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Case Study 01: Apex Wealth Partners

AI-Generated Content — Use for Reference Only

This content is AI-generated and has only been validated by AI review processes. It has NOT been reviewed or validated by certified Salesforce CTAs or human subject matter experts. Do not rely on this content as authoritative or completely accurate. Use it solely as a reference point for your own study and preparation. Always verify architectural recommendations against official Salesforce documentation.

Practice Information

Difficulty: Advanced (Full Board Simulation) Domain weights: D1 System Arch: HEAVY | D2 Security: HEAVY | D3 Data: HEAVY | D4 Solution: MEDIUM | D5 Integration: HEAVY | D6 Dev Lifecycle: MEDIUM | D7 Communication: MEDIUM Designed for 180-minute prep window

Before You Start

Print this case study. Read it twice using the Two-Pass Reading Method — once for the narrative, once to extract implicit requirements. Then build all 9 artifacts within the 180-minute window. Prepare a 15-minute boardroom presentation and anticipate 10 minutes of judge Q&A.

Company Overview

Apex Wealth Partners is a mid-size wealth management firm headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 2006. The firm provides financial planning, portfolio management, and advisory services to high-net-worth (HNW) and ultra-high-net-worth (UHNW) individuals, family offices, and institutional investors. In Q3 2025, Apex acquired Commonwealth Community Bank, a retail banking division with 30 branches across the northeastern United States. The strategic thesis: wealth management clients want consolidated banking and investment services, and banking clients with significant deposits represent a natural advisory pipeline.

Client segments: Mass Affluent ($250K—$1M, 60% of clients), HNW ($1M—$10M, 35%), and UHNW ($10M+, 5% of clients but 45% of AUM). Approximately 30% of advisors operate in teams of 2-4, sharing a combined book of business. A separate 40-person institutional team manages endowments, foundations, and pension funds.

AttributeDetail
IndustryFinancial Services — Wealth Management + Retail Banking
Total employees2,200 (600 advisors, 400 branch staff, 200 ops, 150 compliance, 100 IT, 750 other)
Assets under management$85 billion
Total client accounts180,000 (120,000 wealth + 60,000 banking)
Locations45 wealth offices (12 states) + 30 bank branches (6 NE states)
Revenue growth12% annually (organic + acquisitions)
RegulatorySEC-registered, FINRA member, SOX (publicly traded), GLBA, OCC-regulated banking subsidiary

The CEO has stated: “We need a unified view of every client relationship — whether they hold $50,000 in a checking account, $5 million in a managed portfolio, or both. But we cannot compromise the regulatory walls that protect our clients.”

The CCO has added: “We operate under multiple regulatory regimes simultaneously — SEC, FINRA, OCC, FDIC, and SOX. Any technology platform must enforce these boundaries by design, not by policy.”

The CTO has noted: “Our wealth management division has run Salesforce for five years. The banking division has its own stack. I need a recommendation on whether to bring banking into the existing org, stand up a new org, or something else — and the reasoning must be defensible to our board.”

The COO has flagged hard deadlines: “If we miss the Dynamics renewal window, we commit to two more years of licensing cost for a system we plan to decommission. And the data center lease is non-negotiable.”

Current Technology Landscape

Wealth Management Division — Salesforce Org (Existing)

Sales Cloud Enterprise Edition with Financial Services Cloud overlay (licensed 3 years ago but only partially implemented — Person Account model and basic Financial Account objects activated; full FSC data model never configured).

Technical debt: 300+ custom fields on Account/Contact (many duplicative), 85 custom objects (at least 20 with zero records), 47 Apex triggers (12 below 75% test coverage, several with overlapping logic). Record counts: 2.1M Accounts, 4.8M Contacts, 12M Activities. Storage at 78%, trending +3% per quarter. No release management — changes made directly in production. Sharing model set to Public Read/Write on Account with no record-level security. Advisor adoption mixed (only ~40% consistently log pipeline activity). Einstein Activity Capture enabled for Microsoft 365 sync.

