NEWS & VIEWS
The Private Banking and Wealth Management Conference took place this March, offering a forum for discussion on the challenges and innovations within the industry. FSL were a sponsor at the Conference, and the team had the opportunity to meet with delegates and share more about the company at the FSL stand, while also attending the panel events.
Snoop Dogg, Rock and Roll and images of bits of racehorses provided served up for investment were not exactly what I was expecting when attending the inaugural Private Banking and Wealth Management Conference on 2nd March 2023 yet all featured during the day.
The recent pandemic and WFH enforcement followed by a move to hybrid working practises across a significant part of our industry has raised the bar on client expectations regarding online engagement and financial capabilities delivered direct to a customers’ phones or tablets. Yet, for many the hybrid advise model retaining a degree of personal engagement will always have a place.
The abilities of Wealth Managers and Advisors at providing insights and information from the abundance of data available at the click of a mouse button is always likely to give some the edge. Moves to engage with the “underserved” first time investors through a variety of tech and personal engagement models as well as the provision of easy to access financial education can lead to long term mutually beneficial advisor/client relationships. The ability to deliver tailored services and product offerings supported by data driven engagement opportunities can further enhance a relationship manager’s productivity and focus by reducing time spent on non-advisory activities (by some measures up to 70% of time!).
Intergenerational wealth transfer of an estimated 5 trillion GBP in the near to mid-term represents a great opportunity for those focused on marrying “profit with purpose” to a tech savvy, more ecologically aware cohort of investors. The current TCFD requirements as well as the more nature focused TNFD I heard being talked about extends the range of views around sustainability measures related to financial market participants and moved the commonly thought ESG measures into another level of risk measures for investment portfolios. In some cases the current regulations around SFDR disclosure does little to improve the green credentials of some companies who may be providing key services to address long term issues – one speaker described them as providing the shovel to remove the problem but not scoring well under current perceptions. Extra data insight can bring these investment opportunities to the forefront of conversations.
The recent gamification of trading seen a lot around the crypto and Redit driven investment activity has driven high volatility. This can make alternative assets a welcome haven for more long-term investment due to the very illiquid nature of many of these asset classes – their very nature provides a degree of volatility smoothing. The opportunities for smaller scale investors to enter into these alternative asset classes is being enabled by fractionalisation of the underlying investment. This supported by the tokenisation using blockchain technology of these smaller slices is enabling a democratisation of investment opportunity to an ever-widening potential client base.
So digital engagement, partnered by more enabled advisors, able to focus more appropriate and relevant insights and targeted engagement activity towards an increasingly tech savvy, more empowered and climate focused investment community providing wider opportunities across many asset classes will drive client acquisition and retention.
As Snoop Dogg tweeted back in Dec 2021 “We on the cusp of a digital revolution. Wake up n get it.”
