Digitizing the Wealth Management Experience: Omnichannel as the new Business Imperative

Digital Transformation

9/28/2017

“If we truly want to erase the seams between (customer experience) channels and experiences, these systems of record should become decidedly less distinct. Customer data and voice should be shared and orchestration paths and workflows should be connected and coordinated via a unified hub.” - Jake Sorfman in Toward a Unified Customer Experience Hub

The new digital landscape, coupled with growing customer expectations, are having a profound impact on the wealth management and private banking industry. As aging legacy systems challenge these firms’ agility, they’re making significant investments to modernize the core technologies at the heart of their institutions. Only firms that create unified client and advisor experiences across user devices and all their platforms will deliver the type of experiences that will garner increased engagement and transparency, foster collaboration, and result in more assets under management.

A unified, personalized experience

Clients

Clients expect a new kind of wealth management experience; one that is personalized, seamless, transparent and collaborative in nature. They want to be presented with financial solutions based on their goals and life events. They are less interested in being sold products and want similar experiences from other industries they interact with in their daily lives including retail, entertainment, travel, etc.

Advisors

The new vision for wealth management is for advisors to be present in the financial lives of their clients anytime, any place, across any channel or device. Advisors too, are moving to a digital-ready infrastructure that will help enable a new level of transparency, immediacy, and engagement with clients.

Building trust in the digital age

Trust has always been an essential component of successful client-advisor relationships. And yet, this new digital landscape begs the question: how is trust earned and fostered in the age of digitalization?

The truth is, technology, new analytical tools and an increasingly younger, empowered pool of investors are starting to seriously disrupt the landscape. According to PwC, it is estimated that by 2020 generation X and millennials will control more than half of all investable assets (equivalent to US$30 trillion dollars). Not only do these clients spend more time on social communities and networking sites, they have adopted the “be where your clients are” mentality. They are increasingly embracing online transactions, self-directed investment tools, digital portfolio management, accessing interactive research and reports online, and expect the type of immediacy from their advisors not possible without an omnichannel strategy.

The untapped potential of omnichannel

Wealth management firms that create unified user experiences across user devices and all their platforms are delivering better customer experiences that will garner more assets. Here are some compelling stats:

65% of High Net Wealth Individuals are ready to leave their wealth management firm due to a lack of integrated channel experience (RBC Wealth Management and Scorpio Partnership)
By 2020, the demand for an omni-channel customer experience will be amplified by the need for nearly perfect execution. (PwC)
30% of clients across all age groups are open to engaging remotely with an advisor who does not live near them. (Mckinsey)
67% of customer churn is preventable if the customer issue was resolved at the first engagement. (Huffington Post)
97% of companies that say are investing in omni-channel and yet less than 1% of companies are deploying (deployed) omni-channel (Huffington Post)
29% global companies prefer mobile devices to computers (Huffington Post)
Businesses that adopt omni-channel strategies achieve 91% greater year-over-year customer retention rates compared to business that don’t. (Aspect Software)
Asset attrition rates will exceed 50% in intergenerational transfers of wealth (PwC)
Mobile now accounts for about 35% of client interactions (compared with about 65 percent online) and is the fastest-growing channel across financial services. (McKinsey)

Conclusion

If one thing is clear it’s this: the new digital economy and growing customer expectations are having a profound impact on all industries including wealth management and private banking. Only firms that focus their efforts on delivering the type of personalized, seamless, omni-channel experiences clients have come to expect will find competitive edge.

Fortunately, we’ve worked with organizations like yours to create seamless, omnichannel experiences from one unified digital experience platform, built 100% native on the world’s leading customer success platform, Salesforce! Get in touch with us or learn more about how we’ve helped other financial services leaders!

Sources:
https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/trends/2016-wealth-management-trends
https://www.strategyand.pwc.com/reports/taking-wealth-management-digital
https://backbase.com/7237/omni-channel-banking/
http://business.financialpost.com/executive/c-suite/mastering-the-omni-channel-experience
https://www.accenture.com/t20150707T195226__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/Conversion-Assets/DotCom/Documents/Global/PDF/Dualpub_2/Accenture-Digital-Wealth-Management.pdf