London, February 23rd 2021 - The Wealth Mosaic is excited to announce the release of its latest WealthTech Views Report: Looking into 2021. This is the second report created by The Wealth Mosaic that provides insights and intelligence from technology thought leaders from across the globe on the main technology trends in wealth management they expect to see in the year ahead.

The key themes from the participant responses were as follows:

• Wealth managers continue to struggle to implement new technologies due to issues with legacy technologies and managing the desired change internally
• The pace of change and disruption in the sector is seen for some wealth managers as over-whelming, causing inertia
• There is still a significant opportunity for the wealth management sector to embrace and use AI, quantum computing and machine learning technologies to enable them to assess and use their data more effectively, both internally and for the benefit of clients
• The traditional wealth management model based on physical branches and in-person meetings is facing enormous challenges, especially due to Covid-19, so there is an increasing demand and need to deliver for advisors to engage with clients using technology so interactions can happen anytime, anywhere
• The use of blockchain, smart contracts and tokenization is increasing in the sector as it can enable wide-ranging structural change and create new business models for wealth management
• The ever-changing regulatory landscape continues to challenge the global wealth management industry, especially in the UK and Europe as a result of Brexit-related complexity

To accompany the report The Wealth Mosaic also conducted a survey of its technology vendor clients to gather intelligence as to how they coped in 2020 due to the Covid-19 global pandemic and what their views are on some of the key industry trends in the year ahead. Some of the key findings from the survey are below:

• Covid-19 had a negligible impact on how WealthTech companies operated in 2020 - 87% of respondents said that Covid-19 had either no impact or a positive impact on their business. Surprisingly 28% stated that it had a positive impact. Moreover over 80% of respondents stated that it was relatively easy to set up a remote workforce.
• Sales remained robust in 2020 and WealthTech firms are bullish on 2021 - Close to 60% of respondents said that their sales were either on or ahead of plan in 2021 and when looking in to 2021, an overwhelming 90% of respondents expect sales to be either ahead or on target for their forecast for the year.
• Covid-19 has accelerated the digitalization of the wealth management sector and this trend is expected to continue in 2021 - 95% of respondents stated that Covid-19 has accelerated digitalization in the sector and over 90% expect this acceleration to continue in 2021.
• Wealth management firms were slower to react - Notwithstanding the positive sentiment and need to digitalize, close to 60% of respondents replied saying that wealth management firms were actually slower to make buying decisions than the year before. This is probably due to the significant disruption Covid-19 caused to their internal organisations and how they engage with their clients.

The Wealth Mosaic would like to thank the thought leaders that participated in the report to make it an insightful resource for wealth and asset management firms across the globe. They include William Rouse of Contemi (Singapore), Alessandro Tonchia of InvestCloud (US), Olivier Portenseigne of FundsDLT (Luxembourg), Iwan Schafthuizen of Ortec Finance (Netherlands), Tom Williams of Point Group (UK), Tamsin Hobley of Six Group (Switzerland), and Wael Salem of Tradesocio (Dubai).

“2020 was one of the most turbulent years in recent history, with Covid-19 disrupting every sector in every country across the globe. Notwithstanding this, what was interesting to see is that the WealthTech sector has shown itself to be extremely flexible and dynamic, adjusting quickly to enforced remote working and working closely with their current and potential clients so the on-going digitisation of wealth management can carry on, something which is needed more than ever in the current environment we live in. In terms of the key trends in 2021, it is clear that AI and machine learning are continuing to make an impact in the wealth management sector, along with the use of blockchain technologies, digital assets and tokenisation. It is also apparent that Covid-19 has simply accelerated a change that was happening anyway – how quickly it has made the sector move is still to be seen so we are in for an interesting year”.  said Simon Ramery, Co-Founder and Director at The Wealth Mosaic

Click the image below to access the full report.