Wealth
managers are increasingly offering lifestyle services or rewards
programmes in a bid to differentiate themselves in today’s highly
competitive marketplace, and now Barclays is upping the stakes with a new lifestyle web portal intriguingly called Little Book of Wonders.

The "wonders" of the portal’s name refer to a range of
money-can’t-buy, pre-vetted events and experiences which are exclusively
available to clients of the bank’s wealth and investment division. The
events and experiences are organised around 16 lifestyle themes, ranging
from food and travel to arts and culture, and have been created in
collaboration with high-end brand partners such as Rolls-Royce,
Boucheron and Hassleblad.

The portal is also intended to function as a networking platform for
clients and will additionally feature extensive editorial content
written exclusively for Barclays by a team of leading contributing
editor "names". This will include articles about all the exclusive
events, talks and experiences on offer, as well as features related to
each area of interest.

Rollout

The portal will initially be rolled out to Barclays' wealth
management clients in the UK and Europe, with a view to rolling out in
the US and Asia-Pacific in the second half of the year and MENA soon
after. This phased implementation is simply to allow the new service
time to bed down and for the focus required in deploying extremely
high-end events across multiple geographies, Barclays said. In the
meantime the service can also be offered individually to globe-trotting
clients who may be interested in opportunities in Europe from launch.

Barclays calls the new initiative a "client engagement tool" and in
putting it together the firm said it went back to the drawing board to
entirely rethink the traditional concierge service and try to create
something unique in the marketplace.

Rather than being your standard concierge-type service which tends to be reactive, in that
clients come up with an idea to be arranged on their behalf, Barclays
new service offering proactively sources opportunities for clients to
browse and select. As such, Little Book of Wonders is intended to be something more akin to a "curated world", David Hughes, head of affinity partnerships at Barclays, told WealthBriefing. (This is the sister publication of this website).

"We’ve created an environment where our clients can come and discover
some fascinating and exclusive things to do that we have pre-arranged
and curated on their behalf, rather than the traditional model where the
client has to have the idea in the first place to ask their concierge
service to execute," said Hughes.

Genesis

The idea for the new service came from the fact that luxury brands
would often approach Barclays to offer its clients the chance to attend
special events, but often these opportunities were last minute or so
esoteric that it was difficult to offer them to the right clients in
enough time. Effectively, Little Book of Wonders allows clients
to “self-select” the kinds of events they are interested in, making the
process far more efficient for client and luxury brand alike.

The web portal goes live this week and clients will be introduced to
it in the course of their conversations with their bankers. Reactions
from staff and brand partners, meanwhile, have been “fantastic”, said
Hughes. Bankers are really excited about being able to offer something
unique in the marketplace, he continued, while brand partners all over
the globe have given “phenomenonally encouraging responses.”

The site is very visually appealing and it is easy to find
opportunities to suit any taste, via the interest area “bookcovers” like
“beauty and wellbeing” as well as a comprehensive search function.
Users can also search by region or date – a very useful facility for
special occasions such as birthdays or Valentine’s Day.

Money-can’t-buy experiences

There is an amazing range of events and experiences on offer (over 70
at launch), most of which are free and all of which are exclusive to
Barclays. Forthcoming highlights for next month include an evening at
Sir Terence Conran’s apartment to hear about commissioning a dream home,
a round of golf with Colin Montgomerie at Goodwood with Rolls-Royce,
and an Easter egg masterclass for children being held at Claridge’s in
London.

However, the personal favourite of Hughes - and one which will no
doubt wow cricket fans - is a once in a lifetime opportunity to play a
Twenty20 match with legendary England cricketer Freddie Flintoff. This
last opportunity may put readers in mind of Société Générale Private
Banking’s ongoing sponsorship of top-level golfers Angel Cabrera, Thomas
Levet, Christian Cevaër and Jeev Milkha Singh, through which the firm
is able to offer its clients the chance to play with golfing stars
through a programme of events around the world.

Strategy

The provision of truly special money-can’t-buy experience to reward
“big ticket” clients is an important part of many firms’ marketing
strategy, one reason for this being that the very wealthy are a segment
for whom few doors are closed and as such they are unlikely to be
impressed by mass market events.

While there may be a place for large (but inevitably cost-heavy)
sponsorships in terms of building brand awareness, it is generally
thought that smaller, bespoke opportunities are probably the better
option, not least because they provide a more intimate environment for
clients and bankers to deepen their relationships. Precisely-targeted
events might be more labour intensive to put together but it could be
argued they incur less “wastage” and are a far better way of
demonstrating an understanding of the totality of clients’ lives – an
empathetic, holistic approach which is rapidly becoming industry
standard.

These were the type of views which emerged in the compilation of a
forthcoming ClearView Financial Media research report, entitled Reaching Out To The High Net Worth: Branding And Marketing Strategy Across The Global Wealth Management Industry.

Barclays new website is also noteworthy for its high-tech approach to
helping clients get the most out of the service; its back-end booking
system will allow clients to check the availability of the
events/experiences and book direct, which will in turn trigger an email
to their banker to keep them in the loop. The initial concept behind the
project was “time well spent” and so Barclays is keen to make the
portal as time-efficient to use as it is enjoyable.

Invaluable information

Clearly, Barclays isn’t launching this service just out of the
goodness of its heart, as providing clients with money-can’t-buy
experiences is a popular method through which wealth managers attempt to
build up good will and do more business with their biggest clients,
most of whom are multi-banked. It also goes without saying that such
offerings help firms to gather invaluable information on where their
clients’ passions lie and to exceed their expectations in terms of
client service.

Lifestyle information which naturally accrues to a relationship
manager over time may have historically been carried “in the head” of
bankers (and away with them when they changed jobs), but firms are
increasingly looking to gather this data systematically to mitigate
so-called “key man risk”. Otherwise, an employee’s departure could mean
that incredibly valuable information as to a client’s interests is lost
forever – simply because it was never formally recorded.

Jacqui Brabazon, group head, marketing and philanthropy, at Standard
Chartered Private Bank, who served on the editorial panel for Reaching Out To The High Net Worth, said this on the issue:

"As an industry I don’t think that we have terribly good systems in
place to capture information which enables us to make the client
experience better – to the extent to which other industries use that
type of technology. Other industries use technology a lot to drive their
client experience. We don’t as an industry; instead we rely on the
private banker."

While data capture systems may have historically been regarded with
suspicion by the old guard of private banking, it seems that firms are
increasingly recognising the role technology can play in delivering “the
personal touch”. In this regard Barclays would certainly seem to be at
the vanguard of a new wave of tech-savvy wealth managers.