Icon co-sponsors Digital Integration in Wealth Management 2018

This conference explores one of the most pressing challenges for WM firms, namely how to change to digital technologies in an integrated manner. 
 

Key takeaways include:

The Market is changing rapidly. Drivers are mainly:

• Investors price sensitivity 

• Intergenerational Transfer

• Providers seeking efficiencies & savings

• Regulatory
 

Traditional Wealth Managers only using physical face-to-face meetings and call centres will lose market share to those employing a hybrid customer engagement approach, ranging from robo-advisory (automated investment svces for entry level investors) to remote virtual meetings for time-poor wealthy investors. The amount of travelling and paperwork for all needs to seriously diminish, reserving physical face-to-face meetings for those tasks and outcomes that cannot easily be achieved remotely.
 

Intergenerational transfers becoming an increasing focus area, particularly as 20% of all wealth is inherited yet 66-90% of children leave their testator's advisors after their parents’ death. 
 

Digital Workflow and CRM tools are to grow significantly in 2018-2020 although ‘RegTech’ is yet to be fully discovered by WM's; in UK we are lagging with less than 10% of firms using an automated compliance capability. KYC, for example, is still mostly done on paper or with disconnected processes.
 

Examples of Banks and Wealth Managers were cited with impressive statistics for early adopters of enabled remote meeting technologies. For example, Relationship Managers can increase their daily client meetings from an average of 2 to 3-4, a 50%-100% increase that has secured $100M’s of additional revenues. In another, that Icon advised on, loan completion rates via Bank’s contact centre have transformed from 3% to 42% within months!!
 

That’s not to say that change is easy. It needs disciplined and focused change management with selection of the appropriate technologies for the environment and outcomes desired. WM’s need to focus on a seamless Client Experience Strategy but many struggle with the concept of Minimum Viable Product based on fast delivery of new Value Propositions. 
 

The message we saw was that in the WM space it is easy for huge amounts of money to be wasted on over ambitious projects. It seems that the (financial) Advisors also need their (tech change) Advisors! 

Ed: Ask Icon how we can help with preparing for Digital Change projects, including selection of appropriate technologies and processes that people want to use.