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A family office has four ways to bring custodial data into a single system, and three of them require no Letter of Authorization (LOA): AI statement ingestion, account aggregation, and manual entry. The fourth path, direct custodial feeds, does require an LOA, but delivers the most consistent, tax-complete data. Whichever paths you use, a reconciliation layer keeps the numbers trustworthy.
Three ways to bring in data without an LOA
- AI statement ingestion. Upload PDF or CSV statements and let AI extract positions, transactions, cash, and, where available, cost basis and tax lots. It works with any custodian immediately, because it uses the documents you already receive.
- Account aggregation. Connect bank and brokerage accounts through secure aggregation so balances and transactions flow automatically. It's ideal for banking data and mainstream investment accounts that are infrequently traded, with the caveat that connections can drop and need reconnecting, and the data occasionally contains errors, so it works best paired with reconciliation.
- Manual entry. For one-off holdings or hard-to-source assets, enter positions by ticker, just as you would in a spreadsheet, but inside a structured system that keeps everything connected to the right entity and asset.
Together, these three cover most of a family's book without any paperwork, which is what lets onboarding happen in days or weeks instead of months.
The fourth path: custodial feeds via LOA
An LOA authorizes a direct custodial feed, and it has real advantages the other paths can't fully match: the data is consistent and complete, and it can include tax lot and cost basis detail that's often hard to get any other way. For families with concentrated custodial relationships or heavy tax-reporting needs, this is frequently the best approach.
The trade-off is friction, gathering LOAs across many accounts and entities is slow. So it's usually not the place to start, it's the path you add where the consistency and tax detail are worth the effort.
Where reconciliation fits in
Bringing data in is only half the job. Reconciliation is what confirms the data holds together: it compares positions period over period, checks that transactions account for the changes, and makes sure cash flows tie to balances, then flags any discrepancies, or "breaks," for review. That's what lets you trust a consolidated number, no matter which path the underlying data came in through.
The takeaway
You don't have to wait on LOAs to get a clean, consolidated view across custodians. Start with the three no-LOA paths, AI ingestion, aggregation, and manual entry, and add direct custodial feeds where the consistency and tax detail justify the paperwork. MyFO supports all four, with reconciliation built in.
Curious how this would work with your own custodians? Book a call and we'll walk through onboarding without the LOA bottleneck.
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