maio 05, 2022
As one of the first in-person events of 2022 in this space, the “Digital integration in Wealth Management” conference was held March 29-30 in London and was attended by more than 250 wealth management professionals. Mixing keynotes and panel discussions, all delivered by senior guest speakers, the conference focused on how to implement first-class digital services to HNWI/UHNW clients.
Valtech participated in this event together with our new partner, Nucoro, a fintech providing the next generation of flexible digital investment platforms.
It became quite evident from the discussions with different wealth management professionals that the needs of clients are evolving rapidly, and the pace has increased with the pandemic. Next-generation clients want a more personalized and seamless experience, while still adhering to the core value of their Wealth Manager.
We noted a few very interesting take-aways:
The Role of Wealth Managers Is Pivoting Toward Expert Coaches
In the traditional model, Wealth Managers mainly provide investment advice to their clients. However, in recent years, there has been a shift in client expectations, and they are seen as key advisors in their day to day and lifestyle decisions. This means having more insights across all their clients’ financial activities and providing them with tools to visualize and input their preferences and decisions. The overall objective is contextualizing investment as part of the client’s broader plan and life goals. This takes the relationship beyond discussing just the performance of their portfolio and puts the client’s need at the center of any (digital) business transformation.
Behavioral Recommendations Are Coming to Investment Advice
Amazon is one of the forerunners, having developed and pushed behavioral recommendations to a new level to increase its revenue. Private banking clients are now accustomed to getting help with their decisions and often looking for an easy way to navigate the wealth of information. This trend is coming to wealth management, and by using all the data available to banks and Wealth Managers (within the regulatory limits), firms can propose to their clients a more intuitive way to find new products that would suit their current situation and long-term life goals.
A Hybrid Strategy with Digitally Augmented Interactions Is Preferred Over a Digital-only Client Engagement
The model that seems to gather the most momentum is to implement a hybrid strategy, combining the use of new digital tools and experiences for clients, with face-to-face interactions to maintain a close relationship and further improve knowledge of client preferences and life goals. Combining the best of both approaches is seen by the majority of market participants as bringing the most value to clients. As part of this, taking a human-centered design approach is enabling empathy as a key driver when designing new products.
Participating at the event not only allowed us to discuss and share our visions for the financial service industry with banks and wealth managers. It also confirmed our believe that customer experience must be at the center of any successful digital transformation. At Valtech we help our clients to navigate those demands and partner with them to build new solutions, streamline processes, reimagine the customer experience and implement new legacy infrastructure technologies – all to gain and maintain their competitive advantage.
If you are interested in also having a discussion with our experts, please reach out to us.
