrons download an app before entering the theater and scan a QR code at their seat.

“The film industry is one of the few sectors where the audience experience has seen minimal technological disruption in theatres,” Nittoor stated. “While screen and sound quality have advanced and 3D has been partially adopted, the viewing experience has largely remained the same for decades.”

The screen automatically brightens to show voting options and dims again when choices are made. The system uses discreet phone notifications to encourage audience participation around every ten minutes.

In 2026, Vireza intends to introduce the technology with a full-length interactive movie that will be produced in both English and South Indian for international distribution. The business is presently in the development stage and will shortly start doing multiplex chain trial screenings.

CtrlMovie’s prior success in the interactive film industry was mentioned by Nittoor. CtrlMovie is well-known for “Traces of Responsibility” and “Late Shift.”

In order to overcome the difficulties in cinematography, editing, shot composition, and writing that plagued previous attempts at the format, the firm has spent five years creating what Nittoor refers to as “a new science of filmmaking” that is especially tailored for interactive cinema.

“Despite the proliferation of viewing devices, big-ticket films continue to draw massive crowds to theatres, with box office numbers higher than ever,”  Nittoor stated. “This demand underscores the potential for a meaningful technology shift that could draw audiences out of their homes and into cinemas.”

Other Asian businesses are likewise investigating audience-driven narrative in motion pictures. In February of the following year, Japan’s King Records intends to release “Hypnosis Mic – Division Rap Battle,” an animated interactive film.

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