The VP of Wealth Management: “Our advisors tolerate the current system, but they don’t love it. Any new system needs to deliver visible value to the advisor, not just to leadership.”

Key integrations:

  • Schwab Advisor Services: Nightly SFTP batch (600K position records); scheduled Apex batch job occasionally times out on large files
  • Orion Portfolio Solutions: Bidirectional REST sync every 4 hours for performance/billing data; produces ~weekly data conflicts resolved manually
  • Smarsh: Outbound email/chat archiving for FINRA retention (7 years); link between archived communications and Salesforce records is incomplete
  • DocuSign: eSignature for account paperwork (~15,000 envelopes/year)
  • Compliance managed package: Suitability checks, trade surveillance; not updated in 18 months, vendor roadmap uncertain

Banking Division — Microsoft Dynamics 365

Dynamics 365 Sales + Customer Service on Azure. 60,000 customer records, 120,000 deposit accounts, 35,000 loan records, 280,000 historical service cases. Integrated with core banking (FIS Horizon) via custom .NET middleware for nightly balance sync. Staff: 5 Dynamics admins + 2 .NET developers (who also maintain FIS middleware). Contract renewal due in 14 months. Data quality better than wealth org (3% duplicate rate, consistent field population). No mobile capabilities.

The VP of Retail Banking: “Every time a client with $300,000 in deposits walks in, our tellers should know there might be an advisory conversation — but they should never see the client’s portfolio. That’s a compliance issue and a trust issue.”

FIS Horizon — Core Banking Platform

System of record for all deposit accounts, loans, transaction processing, and regulatory reporting. Not being replaced. On-premise in a third-party data center (managed services contract expiring in 22 months; 6-month extension possible at 15% premium). Processes 400,000 transactions per business day. SOAP API (v8.4) for individual account lookups — no bulk queries, no real-time events (on 2027 roadmap). Batch window 10 PM—2 AM EST (API unavailable). Handles all regulatory reporting (Call Reports, BSA/AML, OFAC screening).

Other Key Systems

Schwab Advisor Services (Primary Custodian, 80% of wealth AUM): Nightly SFTP position files (~600K records, available by 11:30 PM EST). Real-time trade confirmation webhooks. REST API (OAuth 2.0) for new account creation. SFTP integration times out ~twice monthly.

Pershing / BNY Mellon (Institutional Custodian, 20% of wealth AUM): Nightly batch via NetX360 (proprietary format requiring translation). No real-time API (REST beta Q3 2026). Used by 40-person institutional team. No automated integration today — manual spreadsheet reconciliation.

Orion Portfolio Solutions (Performance and Billing): Cloud SaaS, REST API (Orion Connect v3). Bidirectional sync required: demographics CRM-to-Orion, performance/billing Orion-to-CRM. Current 4-hour sync produces ~weekly conflicts resolved manually. Billing must be penny-accurate for quarterly invoicing.

Smarsh (Communications Archiving): Regulatory-mandated (FINRA Rule 4511, SEC Rule 17a-4). Archives email, IM, social media, text. Current Salesforce integration incomplete: only outbound emails linked to client records; inbound and other channels archived but not linked back. 12M communications spanning 5 years.

SharePoint Online (Banking Documents): 1.2 TB with no structured taxonomy. No Dynamics integration. Legal requires 7-year retention, 48-hour production for regulatory requests.

DocuSign (eSignatures): Wealth only (~15K envelopes/year). Banking uses wet signatures. Compliance requires tamper-evident audit trails linking documents to client, initiator, and timestamp.

Business Process Requirements

Unified Client View and Household Management

  1. Advisors and relationship managers must see a comprehensive view of every financial relationship a client or household holds — wealth, banking, insurance, advisory agreements — from a single record.
  2. Support “household” grouping (spouses, children, trusts, entities) with aggregated AUM, deposits, loan balances, and revenue for tiered service assignment.
  3. When a banking client’s deposits exceed $250K, generate a qualified referral to advisory with the banking relationship summary; track through conversion or declination.
  4. New wealth onboarding must capture KYC documentation, investment objectives, risk tolerance, time horizon, and suitability information — reviewable by compliance before activation.
  5. When aggregated household assets cross a tier threshold (e.g., $1M), trigger a service upgrade workflow: assign senior advisor, adjust fee schedule, notify client.

