SunGard has launched a Software-as-a-Service* (SaaS) version of its WealthStation wealth management platform to help advisors obtain the financial planning and asset allocation capabilities they need quickly and cost-effectively. Through its SaaS delivery model, SunGard’s WealthStation provides a Web-based, integrated platform to meet the needs of independent advisors without the resources, time constraints, and infrastructure cost of larger implementations.

WealthStation’s SaaS offering allows advisors to access on demand by credit card, more than 60 financial planning modules, including SunGard’s asset allocation software, and automatically receive upgrades in a secure environment with full disaster recovery backup.

Many experienced advisors are departing traditional banks and brokerage firms to start their own independent advisory practices. There is also a growing demand for advisory services as investors seek guidance from investment professionals. These trends are leading to a greater need for quickly deployed advisor solutions. WealthStation’s SaaS delivery provides an automated, Web-based environment that helps to simplify implementation, accelerate time-to-market, and gain ongoing processing and cost efficiencies with minimal IT support.

Kevin Rafferty, president of SunGard’s wealth management business, said, “It is more important than ever for advisors to be agile in their service offerings and dedicate more time to acquiring, retaining and serving clients. Utilizing SunGard’s SaaS framework, WealthStation provides the technology and tools that advisors need to plan and execute investment strategies for their clients in an on-demand environment, without requiring a large capital expenditure. WealthStation’s SaaS solution gives independent advisors access to the same quality tools enjoyed by traditional institutions.”

* SunGard Financial Systems is pursuing a visionary initiative to transform some of the key functionality of its core systems into components to form a new software development and on-demand delivery environment called Infinity. Infinity enables financial institutions to develop and deploy custom applications, integrating SunGard components with their own proprietary or third party components. Infinity uses SunGard’s Common Services Architecture (CSA), a service-oriented architecture (SOA) development framework, offering business process management (BPM) and a virtualized, software-as-a-service (SaaS) infrastructure.