Technology decisions in trust and wealth management — from trust accounting system selection to full system conversions — carry more organizational weight than they are often given credit for. The trust accounting system is the operational core of the department. The technology stack surrounding it affects compliance documentation, audit trail integrity, client reporting, and the capacity to grow. Selecting the wrong system, managing a conversion poorly, or allowing a technology environment to go unevaluated for too long creates operational risk, regulatory exposure, and staff burden that compounds over time.
Pohl Consulting and Training has been helping trust departments and trust companies navigate technology decisions, system conversions, vendor relationships, and operational assessments for decades. We bring direct experience with the vendors, the systems, and the regulatory expectations that shape these decisions, so organizations can move through complex technology projects with confidence rather than uncertainty.
Select the appropriate trust systems. We will help you assess your current systems and identify your needs and recommend solutions that align with your strategic goals and regulatory requirements, ensuring the chosen system enhances efficiency and compliance.
Trust Accounting System RFP Development and Management: We develop and manage the full Request for Proposal process for trust accounting system selection, including organizational profiling, selection questionnaire development, vendor coordination, and proposal evaluation support. Our master questionnaire templates, built from decades of running these projects, are customized to your organization and ensure the evaluation is consistent, comprehensive, and regulator-ready.
Evaluate the cost-effectiveness of your current and proposed trust accounting systems using detailed comparisons and recommendations to optimize pricing strategies.
Transition to a new accounting system with minimal disruption using our comprehensive project management, from planning and execution to post-implementation support.
Seamlessly transition to new systems by letting us handle the complexities of converting trust department operations, ensuring successful implementation and integration with existing processes.
Trust Operations Staff Readiness Assessment: During a system conversion, we assess how operations staff respond to the demands of the transition, providing management with an objective evaluation of team readiness, training needs, and leadership effectiveness at a moment when those factors matter most.
We evaluate staffing levels, leadership, workflow efficiency, system utilization, and regulatory readiness across your trust operations function. The output is a written report with actionable findings and recommendations, structured so that both board members and regulators can review it with confidence.
We assess the full technology environment supporting your trust department, including your core accounting system, investment management tools, tax reporting, CRM, and document management platforms. The goal is to identify redundancies, integration gaps, underutilized capabilities, and compliance control weaknesses that create operational risk or unnecessary cost
Modernize your trust operations technology. We help you select, implement, and integrate new systems to improve efficiency, accuracy, and compliance in trust management.
Enhance the efficiency and accuracy of trust operations with solutions for transaction processing, risk management, and performance reporting, ensuring seamless integration with front and back-office functions.
Fill professional positions with skilled personnel to ensure continuity and efficiency during transitions or peak periods, so you can maintain high operational standards.
Manage trust operations more efficiently by leveraging external expertise, including comprehensive support for various operational functions, ensuring high-quality service and regulatory compliance.
Create and maintain policies for internal controls and financial conditions of third-party vendors and technology service providers (TSPs) that meet regulatory requirements. Services include Trust Accounting Systems Due Diligence, Investment Advisors Due Diligence, Trust Brokerage Due Diligence, and Broker Dealer Partnership Evaluations.
Maximize opportunities and ensure the right partnership fit for your organization. We provide comprehensive support, from writing RFPs to evaluating proposals, ensuring a thorough and efficient selection process that aligns with your corporate culture and strategy.
Whether you are evaluating a new trust accounting system, managing a conversion, assessing your current technology environment, or working through a vendor relationship, Pohl Consulting has the experience to help. Tell us a little about your situation and we will follow up to discuss how we can support your project.
We manage the full due diligence and selection process, from needs assessment through RFP development, vendor evaluation, and contract review. Our process begins with a structured discovery of your organization’s current system, its weaknesses, and your requirements going forward, including line of business assessments with operations staff, administrators, and management. We bring comprehensive questionnaire templates and vendor knowledge developed across many years of running these projects, which reduces the burden on your internal team while ensuring the evaluation is thorough and regulator-ready. The outcome is a vendor decision grounded in a formal, documented process that holds up to both board and examiner scrutiny.
