What is WealthTech? To us at The Wealth Mosaic, it means any technology-driven or delivered solution that is relevant to the business needs of a wealth manager. It is therefore a broad marketplace and the technology solutions considered within it could be of many possible variants. What is important, we believe, is that the technology is relevant to the buyer market.
However, much of what we see referred to as WealthTech is just a small part of that overall pie. Digital wealth, robo advice, etc. Yes, this is WealthTech but it is not the entirety of WealthTech as seems some would like to claim. What about core banking for private banks, what about portfolio management systems, what about business intelligence tools, what about client reporting tools, what about risk management solutions, etc? We could go on.
If we applied what we fear is a limited version of WealthTech to our own Technology & Data marketplace, soon to be home to over 750 business profiles and over 2,000 individual solution profiles, we would perhaps include just 200 solution profiles. Instead we have so far discovered and categorised over 2,000 and would argue that the vast majority of these solutions, if not all of them, deserves to be considered under the WealthTech banner. They are after all technology-driven or delivered tools to support the business needs of wealth managers.
Therein lies the room for debate about what WealthTech is and what it should include. 200 or 2,000? Ultimately whether we are right or wrong about that, we live in an era where technology is increasingly at the heart of what we do both socially and at work. Wealth management as a sector is not immune to that and, therefore, for the good of the industry, would it not be helpful if every solution that is relevant is first of all in one place, second of all categorised and then take it from there to track, identify trends, spot gaps, and so on?
Maybe then we have a better model to define what WealthTech is and what it includes?
Let’s consider our Technology & Data marketplace then. A research-led and constantly evolving online resource. The business and solution profiles are currently categorised across 23 business needs like Business Intelligence & Practice Management, Client Onboarding and Portfolio & Wealth Management Systems, and will then be further sub-categorised and filterable via filters such as geography, business model and other factors such as firm size and age.
We’d like to think that this resource will be a good tool for the industry tin general and perhaps also a good place to work from to understand and establish a better definition of WealthTech. Why does this matter? There are multiple reasons and we believe this resource can support:
- Closing the knowledge gap between wealth managers and solution providers
- An improved engagement model
- Both global and local views to understand industry trends
- An enhanced and better prepared solution provider marketplace
- A stronger knowledge-based decision-making process for wealth managers
- The ability to identify needs and develop solutions
- Opportunity to engage and support the wider ecosystem
From our perspective, if we take a broader view of what WealthTech is and we work to understand it, we believe the industry will be better supported with the full range of knowledge to make sense of it and use it to support the improved running and delivery of its business. With a limited view, there won’t be that level of collective knowledge and we will remain wallowing in a well of confusion and, increasingly, WealthTech fatigue.
See our Technology & Data marketplace here: http://www.thewealthmosaic.com/market/technology-data/
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