In our new norm, the Age of COVID-19, visual storytelling is critical. Successful storytellers in the asset management space need to weave together their core investment principles in an intuitive, dynamic way that engages and reassures the client.
At the onset of the global financial crisis of 2008, I was working for JPMorgan's corporate investment bank within its Custody & Funds Services business. My clients were massive defined benefit pensions whose plans were largely outsourced to an array of global asset managers. For those of us who lived on the front lines of GFC, we know there are some obvious parallels to be drawn to the current COVID-19 crisis. Markets were changing in real time, seemingly at light speed, and each day's headlines fueled fears of an impending international downturn.
There are, of course, some critical differences, too. As Silicon Valley Bank CIO Jane Leung has noted in her timely market commentary, GFC "was a real estate market collapse that turned into a banking crisis, with contracting credit leading to lowered output. The situation this time is driven by a health crisis leading to lowered output and followed by a likely financial crisis." Beyond the contributing factors, however, the only certainty surrounding COVID-19's long-term economic impact is uncertainty. How we position this uncertainty with our clients can play a pivotal role in the long road to recovery ahead of us.
More often than not, my urgent client requests corresponded to the crisis du jour back in 2008-2009. One day, the pension would need drill-downs into all of it's exposure to Lehman across the $50bn fund, across 200 separately-managed accounts. The next, it would need the same level of detail surrounding Bear Sterns, Iceland's default, FannieMae, etc. Obtaining this level of risk exposure reporting was a herculean effort involving -- you guessed it -- lots and lots of Microsoft Excel pivot tables. Across the industry, when our clients needed answers and needed them fast, the largest financial firms on the planet were paralyzed by our collective lack of technology.
One lesson we should have all learned from those dark days of GFC is that being stuck in "react mode" is not an optimal place to be when our clients are deeply concerned. To get ahead of this, the most common approach is to use our old friend email to distribute reassuring messages. Email (and blogs and videos for that matter) are fantastic because they can help us scale our crisis communications. No matter how concise and insightful these messages may be, however, they often have the adverse effect, making clients feel more isolated and distanced from the financial professionals they need now more than ever.
In our new norm, the Age of COVID-19, visual storytelling is critical. Successful storytellers in the asset management space need to weave together their core investment principles in an intuitive, dynamic way that engages and reassures the client. Our clients need to feel that they can interact with their investments in real time. This includes the ability to customize and blend historical and forward-looking data, seeing the impact to risk and return based on changes to their asset allocation on demand. The storytellers of this crisis will differentiate themselves by adapting these principles of dynamism.
About Jacobi:
Jacobi's technology has its roots in institutional investment management and brings together investment expertise and a market-leading technology platform. Headquartered in San Francisco with offices in London, UK, and Brisbane, Australia, the company is led by a team of experienced investment professionals and engineers.