The timeline varies by organization size and complexity, but most selection projects run between four and eight months from initiation through vendor decision. The process includes a request for information phase, a needs assessment, RFP development and distribution, vendor demonstrations, proposal evaluation, finalist due diligence, and contract review. We manage the process to a defined timeline and keep the internal task force on track, which is one of the most common points of failure in self-managed selection projects. Organizations that try to compress the timeline significantly tend to encounter gaps in due diligence that surface during regulatory review or post-implementation.
A conversion project involves far more than the technical transition from one system to another. It includes orientation with the operations team and the vendor conversion manager, participation in trial conversions, on-site presence during the live conversion week, and ongoing off-site support through weekly calls and virtual meetings throughout the project. We also assess how the operations staff responds to the demands of the conversion, which provides useful information about team readiness, training needs, and leadership gaps that may not be visible under normal operating conditions. Our minimum engagement for conversion management is nine months, which reflects the realistic timeline required to support an organization through a transition of this complexity.
A tech stack assessment evaluates all of the technology systems a trust department uses, not just the trust accounting system, including investment management platforms, tax reporting tools, CRM systems, document management, custodial services, and any ancillary tools layered onto the core system. The goal is to identify redundancies, gaps, underutilized capabilities, compliance control weaknesses, and integration issues that create operational risk or unnecessary cost. Many trust departments accumulate technology over time without ever stepping back to evaluate whether the full stack is working as a coherent system, and a structured assessment frequently surfaces both inefficiencies and compliance exposures that were not visible from inside the organization.
A trust operations assessment evaluates staffing levels, leadership quality, workflow efficiency, system utilization, and regulatory readiness across the operations function. It is typically initiated when an organization is preparing for a system conversion, responding to examination findings in the operations area, evaluating an outsourcing decision, or planning for significant growth. The assessment involves on-site interviews with operations staff and management, review of policy and procedure documentation, examination of recent audit and examination findings, and observation of actual operational workflows. The output is a written report with actionable findings and recommendations, structured so that both the board and regulators can review it with confidence.
Vendor management in trust and wealth management is a regulatory expectation, not just an operational preference. Examiners expect institutions to have documented policies and processes for evaluating, selecting, monitoring, and managing third-party vendors and technology service providers. We help organizations create and maintain vendor management frameworks that meet those expectations, including due diligence processes for trust accounting systems, investment advisors, broker dealers, and trust brokerage relationships. We also assist with RFP development and proposal evaluation for broker dealer selection, ensuring the process is thorough, documented, and aligned with the organization’s culture and strategic direction.
System selection and conversion management are two distinct projects that often follow each other sequentially. Selection is the process of evaluating vendors, issuing an RFP, assessing proposals, and choosing a system. Conversion management begins after the selection decision and focuses on managing the implementation of the chosen system, including the transition from the legacy system, staff readiness, vendor coordination, and operational continuity during the go-live period. Some organizations engage Pohl for selection only and manage the conversion internally. Others engage us for both, which has the advantage of continuity since the consulting team already knows the organization, the vendor, and the decisions made during selection when the conversion phase begins.
We review proposed contracts and provide input on the market reasonableness of pricing, terms, service level agreements, and contractual provisions based on our experience across many similar engagements. We do not directly negotiate with vendors or provide legal advice, but we provide back-end consultation on strategy and positioning throughout the negotiation process. This allows the institution to enter negotiations with an informed perspective on what is standard in the market, what is negotiable, and what provisions warrant closer attention from legal counsel. Given the multi-year commitment involved in most trust accounting system contracts, this input frequently produces meaningful improvements to the final agreement.
A trust operations assessment is typically triggered by concerns about staffing capacity, leadership effectiveness, workflow inefficiency, or regulatory findings in the operations area. It evaluates the people, processes, and procedures of the operations function, with technology as one component of a broader organizational evaluation. A tech stack assessment is triggered when the focus is specifically on the technology environment, whether systems are redundant, underutilized, poorly integrated, or creating compliance gaps. In practice, the two assessments often inform each other, and organizations facing a significant technology decision frequently benefit from an operations assessment first to understand whether the issues they are experiencing are technology problems, people problems, or both.