Our mission in life has always been to enable financial services to do better business and we have been working hard to evolve our events platform to deliver yet more value. Over a decade ago we launched A Meeting of Minds to provide a platform for the financial services industry to share best practice; be inspired; and work through the biggest challenges facing your businesses. The end goal was always to identify areas where collectively we could try to drive change forward. We also launched a series of quarterly breakfast briefings targeting specific job titles along with supporting research to create this cycle of activity which we termed the “wheel of change”.

However, we found that as the industry is constantly fighting fires due to the ever-present challenge of cumbersome and complex regulation; rising cost income ratios; technology innovation; changing consumer expectations; pricing competition… to name a few… it is becoming increasingly difficult to innovate effectively in such a fast paced world. 

Therefore, we have created three pillars within our business to act as a catalyst for change and ensure your conclusions are fed through to the right channels like the associations, regulator, academia, consultants; providers; and of course your peers.

We will of course continue to run strategic, tactical and bespoke events; along with our second pillar which is to deliver research and content to support the conversations you are having. 

However, we have just launched a third digital pillar which we are calling oneMIND. This is a digital platform to help your businesses become more innovative and ensure you are identifying the best solutions or ideas in the market. We want to start a revolution!  The concept is relatively simple, imagine a large digital funnel, a challenge facing the industry is fed into the top. Using the platform we then reach out to crowd which is made up of a selection of providers; distributors; business schools; and universities. Going forward we are looking to include a consumer panel into the mix. We then invite the idea generators to submit their ideas or solutions to the challenge set, which are then evaluated by an advisory board made up purely of industry practitioners. The best ideas are then presented back to the industry or businesses individually.

There are a number of platforms out there in the marketplace, but the key differentiators for oneMIND are that;

• We can feed any challenges through the platform – from geopolitical, regulatory; technology; product; or a people perspective.;
• The platform can be used both collectively at an industry level, or individually by companies looking to address specific challenges to their business privately; and
• The platform will complement the strategic dialogue at our various events including A Meeting of Minds and the Breakfast Briefing series.

We have spoken to a number of the CEOs of the largest private banks and wealth managers about the launch over the past couple of months and the level of support and interest has been fantastic. 

Given the regulator’s continued focus on customer outcomes; the migration to digital; the rise of the Millennials in the wake of the intergenerational wealth transfer; and the search for the value and differentiation of the wealth proposition… we decided to run a challenge through oneMIND to see if we could identify innovative digital solutions which could optimise customer experience while maintaining regulatory requirement.

We had a number of solutions and ideas put forward, and ultimately we were looking for ideas which could help you differentiate and modernise your proposition; deepen share of wallet and client retention; and help with data capture and client segmentation.  We narrowed it down to the following:

• Stryng – a communications solutions that allows clients to engage with their wealth manager in real-time via audio, video or co-browsing via any device
• FinTech Circle – who are collaborating with a number of firms to build an all-encompassing, non-discriminatory retirement savings and investment platform.
• Bud & Moneyinfo – different platforms that allows you to view, interact and manage all of your finances in one place. 

You can get more information about the challenge along with the ideas and solutions on our website, which will hopefully give you a sense about how a challenge can be set; how the ideas and solutions will be presented; and how you can plug and play.  

So now we have the platform we want you to engage with it to find innovative ideas and solutions to specific challenges; and share best practice.  We are calling this new platform of events, research and idea generation “the MIND”, and are inviting organisations to come join the revolution!  If you would like to find out more please do email James Goad on jamesgoad@owenjamesgroup.com or call us on 01483 861334.