Maestro

Compensation structures in the BD/RIA world are rarely simple. Every firm has its own mix of plans, schedules, and rep-level variations — and keeping that all accurate, period after period, is where spreadsheets and legacy systems break down.

Maestro handles it all. Whether your firm runs a single compensation schedule or maintains a unique plan for every rep, Maestro processes your payout rules accurately and delivers clean, professional pay statements every period. And when plans need to change — new enhancements, new structures, new hires — updates are made directly in Maestro and propagate automatically. No reprogramming. No manual adjustments.

What sets Maestro apart is its ability to track and report compensation across your user defined business lines within your organization. Broker-dealer commissions, advisor fee-based compensation, and insurance commissions, and more are each managed and reported separately — giving your firm the clarity and auditability that multi-line operations demand.

Beyond what spreadsheets can handle

Spreadsheets can store numbers. What they can't do is manage the logic, the exceptions, and the moving parts that real-world advisor compensation demands. Maestro handles the complexity that keeps back office teams working late:

• Grid management — production tiers are built directly into the system, so payout rates calculate automatically as advisors cross thresholds. No manual lookups, no formula errors.
• Shadow accounting — advisors can see their projected earnings before the payout period closes, reducing calls to the back office and giving the field the visibility they expect.
• Clawback tracking — when a client leaves or an investment is cancelled, Maestro manages the commission reversal automatically, maintaining an accurate and auditable record throughout.
• Team splits — when multiple advisors share a client relationship, Maestro handles the split math precisely, regardless of how complex the arrangement is.
• Compliance hooks — compensation is only released when all required regulatory training and paperwork is complete, ensuring that nothing gets paid out before it should.

What's included

• Flexible compensation package setup — create, assign, and update plans individually or across your entire organization
• Business line separation — track and process BD commissions, advisory fees, and insurance commissions independently
• Clear, professional pay statements delivered to reps and advisors each period
• Fast reruns of all or selected statement calculations when needed
• EFT file generation for direct deposit each period
• 1099-Misc processing with separate reporting by business line, year-to-date tracking on every statement, paper form generation, and electronic IRS submission

Compliance in today's BD/RIA environment goes beyond checking individual transactions. Regulatory scrutiny increasingly focuses on patterns of behavior — what's happening across an account over time, not just whether a single trade passed a suitability check. Maestro is built for both.

Transaction-level checks

Every transaction submitted for payment passes through a 24-point inspection covering suitability and compliance criteria. Checks are tunable — severity levels and tolerance thresholds can be configured to match your firm's specific policies. Licensing checks are business-line aware, recognizing that the requirements governing broker-dealer transactions differ from those on the advisory side — and validating accordingly. Client suitability profiles include registration status, investment objective, net worth, liquid assets, investment knowledge, risk tolerance, time horizon, annual income, tax bracket, and investment experience — all compared against the product sold.

Aggregate surveillance

Where Maestro goes further is in its ability to analyze entire account histories for behavioral patterns that individual trade checks can't catch. Maestro's aggregate compliance engine automatically monitors for:

• Buying back — identifying when a rep sells a client out of a fund, then repurchases after a waiting period to avoid a breakpoint
• Cost to Equity Ratio — This measures the trading costs an account runs up against the value of what it holds. A high ratio means the account has to earn an unreasonable return just to cover the cost of its own trading
• Churning — excessive buying and selling within a client account over a defined period
• Day trading — same-side trades in the same security for the same client on the same day
• Early withdrawals — withdrawals made shortly after a purchase
• Employee vs. client trading — rep and client trading the same product at different prices or timestamps
• Income percentage — aggregate trade activity measured against the client's total annual income
• Low price securities — Flags clusters of trading in cheap, low-priced securities — often penny stocks — which can signal speculative or high-risk activity in an account.
• Net worth percentage — aggregate trade activity measured against the client's total net worth
• Opposite side trading (adverse interest) — rep selling a product for one client while buying the same product for another on the same day
• Over-concentration — buy and position totals flagged when a client's holdings are disproportionately concentrated in a single product or sector
• Proceeds — identifying when sell proceeds are reinvested at a combined commission rate that suggests a conflict of interest
• Reverse churning — accounts enrolled in advisory fee programs where the account is not actively being managed
• Share class suitability — flagging when a client's combined positions and trades in a share class exceed an appropriate threshold
• Structured deposits — multiple deposits across an account that cumulatively exceed a reporting threshold
• Switching — purchasing mutual funds across different vendors to avoid breakpoints
• Transient deposits — deposits that are withdrawn shortly after being made
• Turnover ratio — annualized measurement of how frequently an account is being turned over relative to its positions
• Unsolicited products — repeated unsolicited purchases of the same product across an account