Advisory Workflow and Book of Business

  1. Each advisor has a defined book of business; the system tracks AUM, revenue, client count, and activity metrics per advisor.
  2. Client transfers between advisors must preserve full history under the original advisor, transfer access to the new advisor, and notify compliance.
  3. Advisors log meeting notes, financial planning activities, and follow-up tasks linked to both advisor and household.
  4. Track advisor licensing (Series 7, 66, state registrations, insurance) and prevent activities requiring certifications not held.
  5. On advisor departure or extended leave, book of business must be reassigned with full visibility transfer and compliance logging.

Banking Operations

  1. Branch staff view banking relationships (deposits, loans, service history) and perform service activities without direct core banking access for routine inquiries.
  2. Route customer service requests (disputes, wire transfers, loan inquiries) to appropriate teams by type and branch, with SLA tracking.
  3. Surface wealth management opportunities to banking staff based on defined criteria, without revealing existing advisory relationship details or portfolio data.
  4. Referral workflow from banking to wealth captures referring staff member, client interest, triggering deposit balance, and outcome — with referral fee credit tracked to originating branch.

Compliance and Regulatory

  1. Complete audit trail for every client record modification (user, timestamp, previous/new value) retained minimum 7 years for SEC, FINRA, and SOX.
  2. All client-facing communications archived per FINRA Rule 4511, producible upon regulatory examination.
  3. Pre-trade suitability reviews and post-trade surveillance reports to detect unsuitable recommendations, excessive trading, or unauthorized discretionary activity.
  4. Information barriers (“Chinese walls”): MNPI held by banking commercial lending/investment banking must not be accessible to wealth advisors who might trade on it.
  5. SOX controls: segregation of duties for account modifications, approval workflows above thresholds, quarterly access certification reviews.

Client Portal

  1. Secure portal for wealth clients to view portfolio summary, balances, transactions, performance reports, and advisor-shared documents.
  2. Secure messaging between clients and advisory team, with all messages archived for compliance.
  3. Electronic document signing through the portal without in-person visits.
  4. Financial-services-grade authentication: MFA, session timeouts, device recognition.

Reporting and Analytics

  1. Daily CIO dashboard: firm-wide AUM by asset class, net new assets, attrition, advisor productivity — refreshed by 7:30 AM EST.
  2. Weekly regional director reports: per-advisor book metrics with drill-down to authorized client records.
  3. Branch performance dashboards: deposit growth, loan origination, cross-sell conversion, case resolution times.
  4. On-demand compliance audit reports: record access history, suitability profile changes, trade surveillance alerts.
  5. Monthly consolidated financials: combined wealth + banking revenue by segment, region, and household tier.
  6. Ad-hoc manager reporting without IT involvement, scoped to each user’s sharing model access.

Data and Migration Requirements

  1. Migrate 60,000 banking customer records from Dynamics 365 with duplicate detection against the wealth division’s existing base — estimated 8,000 overlapping clients.
  2. Survivorship strategy: wealth data wins for investment fields, banking data wins for deposit/loan fields, most recently updated demographics wins for contact information.
  3. Address existing wealth org data quality issues: 15,000 Accounts with no Contact, 22,000 Contacts missing email, 8,500 records assigned to departed advisors.
  4. Migrate historical activity data from Dynamics (3 years) and existing Salesforce (5 years) with full user/timestamp attribution.
  5. Store and associate financial account data (positions, holdings, balances, transaction history) supporting both real-time views and historical point-in-time reporting.
  6. Ingest nightly custodian data (~1.2M position records), reconcile, and associate with correct accounts before 7:00 AM EST.
  7. Migrate 1.2 TB of SharePoint banking documents to a solution accessible from client records, with metadata tagging by client, document type, and branch.

