Trust in Wealth Management
Trust has always been an essential aspect of successful relationships with financial advisors. But today the meaning of trust is dramatically changing. The fundamental shifts faced by wealth managers can be best described as two revolutions, one loud and the other quiet.
The loud revolution includes the huge transfer of wealth from baby boomers to the next generation, automated advice in the form of robot and virtual advisors, online services offering algorithm-based portfolio management recommendations, and heightened regulatory scrutiny designed to ensure that the financial interests of advisors are not at odds with those of their clients.
The quiet revolution includes the simultaneous increase of standardization and personalization of advice and the growing demand for innovative ideas about how that advice is arrived at and delivered.
Trust is at the heart of this second revolution. Today, clients want more personal, more realtime, more effortless interactions. They want to be in control of financial decisions. Companies must design an onboarding strategy for generation X and millennials, given that by 2020 they will control more than half of all investable assets, or about US$30 trillion.
As these new generations want to manage their assets to achieve personal and professional goals, the new concept of “health of your wealth” is emerging while expectations about the scope and nature of advice are broadening to include liabilities, tax and estate planning, insurance needs, healthcare policies, assistance with budgeting and spending controls, and income generation.
This shift is having a profound impact on the role financial advisors play and the level of expertise and creativity they must bring to the table. Multichannel and Omni channel delivery of advice will increase and will include mobile, desktop, telephone, and in-person sources. All these changes will require extensive redesigning of current processes.
As a result of the significant shifts in the industry, wealth managers will need to offer and support a broader range of financial products, such as live portfolio analysis, live reporting of positions and information, live scenario activity, and live alerts about a portfolio’s or an individual investment’s performance.
The cumulative effect is that the cost-to-serve is increasing, so managers need to cut costs through automation, internal workflow enhancements and a lower cost to deliver advice through online, mobile, and video interactions.
Advisors themselves will have to adjust to the new expectations and adopt new technologies in a way that is meaningful and beneficial to their clients; meanwhile, institutions will need to upend their current operating model, and actively engage in reshaping the business to adapt and thrive in the wealth management environment so they can show themselves as trustful partners to these younger, technologically savvier, more digitally inclined audience.
Nobiletec is a multi-national consultancy firm specializes in B2B, B2C and P2P FinTech solutions.