Built-in compliance workflow

Detection is only half the equation. When Maestro flags a violation or concerning item, it doesn't stop at generating a report — the built-in workflow system automatically routes flagged items to the appropriate parties' dashboards for review and resolution. The right people see the right issues without manual distribution, keeping your compliance process moving and creating a clear audit trail from detection through disposition.

Your data is only as useful as your ability to interpret it. Maestro’s reporting suite lets your team easily slice, filter, and uncover the insights they need—no IT support or manual exports required.

Where most systems lock you into fixed report formats, Maestro takes a different approach. Maestro provides the reporting framework, your users define the content. Summaries can be grouped and filtered by organizational unit, advisor team, product type, business line, or any combination that makes sense for your firm. Report setups can be saved to a personal workspace or shared across your organization, so the views your team relies on most are only a click away.

Reports can be generated as a PDF for clean presentation and recordkeeping, or as a spreadsheet for further analysis.

Report categories include

• Sales and production totals
• Daily trade blotters
• Compensation and fee summaries
• Compliance rule violations and licensing issues
• Client, rep, and transaction logs
• Client householding
• Aged receivables
• Suspicious activity flags (excessive commission rates, low share price, etc.)
• Production rankings by rep, product type, vendor, and more

Accurate compensation processing starts with accurate data. Maestro's import engine has deep roots in processing compensation and fee data from the clearing firms, mutual fund companies, insurance carriers and any other sources your firm works with every day — and the latest version takes that foundation significantly further with end-to-end import automation.

Automated data pipeline

Rather than requiring manual file handling each period, Maestro can go out and pull data in automatically. When files arrive, the system identifies their content without manual classification — whether it is client account updates, compensation and fee transactions, or position data, Maestro recognizes the file type and routes it accordingly. Built-in duplicate detection ensures that data already loaded into the system is never processed twice, eliminating a common source of downstream errors.

Broad format support

Maestro supports an extensive library of clearing firm, mutual fund, and insurance carrier formats out of the box, including:

• AXOS Clearing
• DAZL
• DST IDC & FanMail
• DTCC / NSCC
• Fidelity / NFS
• First Clearing
• Hilltop Securities
• Pershing
• RBC Dain
• Raymond James
• Schwab

Mutual fund companies and insurance carriers who provide compensation data directly are likely already supported. For those that aren't, new formats can be added quickly.

Manual entry for paper-based sources

For firms still receiving paper statements from insurance carriers or real estate product sponsors, Maestro includes an efficient manual entry interface designed for fast, accurate data input alongside your automated feeds.

Keeping client, rep, and transaction records complete means more than just the numbers. Maestro's built-in document imaging lets your team scan, store, and retrieve paper documents directly alongside the records they belong to — no separate imaging system, no additional software to buy or maintain, and no extra fees.

Documents are organized at the client, rep/advisor, or transaction level and accessible in a few clicks. New pages can be added to existing document records over time, document types are unlimited and user-defined, and both single and multi-page documents are supported. 

All document image files are stored and backed up on Artisan-owned servers located in the United States.

Because imaging is native to Maestro rather than bolted on, it's one less vendor, one less integration, and one less line item on your technology budget.

Giving your field force access to back-office data is only valuable if that access is properly structured and controlled. Maestro's rep and advisor access management gives your back office precise control over who sees what — ensuring that every user in your firm's hierarchy has exactly the visibility and capabilities their role requires, and nothing more.

Role-based access across your entire organization

Maestro supports a full range of user roles reflecting the real-world structure of your firm. Managers have visibility across the reps and teams within their scope. Sales assistants operate with a deliberately narrow, limited permission set focused on the specific tasks they need to perform on behalf of their advisors. Reps and advisors access their own book of business. Back office staff work across the full platform with appropriate administrative controls.

Each role is configured to match how your firm actually operates — so your team isn't navigating permissions that don't apply to them, and sensitive data stays appropriately protected at every level of the organization.

