Information checkedInformation unaudited Information geprüft Information ungeprüft Our EAM Powerhouse: Behind the scenes with Hendrik Breitenstein
A dynamic centre for external asset managers: Hendrik Breitenstein, Head of External Asset Managers, takes us on a tour of the EAM Powerhouse – a place filled with passion, fresh ideas and a team that brings it to life.
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A simple question to start: What exactly does your department do?
EAM stands for external asset managers, who take care of their own end clients and require a bank like LLB to manage their clients' accounts.
Our department is responsible for cooperating with these external asset managers. We coordinate the relationships and interfaces between the asset managers, their clients, and LLB. We provide the necessary infrastructure and support to enable external asset managers to efficiently manage their clients' accounts. This includes processing transactions, providing investment and reporting services, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
We play a crucial role in this triangular relationship by acting as the link that ensures the needs of asset managers and their clients are seamlessly integrated with LLB's services and infrastructure.
Hendrik, the LLB Group has built another house? What's that all about?
The LLB Group has already successfully established its Fund Powerhouse – a platform that enables us to collaborate across countries and companies, fully focusing on the needs of our clients.
So it made sense to extend this successful approach to other areas. We quickly realised that the business model of fund management and that of external asset managers share many parallels.
This led to the idea of creating a transnational powerhouse for our external asset managers business as well – the LLB Group's EAM Powerhouse. Our aim was to introduce new and innovative approaches while preserving what's worked in the past.
What's special about the EAM Powerhouse?
Think of it like building or renovating a house. The foundation has to be stable and reliable for generations – and LLB has been meeting these requirements for over 160 years. Once the foundation is in place, the next step is to build the supporting pillars of the house, brick by brick. For us, these pillars are Online Banking that is clearly focused on our intermediaries, digital interfaces, and experienced client advisors. The various markets and their corresponding regulatory requirements form the roof of our house. We are happy to adapt the interior design to the individual wishes and interests of our clients. Altogether, we combine the three building blocks of our house to create an individual and unique offering – a modern, reliable, and personal service that grows together by leveraging the strengths of our locations along the Alpine chain.
As part of our “house construction”, we have reviewed and optimised all processes in our business with external asset managers. Our team is on-site in person in the DACHLI region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein), offering joint digital solutions and acting as a reliable partner.
A good example of this is our fully digitalised onboarding for the end clients of our asset managers. With our specially developed onboarding tool within the secure LLB Online Banking, asset managers can open their clients' accounts securely and efficiently. We rely exclusively on internal systems that guarantee stability, security, and digital efficiency.
By staying close to our clients, we recognise changing needs at an early stage and implement them consistently. Our aim is to always exceed our clients' expectations and surprise them in a positive way every day.
How has the EAM Powerhouse changed internal workflows and processes at LLB?
Our team continually scrutinises existing processes to improve them. While we retain what has been proven to work, change can be challenging at first, and optimisations are not always immediately visible to everyone. Our goal is to steadily improve our processes in a client- and results-oriented manner and to implement these improvements in our daily work.
What specific benefits does the EAM Powerhouse offer our employees?
Building something new is always a challenge, and the EAM Powerhouse is no exception. We've had to step out of our comfort zones to gain new insights and apply them consistently. We've been given significant freedom for design and development. For those seeking innovative solutions and wanting to align the needs of our clients with the goals of LLB, the EAM team is the perfect fit.
What new digital solutions has the EAM Powerhouse introduced, and how do our teams benefit?
Our focus is on increasing efficiency and reducing errors. Over the past few months, we've identified numerous areas for improvement thanks to client feedback. One of our biggest projects is digital onboarding – both hybrid and fully digital. We're also enhancing our focus on Online Banking and integrating order interfaces for asset managers. These innovations also require adjustments in lending, which we are addressing through cross-team collaboration. Despite occasional challenges, we are confident that we are heading towards a successful future together. It's like construction – sometimes the best solutions become clear only once you're on-site, seeing things from a new perspective.
What can we look forward to in future?
The EAM Powerhouse now stands – but just like building a house, completion isn't the end of the story. The interior design and ongoing optimisations continue. In addition to digital onboarding solutions, we now offer our clients the LLB relocation service for asset managers.
We know that our asset managers also want to streamline their processes and modernise. With the LLB relocation service, we make it easy for end clients to move from an external custodian bank to the EAM Powerhouse. We handle the complex tasks involved in the relocation, particularly the recording of the asset manager's client data on-site, and work closely with relevant specialist departments such as Compliance, Tax, and Cross-border to ensure the relocation is as smooth as possible. This allows our asset managers to focus fully on their core competence: asset management.
We have introduced many innovations, critically examined processes, and used feedback to further develop our EAM Powerhouse. The project isn't finished – just like in your own house, there are always optimisations and improvements to be made.