Digital innovation brings with it the ability to self-serve and become more independent of the financial advisor, according to Jens Rabe, COO at Unblu. But customers don’t want to feel cast out of the relationship with the advisor and so there is a space for well-delivered self-service and the actual sharing of human knowledge. The challenge is to bring them together so that digital is building personal, meaningful relationships, not disenfranchising them.
Challenges: What do you see as the main technology and technology-related challenges for the wealth management sector through 2020?
Keeping up with customer expectations can be challenging in 2020. Customers expect a whole lot more today than ever before. Their needs and wants are being reshaped by digital, social and mobile innovation. They want immediacy, simplicity and customized advice – and they want to communicate with their advisor whenever they want.
Contrary to the doomsayers, the trends in digital innovation are not a threat to the future role of the financial advisor. They are, in fact, forcing the role to evolve and become more service-oriented and customer-focused. To be successful, advisors need to know their clients well, understand their needs and keep pace with personalized big data analysis and corresponding system-driven investment proposals. This means being digitally prepared to communicate with clients on the channels of their choosing. Digital transformation must also consider the combination of advanced profiling with personal advice on investment alternatives.
Opportunities: What do you see as the main technology and technology-related opportunities for the wealth management sector through 2020?
Every conversation is an opportunity to get to know your customers, to be helpful, relate to them and ultimately guide them through their financial decisions. To borrow a wonderful phrase from Chris Skinner, banks are ‘a foundation of humanity’, built on decades of trust. This is a big advantage that banks have over start-up competitors.
By implementing a conversational interface on their digital channels, they can be well-positioned to take the conversation to the next level with customers. The time is ripe to use conversations to drive these valuable, personal interactions that build loyalty. In our experience, the institutions that use conversational interfaces have the best shot at moving from being reactive to proactive. Advisors can have more frequent conversations with customers that lead to more business transactions and higher customer satisfaction. Effectively using digital channels provides the bank and their advisors with a unique opportunity to increase the level of client touch within the current resource capacity.
Market focus: When considering your wealth management clients and prospects, where are they currently focusing their technology investments and resources: clients, advisers/staff or their business infrastructure?
Banks have generally focused on technology as a means to drive efficiency, rather than enhance the customer experience and make it truly personal. One example are robo-advisors. It’s easy to see why this kind of solutions have a place in the market. It’s very useful for the customer to have access to information and while getting personalized advice based on existing data and patterns. However good financial advice depends also on things that are beyond robotic capacity, such as intellectual capital, nuance and emotional interactions. Like other sectors of the industry, wealth management is grappling with a major question: What should be automated by robo-assisted services and what should be left to human expertise to best service clients?
Most experts agree that it has to be a blend of both human and automated help – combining powerful technology with the guidance and expertise of an advisor. Robo-advisors can help both clients and wealth managers by distilling relevant information, making them both better prepared to collaborate and drive decision making. While algorithms may do more of the groundwork, people still want humans to help them plan their broader financial lives. Driving decision making is where robo-advisors are limited in their reach.
Our customers have told us that their customers don’t want to be left ‘alone’ to browse and transact in a self-service universe at the detriment of a relationship. That means that there is a growing gap between well-delivered self-service and the actual sharing of human knowledge. The challenge is to bring them together so that digital is building personal, meaningful relationships, not disenfranchising them.
In our opinion, wealth management institutions should focus on making human conversation available for every online interaction and on every channel. Ultimately there is no replacement for building a trusting relationship based on the very human aspects of needs, hopes and fears. When human touch and expertise is combined with technological capabilities, the financial advisor can provide truly holistic expertise, delivering value to end customer while driving revenue for the bank.
Excite: When you look at the technology capabilities and resources now available to the wealth management sector, as a solution provider, what excites you most in 2020?
We are excited about helping banks and wealth management institutions to build meaningful relationships using our conversational platform on their digital channels. There is a lot to do to digitally transform the wealth management industry but one thing will remain unchanged: the importance of humans. With conversational banking solutions, wealth managers can reshape the way they do business and deliver value to their clients. Being at the heart of this business innovation is what excites us most.
We are helping banks leverage their authenticity and empathy for the customer. From the customer’s perspective, their journey begins with an intent, a need or a desire, not a product. A customer’s intent is not to invest in product A as the bank would frame it, but to manage their investments. A customer’s intent is not to take out a pension plan, but to organize their retirement. By framing each interaction and moment of truth from a customer’s perspective, a bank can map out how each customer journey can be re-designed to reflect the values driving the bank’s purpose.
Your support: Finally, as a solution provider to the wealth management sector, what will you be doing in 2020 to help your clients and prospects meet their main technology and technology-related business needs?
Banks tend to focus on how technology will change their business, rather than how the organization itself needs to change to unleash the full potential of their digital initiatives. Technology is a key component of a digital transformation, but it's not the only component.
Going digital doesn’t mean leaving the physical world or automating everything. A digital transformation enables an extension of the physical world. True transformation gives every person in the bank the ability to connect with and serve their customers digitally. That’s our goal, and we are happy to say that many wealth management institutions share our vision. Taking customers through the design and the change management process to further the personalized usage of their digital channels is what we bring to the table. It is as much technology as it is the experience on how to implement and best use it.
