For the past decade we have been in the privileged position of bringing together the good and the great of the industry to work through the key challenges facing their businesses. It has been fascinating to sit shoulder to shoulder with some of the greatest minds in the industry and trying to help them collectively drive change forward. One mind who will be sorely missed and was never afraid to speak out against the norm and rattle a few cages was Simon Chamberlain from Succession. In our eyes he was a leader of leaders and he leaves large shoes to be filled. Our thoughts are with his family at this sad time. 

One of our frustrations is that when we look at the challenges the industry battles with, we often see the same problems being tabled again and again in a different guise. The soupe de jour is currently MiFID II - just when we thought had put RDR to bed. At the risk of being contentious, I feel we run the risk of spending too much time looking backwards and it was a senior head from a large private bank put it eloquently yesterday when he said “we are all busy protecting our comfort zones, but nothing grows there”. Too often we see the industry focusing all its time and energy putting out regulatory fires rather than thinking about the client and how we can innovate our businesses into a space ‘where the magic happens’. 

Everyone talks about innovation as if it will be the pill that will cure all our woes, but in the end it is just another word for ideas… something we have been doing before we invented the wheel. I think the industry has hit a once-in-a-generation, watershed moment of unprecedented change. You don’t need me to tell you about the challenge of driving change in such fast paced world of rising costs income rations; regulatory overload; evolving digital and customer requirements; and volatile markets. But we want to help, and have invested in a platform that will hopefully take steps to do just that. Often to solve a problem we need to see some initial solutions or ideas around how it could be solved. They may not be completely right, but through collaboration and evolution we can get there. 

By digitising our proposition and working with a number of strategic partners we are expanding our Meeting of Minds platform to help businesses become more innovative and ensure you are identifying the best solutions or ideas in the market. We want to start a revolution! 

The idea is simple – a digital platform for wealth managers and private banks to table their biggest challenges and by tapping into the ‘crowd’ to identify the best actionable ideas and solutions. We are kicking off in the private wealth space, but are planning to launch it into the advisory; retail; and asset management space. 

Think of a funnel. Each month we will feed in a new challenge and invite the crowd to solve the problem. An Advisory Board made up purely of distributors will then select their favourites which will be fed back to the industry. But who are the crowd I hear you cry! The crowd will be made up of providers; consultants; business schools; and the distributors themselves. In the future we would also like to tap into consumer thinking – so watch this space.

Ultimately we will be able to feed any challenges through the platform - whether they are geopolitical, regulatory, technology, product; or people driven. Going forward there will be opportunities to table your own challenge, but to get the wheel moving, we have three challenges that we would like your help as an industry solving! 

Leveraging digital to optimise your customer experience - what digital solutions could optimise customer experience while maintaining regulatory requirements? We are particularly interested in solutions and ideas that increase share of wallet and client retention; facilitate data capture and client segmentation; and enable due diligence.

Tapping into technology to drive productivity - what innovative technology solutions are out there that can help your RMs become more productive? Particularly when it comes to providing RMs with the tools to service clients with the benefit of captured data in a compliant; consistent; time-efficient; differentiated manner, ultimately this is all about driving down cost income ratios and increasing profitability within the business.

Challenge the challenger - what’s keeping you up at night?  Are there any challenges facing your business (or the industry) that you would like to challenge the crowd to out forward their innovative ideas? 

And it doesn’t stop there… before we can innovate we need to know which parts of the business need improvement. That is why we have teamed up with Wazoku to provide a free innovation health check called “Innovation Pulse”. Innovation Pulse is a comprehensive survey to assess the current state of innovation in your business. The assessment evaluates your company across the five core pillars of innovation strategy, leadership, management, culture and process & tools. It is a comprehensive, customisable survey that can be shared company wide and will provide you with interactive reports to understand responses across demographic factors including years of service, job function, geography, role and more. However, more importantly it will provide downloadable results summaries and recommendations for innovation improvement. 

Finally, once you have run your diagnosis, you may need some hand-holding to drive innovation through your business and we have partnered with Fintech Circle to launch the “Wealth Management Accelerated Innovation Program” – which is a six month programme and is an accelerated journey into the future of wealth management. 

If you would like to get involved with oneMind or would like more information, please do drop me an email on jamesgoad@owenjamesgroup.com or give me a call on 01483 861334.