Access Control and Information Security

  1. Advisors see only their assigned book of business — no visibility into other advisors’ clients.
  2. Advisor teams (30% of advisors) share access to the team’s combined book.
  3. Branch staff see only banking records with no visibility into wealth account details, positions, or advisory information.
  4. Compliance has read-only access to all client records across both divisions but cannot modify data.
  5. Operations can process service requests across all clients but cannot see advisory notes, meeting summaries, or investment recommendations.
  6. Information barrier prevents wealth advisors from viewing any data from banking commercial lending/investment banking activities for MNPI clients, even with a legitimate personal account relationship.
  7. All user access to client records logged and auditable (who viewed which record, when, from where).
  8. Client portal authentication separate from employee identity; financial-services-grade security controls.
  9. Data classification (Public, Internal, Restricted): Restricted data (SSN, account numbers, positions, MNPI) encrypted at rest, masked in non-production environments.

Integration Requirements

  1. Nightly Schwab position/balance data ingested, reconciled, available to advisors by 7:00 AM EST.
  2. Pershing data follows same pattern with format translation from proprietary to normalized schema.
  3. Bidirectional Orion sync: CRM demographics reflected in Orion within 15 minutes; Orion performance data reflected in CRM within the nightly processing cycle.
  4. FIS Horizon queried for real-time account balance and recent transactions when a user opens a banking view — without storing full transactional data in the CRM.
  5. All client communications captured by Smarsh in near-real-time with linkage back to the CRM client record.
  6. DocuSign execution initiated from CRM, signed documents auto-stored and linked to client record.
  7. Real-time Schwab trade confirmation webhooks processed within 5 minutes of execution.
  8. Architecture must accommodate future eMoney Advisor and client reporting portal integrations without significant rearchitecture.

Development Lifecycle and Governance

  1. Defined release lifecycle with separate dev, test, staging, and production environments, automated deployment pipelines, and approval gates.
  2. Changes affecting client data access, security, or compliance require documented CCO approval before production promotion.
  3. Internal CoE (4 admins, 3 developers, 1 release manager, 2 BAs) supplemented by a consulting partner during initial build; self-sufficient within 18 months.
  4. Phased implementation: wealth division continues with minimal disruption; banking begins before Dynamics renewal (14 months).
  5. UAT involving compliance officers (access controls), advisors (book-of-business visibility), and banking staff (cross-sell workflows) — all results documented for regulatory readiness.
  6. Banking division’s 5 Dynamics admins and 2 .NET developers must be retrained or reassigned into Salesforce roles within the CoE.

Performance, Scalability, and Mobile

  1. 2,200 concurrent internal users during peak hours (9 AM—4 PM EST) with page loads under 3 seconds for aggregated client views.
  2. Nightly processing (custodian files, Orion sync, FIS batch) must complete within 5 hours (10 PM—3 AM EST) for ~2 million records combined.
  3. Scale to 250,000 accounts, $120B AUM, and 3,000 employees within 3 years.
  4. Client portal: 5,000 concurrent external users, under 2-second response for portfolio views.
  5. Handle quarterly rebalancing peaks (3x normal daily activity in reporting and trade confirmations).
  6. Mobile access for advisors (~30% of meetings are off-site) with full security enforcement.
  7. Future mobile banking capability for “pop-up banking” initiative (community events, corporate offices).
  8. All mobile access must enforce identical security and sharing controls as desktop.

Organizational Context

The acquisition closed 6 months ago. Cultural integration is ongoing:

  • Wealth division views itself as the flagship and expects banking to adopt their systems
  • Banking division views the migration as disruptive and imposed; branch managers concerned about staff learning a new system under client service pressure
  • Compliance concerned that migration during a potential FINRA exam window could create gaps in examiner data requests
  • IT team stretched: 2-person Salesforce admin team in reactive mode for 5 years with no formal training
  • Prior Salesforce implementation was 4 months late and 30% over budget, creating lasting executive skepticism
  • Banking staff unionized in 3 of 6 states — system changes altering job functions require union notification and consultation (does not prevent migration but requires a communication and training plan)

Additional Constraints

Licensing: Enterprise Edition today with 650 licenses. Banking (400) and additional ops/compliance staff need new licenses. Shield required for encryption/audit. All data at rest and in transit must be encrypted; SOC 2 Type II certification required.

