Being a provider of a portfolio management system (PMS) that powers wealth management firms requires a commitment to investing in wealth technology. Competing and often conflicting pressures to create compelling tools for advisers and relationship managers, customer journeys, optimise the mobile experience, display data in quality frameworks, and then achieve all these requirements in a speedy time to market, can result in a dilemma for business and wealth technology leaders. Delivery needs to be better, faster, and cheaper than the competition. So how can you escape this conundrum?
Think big, act small
Large-scale, long term digital transformation/wealth technology projects can be overwhelming. Every wealth manager wants a PMS with a rationalised IT stack, a scalable data platform, an environment conducive to experimentation, the application of analytics and a scalable Cloud-based data storage network. What if you could disaggregate your PMS tech stack and pinpoint one area of improvement that could be achieved in the short term?
Perhaps your wealth technology performance or speed of calculation is an issue for your platform. When an adviser is meeting with a client, she wants to input data into the system and demonstrate in real time what a rise in interest rates might mean for his portfolio. But if loading the data and performing the calculations takes minutes rather than seconds, and when the outcome displays on the device and is not intuitive to understand, you are stuck with an inferior user experience. Rebuilding your wealth technology system to improve performance is too expensive and time-consuming. A better approach might be to add a managed API solution that can resolve all your computational needs to your existing toolbox.
With OutRank®, you can forecast the customer’s financial situation quickly using simulation and, thus, encouraging an interactive dialogue between your adviser and the customer.
Time to market
Your wealth managers want to communicate your house view to customers in a meaningful way. Building a new dashboard or creating a new report in your PMS takes time and money. What if you could present your house view overlaid by a detailed cash flow model that helps customers visualise what is possible with their portfolio, and helps advisers explain the narrative of the house view that is compelling and believable? With OutRank®, advisers can create scenarios that reflect the benefits of a chosen investment products - free from bias. We explain our assumptions so that customers can trust what they see on screen and hear from their adviser.
Wealth technology budgets
The unrelenting need to modernise wealth technology platforms means that multi-year budgets are necessary. From a planning perspective, some projects take so long to build that by the time they are delivered, they are obsolete. Advisers need enhanced functionality, including interactive mobile offerings and self-service options, to keep customers engaged and loyal.
Using APIs helps alleviate budget pressures and avoid “tech debt”. Rather than embarking on an endless cycle of development, you can keep your existing systems intact, and integrate the OutRank® API into your PMS. Your developers can focus on consolidating the data and calculation results into actionable information for your clients rather than on reinventing the wheel. A managed API solution can deliver high-quality results to your wealth technology in a cost-effective manner.
Service quality ambitions
Part of the role advisers play is to encourage clients to take the initiative to participate in wealth planning. Providing a visually attractive, personalised, digitally enabled platform makes the process interesting for clients. Differentiating your offering from that of competitor platforms is essential to attract and retain customers.
With OutRank®, your customers have the ability to create simulations with data tested under different scenarios, such as high versus low interest rates, equity valuations, energy prices, etc. Our tool is objective, fact-based and transparent, so clients can test our assumptions and query our processes. Our wealth technology has been battle-tested with insurance companies and wealth managers alike. It is reliable and scalable and can be provided in the cloud as well as on-prem.
Improving the productivity and revenue of advisers
Every adviser or wealth manager has room for improvement: whether measured in productivity and time spent per account or total revenue per account. That is why it is essential to invest in wealth technology that provides incremental benefits to advisers. According to a McKinsey study, relationship managers in wealth spend 60-70% of their time on administrative activities – not with their clients. If advisers can be equipped with the right tools, they can spend most of their time with clients, which is rewarding for all parties. To the extent that wealth technology can help advisers service customers at all stages of the customer lifecycle, that deployment can contribute to both client and adviser retention.
Incremental action: better, faster, cheaper
For users and builders of PMSs, digital transformation is essential for long-term growth and profitability. However, making incremental, pragmatic investments in your wealth technology today can pay off with quick wins that will motivate the advisers, delight the customers, and keep revenue in your value chain.
With OutRank®, we have the only managed API solution of its kind: with reliable, high-performance supporting interactive meetings, realistic scenario generation and balance sheet and cash flow modelling, including tax implications.
Action
At Kidbrooke, we believe in the power of wealth technology to re-invigorate a PMS infrastructure and deliver superior outcomes to wealth management advisers. We can do it better because of our analytics, faster because of the ease of integration of our fundamental use case-agnostic API with existing platforms, and cheaper because we have done the development work for you with an efficient but comprehensive operating model. We help your advisers have meaningful, value-added conversations with customers and spend less time on administrative tasks while keeping revenue in your firm. That one small step can have the impact of a giant leap!
To learn more about how Kidbrooke can help you achieve your business and IT goals, please get in touch: www.kidbrooke.com
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Sources:
https://www.accenture.com/us-en/insights/capital-markets/wealth-management-reframing-growth
