Setting the scene for technology across the wealth management industry for the year ahead, the WealthTech 2023 report aims to identify key industry trends for the next year and beyond. What should the industry be focusing on and why? We aim to provide an overview of the main thematic trends impacting the community and how they might play out over the year. The report features 12 industry perspectives segmented into four sections, including the overview, the client, the adviser, and the business. 

On the client side, the importance of customer experience is highlighted again and again by vendors and wealth managers alike. The ability to attract and retain clients remains key through leveraging technology to enhance the experience and get an increasing share of wallet. The role that technology plays in reducing cost to serve continues to be a concern as well. 

Client experience is also particularly important in the context of the great wealth transfer. The recipients of wealth have a different set of expectations around products, services, and their orchestration and delivery. These are central themes. The client is the sector’s lifeblood, and technology plays an ever-greater role in delivering a modern and relevant client experience. 

Looking at the adviser side of the coin, the role of technology is to enable the adviser with better tools to make their day-to-day roles more efficient, accessible, and more connected to broader business processes (products, research, content, planning, etc.) and their system infrastructure. Using new technologies around AI and ML is increasingly being looked at as a real opportunity to promote personalisation and give granular insight that benefits the client, adviser, and the business alike.

Finally, for the business, being able to correctly position itself to serve clients’ actual needs, as opposed to perceived needs, will prove crucial. This relates not only to the next generation but also to the provision of alternative asset classes, notably private markets. The growth in popularity of the family office also underpins the generic customer experience theme, with the expectation from clients to have a service tailored to their specific needs. 

Ultimately, the wealth management community must effectively leverage technology in all business areas to survive and thrive. The need to reach out and collaborate with a multitude of vendors to achieve a wide set of goals across the wealth management community is becoming widely accepted. The missing piece of the puzzle is the visibility between the vendors and the wealth managers – and this is the purpose of The Wealth Mosaic. 

We hope you find value and action points from this report’s thoughts, experiences, and perspectives. We look forward to continuing to bring you more insights into technology and wealth management through this and other reports and events in our programme. We welcome any feedback and questions you have on the contents of this and future reports. 

Read online and download WealthTech 2023 Annual Report here.

A thank you to all the contributors: Ian Woodhouse, Lead Wealth Management Transformation and Thought Leader for Europe – Accenture; Geoffroy De Ridder, Head of Technology and Operations at Bank Lombard Odier; Benjamin Labrousse, Manager, Pre-Sales – EU at Wealth Dynamix; Adam Toms, CEO Europe of OpenFin; Tariq Khan, Business Development Director at Objectway; Fahd Rachidy, CEO and Founder of ABAKA; Urs Bolt, WealthTech and Wealth Management Adviser; Lucia Perchard, Head of Family Office Product, Corporate Solutions at Apex Group; Shane Reid, Co-Founder and CRO of Umlaut; and Tamara Kostova, CEO of Velexa.