Timeline and budget: Data center lease expires 22 months. Dynamics renewal due 14 months. Total 24-month program budget: $12M (licensing, implementation, integration, migration, training, contingency). Overruns exceeding 10% require board approval. Quarterly board briefings required.

Identity: Okta as enterprise IdP (banking migrating from Azure AD, completing in ~6 months). CISO requires all production access tied to named user accounts with MFA — no shared or interactive service accounts. Regulatory examiners must receive data exports within 48 hours of request.

Regulatory timeline: SOX audit cycle begins in 8 months — changes affecting financial controls must be documented and tested before audit window. FINRA exam could occur during implementation (last exam 18 months ago, cadence 2-3 years).

Staff dynamics: Three of five banking Dynamics admins want Salesforce certification; two may leave without adequate training and career path support.

Implicit Requirements

This case study contains unstated requirements implied by the company profile, regulatory environment, and business context. Identifying these is a critical CTA skill.

Key areas: multi-org vs. single-org decision cascading into every artifact; regulatory mandates (SOX, FINRA, GLBA, SEC, OCC) beyond what is explicitly stated; Chinese wall architectural implications; 8,000 overlapping clients and data model impact; growth trajectory and org limits; real-time vs. batch integration pattern selection; client portal authentication separation; 5-year technical debt remediation; hard deadlines (14-month Dynamics, 22-month data center); managed compliance app with uncertain vendor; 1.2 TB document migration storage strategy; banking staff retraining timeline.

Presentation Requirements

15-minute boardroom presentation covering your recommended architecture and key decision rationale. Review board:

  • CTO — wants defensible multi-org vs. single-org recommendation
  • CCO — wants regulatory boundaries enforced architecturally
  • VP Wealth Management — wants advisor experience and book-of-business integrity
  • VP Retail Banking — wants banking staff productivity and cross-sell enablement
  • External CTA Review Board — evaluating architectural reasoning, trade-off analysis, and artifact quality

Time Management

Prioritize your artifacts. Start with the multi-org decision (it cascades into everything), then build the security model (Chinese wall is the hardest requirement), then integration and data. Allocate 30 minutes to rehearse. If short on time, governance and environment strategy can be presented at summary level.

Deliverables Checklist

  1. System Landscape Diagram — single/multi-org topology and all external system connections
  2. Data Model / ERD — client record structure, financial accounts, households, key objects
  3. Role Hierarchy — wealth, banking, compliance, and operations structure for data access
  4. Integration Architecture — all external systems with patterns, protocols, frequencies, volumes
  5. Identity / SSO Flow — employee auth, client portal auth, and separation between them
  6. Data Migration Strategy — Dynamics migration, duplicate resolution, cleanup, historical data
  7. Governance Framework — CoE structure, change management, compliance approval gates
  8. Environment Strategy — sandbox topology, data masking, CI/CD pipeline
  9. Phased Delivery Roadmap — 24-month sequencing with milestones and deadline dependencies

Key Stakeholder Priorities

StakeholderPrimary ConcernKey Requirement
CEOUnified client view across divisionsReq 1, 2, 3
CTODefensible org strategy, technology governanceMulti-org decision, Req 54-59
CCORegulatory boundaries enforced by architectureReq 15-19, 42-45
VP WealthAdvisor experience, book-of-business integrityReq 6-10, 37-38
VP BankingStaff productivity, cross-sellReq 11-14, 39
CFOBudget governance, consolidated reportingReq 27-28, $12M budget
COOTimeline adherence, contract deadlinesDynamics 14-month, DC 22-month
CISOEncryption, MFA, data classificationReq 44-45, 67