This news service recently caught up with the new MD in Singapore for Friends Provident International.

The newly-installed managing director at Friends Provident International in Singapore wants his firm to be a more “aspirational” brand and build on a reputation for being easy to deal with, both from a distributor and client point of view.

“There are opportunities for us to bring to life the term 'client-centricity’,” Andrew Waddell told this news service recently, shortly after taking up the role. “We want to really get to understand the needs of customer,” he said.

In May, Friends Provident International, part of the UK-based Aviva] group of financial organisations, appointed Waddell to his post; Chris Gill, formerly the MD in Singapore, left the group for family reasons and returned to the UK. Waddell was previously principal and executive director at Lahinch Partners. Prior to that, he co-led the establishment of AMP Advice, following the merger between AMP and AXA Australia. 

Waddell knows that his firm is competing at a time when rising regulatory burdens and client expectations, coupled with the arrival of new fintech channels, has thrown the wealth management sector in Asia into flux. Firms are launching “innovation labs”; private banks have launched mobile platforms for clients and even governments, such as those of Singapore, are getting into the act. These are unsettling but also exciting times. Another force at work in Asia, as explained recently by this news service, is the rise of independent asset managers (see this article for more detail here).

“Wealth management is changing, increasingly there is a role for digital and regulatory change that is hard to argue about. FPI needs to be a business that is well-positioned for these changes,” he said.

“I want to be able to digitise our business and move our distribution and service proposition to a digital platform,” Waddell, a native of Australia who is now based in Singapore, added.

Aviva, FPI’s parent, has set up a “digital garage” to encourage innovative fintech ideas that the firm can exploit, part of a trend of firms such as Citigroup, Standard Chartered and Deutsche Bank, to name just three, making similar moves in Asia and elsewhere.

FPI has been driving forward a number of its business offerings in recent years, including its service aimed at expats, as this article showed. 

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FPI’s long-standing service offerings to groups such as expatriate professionals need to keep pace with the times and changing expectations of customers, he said. Instead of a traditional model of expats spending a few years outside their place of birth before returning home, it is increasingly the case that expats move to a variety of different nations during their work years, before either returning home, or spending their retirement overseas. This affects the type of wealth management offering such clients need, Waddell said. 

Last year, FPI launched its Western expat proposition to provide advice to UK and Australian expats in Singapore, as well as affluent Singaporeans interested in saving or retirement. More broadly, FPI provides life assurance and investment products in Asia, the Middle East and other selected markets. The firm has offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, the United Arab Emirates and the Isle of Man, and more than 500 staff worldwide.

There have been some high-level changes in Asia recently. At the start of 2016, James Tan, who had been its Asian chief, left the firm, with Charles Barrows named as the new MD of FPI in Hong Kong. Tan had held his role of MD, Asia, since the summer of 2012 and left the company. His old role vanished amid a company restructuring. The firm has also shut its UK offshore bond market business to new clients, a move affecting business in the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey.

Waddell certainly believes the firm must play a part in making full use of a financial industry toolbox, including offering insurance-based wealth structures. As the Asia-Pacific market continues to mature with generational wealth transfer an increasingly important issue, a full range of solutions are essential, he said.

Waddell said his own background in Australia’s wealth market, which is more established in some ways than those of younger Asian countries, should be useful. “It is very difficult to argue against consumer choice, greater transparency and higher advice standards,” he said. “These themes are increasing globally for Asia to consider."