The influence of technology, operations and strategy flows through all aspects of today’s wealth management businesses be they global or boutique players, a conference has heard.

The influence of technology, operations and strategy flows through all aspects of today’s wealth management businesses, be they global or boutique players. Indeed in certain niches they are leading the way and transforming the industry, a conference has heard.

Speakers held forth on the areas of wealth management business primed for breakthroughs in the second panel to be held at the WealthMatters Singapore conference, organised by ClearView Financial Media (publisher of this news service) and in association with Coutts. (To see the first of the panel discussions from the conference, see here.)

The panellists for the Strategy and Operations question-and-answer session were Peter Sherriff, principal architect, Charles River Developments;  Reto Merazzi, general manager, Asia-Pacific region, of Appway; Tan Han Wee, associate director, EY Advisory Singapore, Ed Limon, sales and marketing manager, Asia-Pacific, at Fusion Systems and Pathik Gupta, head of wealth management, Asia, McLagan.  

The panellists were asked how the large European and US institutions were performing in penetrating the Asian market.

Responding, Sherriff said banks should now be thinking about managing the technology and operations platform for their ultra high net worth clients up to the same level as they would for an institutional client.     

Tan Han Wee noted that the systems and processes from the mature global private banks went into the Asian region from a well-proven and robust international platform and calibrated it; on the other hand, local and regional Asian banks were leveraging off a perhaps less sophisticated retail platform.

McLagan’s Gupta agreed that the systems of the global banks are superior to those of the local banks as they could be road-tested before being brought into Asia. However, banks such as Singapore-headquartered DBS are committed to elevating the technological input across their wealth management business.

Asia is its own market and a one-size solution does not fit all, Appway’s Merazzi said. His view was that investing in technology may not be a fit with all Asian clients and it will need to evolve. Fusion Systems’ Limon was of a similar mindset, saying that the global banks may have the technological edge but they had to adopt and adapt to accommodate local and regional nuances. There may even be useful new ideas that can go back into the pipeline to service other global locations.     

Compliance, onboarding
On compliance and onboarding issues – issues that are under the spotlight - Merazzi said that with the new wave of web-based financial services providers breaking through and mostly only requiring one log-in and registration step, the lengthy process for banks sometimes taking months to get clients on board was pushing away potential customers.

The other panelists agreed with this analysis: Sherriff said it was a case of the “tail wagging the dog” where some compliance structures were concerned. An ideal scenario is to ensure early in the relationship/sales process that the relevant information is rendered to the relationship manager for onboarding and then getting compliance out of the way.

Gupta said the cost of compliance systems in some cases had now become so great that other perhaps innovative client-centric IT ideas suffered from lack of budget.

In summing up the panel tried to look ahead to the developing world of apps and the rapidly expanding services technology can deliver within private banking and wealth management.

Sherriff’s stated it was inevitable that technology would take up more tasks in the wealth management sector. In Asia, the younger demographic would drive this trend and he foresaw a hybrid model of services evolving. Limon closed by saying that the industry had to fully utilise and embrace technology while closely communicating the advantages to clients after all it was here to stay.  

Tan Han Wee envisaged a trend developing of low-cost online solutions and user-friendly apps competing with the traditional wealth management model but face-to-face relationships would not be replaced soon. Pathik Gupta said that clients wanted more technology and automated financial services he also liked the fact that the mass affluent market could be served with low cost effective and evolutionary apps.

Finally, Merazzi gave the example of Apple, which can be bought on line everywhere but pointed out that the Apple shops were usually always busy with customers wanting to interact, ask questions and see the goods. So too in the wealth management space he believes and despite all the technological hyperbole, the human element remains very important.