The back office stays in control

Behind every Repertoire session is Maestro managing the data, the permissions, and the rules that govern what the field can see and do. Changes made in Maestro — to compensation structures, compliance flags, client records, or access permissions — are reflected immediately across the platform, keeping the back office and the field in sync at all times.

Licensing isn't just an administrative function — it's the foundation that makes Maestro's transaction-level compliance checks meaningful. Every trade Maestro processes is validated against the rep or advisor's active license status, ensuring that compensation is only generated on business the rep is actually authorized to conduct.

What Maestro tracks

Maestro maintains a complete licensing profile for every rep and advisor, including:

• FINRA national-level exams (Series 6, 7, 24, and others)
• FINRA state-level exams (Series 63, 65, and 66)
• State insurance licenses
• Insurance carrier appointments by state and product line

Keeping data current

Maestro includes a direct interface to WebCRD, allowing FINRA license data to be updated via downloaded files rather than by hand — keeping records accurate without adding to your team's workload. License approval and renewal dates are tracked automatically, and firm-wide reporting gives compliance staff a clear view of which licenses are approaching expiration across the entire organization.

Renewal management

When renewal season arrives, Maestro streamlines the process from tracking through payment. Users can select which licenses to renew for any given rep, and Maestro applies the appropriate fee deductions directly to the rep's compensation statement — no separate billing, no manual reconciliation. Detailed reporting captures which licenses are being renewed or terminated and the fees collected, giving management a complete picture at renewal time.

FINRA Rule 17a-3 requires broker-dealers to create and maintain specific records for each customer account — including new account notifications, account change confirmations, and periodic account verifications. Maestro automates the entire customer correspondence workflow, turning a recurring compliance obligation into a hands-off process.

What Maestro generates

Using the built-in form letter generator, Maestro produces the required customer notifications directly from data already in the system — no manual data entry, no mail merge, no separate mailing platform:

• New account notification (30-day welcome letter)
• Account change notification
• Address change notification
• 3-year account verification
• And any other custom letters

Each letter is generated automatically based on the customer record, formatted with your firm's own layout and logo, and retained in the customer record upon sending — creating a ready-made audit trail without any additional steps.

High-volume mailing support

For firms with large customer bases, Maestro supports postal barcoding to reduce postage costs on high-volume mailings.

Anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance requires firms to screen client records against multiple federal watch lists — a regulatory obligation that Maestro handles automatically.

Maestro checks both new and existing client records against two critical databases: the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) Sanctions Program listings, which identify sanctioned individuals, entities, and countries, and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) list, which targets money laundering, terrorist financing, and other financial crimes. Together, these two checks give your firm comprehensive federal screening coverage from a single automated process.

How it works

Potential matches are flagged immediately and back office users are notified for review. Dedicated disposition screens allow staff to evaluate each potential match and record their determination, creating a documented, auditable resolution process.

Comprehensive audit reporting captures when checks were performed, which records were flagged, who reviewed them, and what disposition was recorded — giving your compliance team a complete paper trail for regulatory examination purposes.

Like all Maestro features, OFAC and FinCEN screening is included as a standard part of the platform at no additional cost.

In a regulated environment, knowing what changed is just as important as knowing what the current state is. Maestro's built-in audit tracking subsystem maintains a complete and unalterable record of every addition, modification, and deletion made anywhere in the system — automatically, with no configuration required.

Every time a record is touched, Maestro logs who made the change, when it was made, and exactly what the data looked like before and after. Nothing can be quietly altered or disappear without a trace. Whether you're responding to a regulatory examination, resolving a rep dispute, or simply verifying that a record reflects what it should, the complete history is always available.

Accessible where you need it

Audit history isn't buried in a separate reporting module. Every applicable screen in Maestro surfaces the audit log directly — click the audit button on a client record, for example, and the full edit history for that client is immediately visible. No navigation, no special access, no waiting for a report to run.

What the audit trail covers

• Client records, compensation data, compliance dispositions, and licensing information all carry a complete field-level change history
• Before and after values are captured for every modified field, not just a notation that something changed
• Back office supervisors can review the activity of any user across any record type
• Audit logs are available for reporting, giving compliance staff and examiners the documentation they need without manual reconstruction

Audit tracking is woven into the core of Maestro — not an add-on or optional module — ensuring that every part of the platform carries the same level of accountability and that your firm's data integrity is protected by the system itself, not by policy alone.