Covid-19 reminded wealth managers of what their job’s really about: serving people and their needs. In a recent webinar, I discussed this with Antony Bream at our partner Wealth Dynamix. Here I’d like to summarise some of the highlights in the form of three timely reminders for the wealth management business.
At Synpulse, we just ran a short survey of wealth management clients to find out whether they’d been contacted by their relationship manager during the crisis. It turns out that very few had been. But those who had been contacted felt much more confident, appreciated, and taken care of.
In such a competitive market, it’s more important than ever to be close to your clients. One way of keeping in touch with your client is by using and improving the technology that you have to enhance your communication channels. Profitable wealth management is ultimately about something else entirely. Now, as ever, it’s about talking to your clients, listening to their needs, and coming up with creative solutions to address their individual situations.
In another revealing survey, Cap Gemini recently asked clients what made them pick a wealth manager. Interestingly, the digital client experience was close to the bottom of the list. What was top of the list, by a long way, was the quality of the client service management experience.
The message is clear: Technology isn’t something to be invested in because it’s fashionable or because you think you have to offer your clientele the latest gadgets. In the wealth management business, it’s ultimately about providing advisors and the teams that support them with the best tools, the best quality data, the best insights, and the best channels of communication so they can give their clients an enhanced, value-adding service experience. If you use technology, it should be chosen carefully to ultimately make that process as efficient, and as effective, as possible.
The third reminder basically boils down to the same thing as the first two: Forget technology as an end in itself. Instead, when you’re thinking about investment, ask yourself what you want that investment to achieve. There are plenty of tools out there. You could go into an RFP. You could start doing a POC, identifying weak areas. You could do a benchmark. You could collect the data out of your existing systems to get a better picture. But before you decide for any of these tools, it’s really important to define your business goals.
Is your desired outcome revenue, profit, efficiency, or compliance? Clarifying these questions is a challenge, but it will give you direction throughout the process and help you see and choose between the different options. It will also help you decide where to apply technology: front, middle, or back office. Given Reminders one and two, I would suggest that wealth managers focus on investments that enable front-line staff to invest more time in proactive, listening relationships with their clients.
Feel free to listen to the webcast below, and contact me or Antony Bream at Wealth Dynamix if you’d like to continue the conversation in more depth.
