Traditional wealth management relationships are typically advisor led – they meet their clients in person, develop static financial plans and manage investments with annual check-ins on performance. Digital experiences are giving clients some visibility into the process, but they are not in-sync with the advisor and offer only select capabilities for clients to make updates to their plans as their needs and circumstances change. Start-ups have filled the gap with digital-first offerings, however, they are mostly self-directed in nature and may not fulfil the need for full-service experiences.
Today’s investors are setting new expectations for how they want to consume financial products and experiences. In other realms of life, they have come to expect personalization, customization, flexibility and adaptability, all enabled digitally – and they expect the same from their wealth management channels, all at their fingertips, all the time. Clients are looking for a seamless, interconnected journey across channels, while managing their primary relationship.
Platform mindset – the key to building seamless omnichannel client journeys
As an industry, we are moving away from developing products and capabilities that exist in verticals and toward designing wealth capabilities as a seamlessly connected end-to-end ecosystem. This is what we call platform mindset.
Platform-first companies outside of financial services, in industries such as transportation, education and hospitality, have created extremely successful businesses around this concept. Take a ride-sharing company for example: this has different sets of users (passengers, drivers and retail outlets) in an interactive ecosystem that can co-create value while reducing inefficiency and friction.
Platform mindset can be applied across all wealth capabilities, empowering clients, advisors, investment product specialists, bankers and service specialists to all come together – with smart engines behind the scenes that are constantly learning how all of the pieces are interacting. All of the different user groups are working together with clients to give them the support they need, when they need it, in whichever channel they choose, and advisors can anticipate client needs ahead of time, while having tools that support client conversations with real-time insights.
What does this actually look like?
Customer journeys – for both external clients and internal users – provide the map for getting started with platform thinking. Let’s take a look at three examples in a holistic journey where platform thinking is transforming the holistic experience.
- Seamless omnichannel experience (aka request a ride)
When disconnected platforms come together, clients feel known and supported throughout all touchpoints in their journey. Regardless of which channel a client chooses to go to next, all user groups have the same information, making handoffs between channels feel seamless. A client can specify that planning for children’s education is a priority through their app, and the next time they are in a branch the banker has already seen this and can offer information and refer them to an advisor. Service agents can see that a client tried to complete an action online and were not successful, so they already know why the client is calling. Content and insights served to the client digitally are informed by conversations they have with their banker or advisor in person.
This is the level of personalization and flexibility clients already expect – made possible by empowering all of the different user groups with the same information through a comprehensive platform.
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Connecting clients and advisors (aka swipe right)
Platform thinking can also help us connect the client to the right advisor in a simple and intuitive way. We can make it easy for clients to set up meetings with an advisor by taking what we already know about the client to prefill information and reduce the number of choices a client has to make before scheduling a meeting, reducing their cognitive load. On the back end, systems decide where each lead will be routed based on what we know about the client’s financial picture and preferences. With a robust, interconnected platform, we can continuously learn from the lead assignments.
Once clients and advisors come together, the platform can provide collaborative meeting capabilities via similar user experiences and allow advisors to host client meetings and share information via a fully integrated client mobile and online experience. -
Enabling client-advisor collaboration (aka contact host)
Planning is the backbone of the wealth management industry. It is the advisor’s bread and butter, and a client’s guiding light. To fulfil the expectations set by today’s investors, we need to give clients a full picture of their finances that is flexible, customizable and accessible. At the same time, we need to provide advisors with real-time visibility into any updates clients make to a plan and ensure that they can see what their client sees. At J.P. Morgan Wealth Management we created Wealth Plan, our award-winning digital money coach, to deliver a connected experience for both clients and advisors.
Typically these capabilities are supported by separate systems, each optimized for different purposes that we need to bring together to make this collaboration possible. On one hand, the advisor platform is engineered for highly complex investment capabilities. The tools need to be advanced and flexible enough to cater to a broad range of planning needs. On the other hand, the digital platform used by clients is engineered for speed and simplicity. Connecting these two platforms, without sacrificing critical capabilities for either user group, requires a considerable effort upfront but the resulting experience is more seamless and valuable for both clients and advisors – and provides a foundation for further innovation to come.
Conclusion
Connected platforms can help lay the groundwork for transforming client experiences – fulfilling client expectations for more personalized, flexible and collaborative interactions. Organizations that leverage platform thinking are better prepared to adapt quickly and at scale as client expectations continue to evolve and new technologies continue to emerge. Once systems are connected in an organization, the rest of the industry should expect a new set of innovations to come live.
J.P. Morgan Wealth Management is a business of JPMorgan Chase & Co., which offers investment products and services through J.P. Morgan Securities LLC (JPMS), a registered broker-dealer and investment adviser, member FINRA and SIPC.
Interested in reading the US WealthTech Landscape Report 2024? You can read the report online here.
ABOUT THE US WEALTH LANDSCAPE REPORT 2024
The US WealthTech Landscape Report 2024 has been designed to showcase the pivotal role that technology plays in the evolving landscape of US wealth management.
With the rapid pace of change in financial services, understanding technology's impact on this sector is more crucial than ever. This US-focused Landscape Report features a series of insightful articles that explore the trends, challenges, and innovations surrounding technology adoption in wealth management. Contributions come from a range of organizations, including Advisor360, Alpha Tech Partners, Aureus Advantage, Croesus, Diamond Wealth, ERI, First Rate, J.P. Morgan Wealth Management, Malka Media, Pirker Partners, Seismic, and Transcend Capital Advisors.
The report also features a section dedicated to a series of solution provider showcases, offering insights into the offerings and capabilities of the firms featured. This section is designed to provide an overview of a selection of solutions available on the market today, showcasing some of the available technology tools and partners that might address your business needs. Finally, we culminate the report with the directory section that introduces our online Solution Provider Directory (SPD) and references the size of market relevant to the US wealth management sector.
Interested in reading the US WealthTech Landscape Report 2024? You can read the report online here.
ABOUT THE WTLR SERIES
Our goal with our WealthTech Landscape Reports (WTLRs), is to collate relevant, insightful content and comments from both wealth managers and vendors operating in a specific region. Each WTLR is founded on a curated directory of hundreds of relevant technology and related solution providers to the business needs of the wealth management community in focus. The directory is supported by a rich variety of thought leadership articles and interviews with industry participants from both buy and sell side, plus a section of Solution Showcases. We also look at country, regional, and sectoral trends.
If you are interested in contributing to our WealthTech Landscape Report series, don't hesitate to get in touch.
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