How to get the best chance of bringing a client on board and delivering a long-term, enriching customer relationship? Wealth industry professionals in Asia recently discussed the topic in Singapore.

Attracting a client to a wealth management firm is often as much about cultural sensitivity and understanding of very specific needs as it is about providing smart-looking investment offerings and digital channels, the WealthBriefingAsia Summit in Singapore heard recently.

Banks and other organisations need to focus on the two merits of likeability and competence if they are to succeed in bringing clients on board and turning them into loyal customers over the long term, the conference, held in April, heard. (For more detail on the event, see here.)

Figures from the wealth management sector in Asia addressed the topic “Maximising Client Conversion Rates – Multi-Disciplinary Strategies To Get Prospects Over The Line” at a conference held at the renowned Raffles Hotel in Singapore. Speakers were Reto Merazzi, general manager, Appway, APAC region; Mandeep Nalwa, CEO for Taurus Wealth Advisors; Damien Piper, sales director of smartKYC; Kimmis Pun, president, FPAS; and Steven Seow, head of wealth management for Mercer. The panel was chaired by Tom Burroughes, group editor, WealthBriefingAsia. Sponsors for the summit were Appway, Milltrust International, smartKYC, Vermillion, BVI Finance and the Financial Planning Association of Singapore. Supporting organisations were Standard & Poor’s MMD, ProFundCom and WealthBriefingAsia.

“Prospering in this business is about understanding the importance and impact of every interaction with the client. Just collecting mandatory regulatory data while onboarding a new client or prospect does not help you to understand the needs of a client. A narrow view on KYC does not help you to develop the relationship or establish trust,” Appway’s Merazzi said.

He observed that many organisations still take a "silo view" and approach towards the client instead of trying to be truly client-centric. “This approach generally means that interactions are not streamlined and sales opportunities are often missed,” he continued.

“[It is] only by adding a horizontal digital platform on top of the various data sources that an organisation can effectively manage the client relationship and become truly client-centric,” he said.

Merazzi talked about how RMs might have to select which documents a client must sign out of hundreds of documents, and such a volume of material is very difficult to handle: “It’s ridiculous,” he said. “It can sometimes take three to six months to bring a person into a bank today because of the constant back-and-forth and asking for additional material,” he said. Such a long process is costing banks money and dilutes confidence, so anything that truncates the process makes obvious financial sense.

Asked to what extent offering these services through online channels might help he said that the bigger priority should be to digitize the processes and provide transparency internally before involving the client in such tasks. To directly engage the client is a small step after a solid foundation has been established, he added.

“This is not just about share of wallet…. In order to be a successful banker and run a successful bank you need to establish trust and establish a meaningful business relationship,” Mercer’s Seow said.

He referred to the twin assets of “likeability and competence” in banking. “It is also about how you bring your intellectual capital to the client,” he said. Creating bespoke solutions for clients can be difficult given the cost/resource constraints on firms, Seow added. “What many of our clients have done is create a series of model portfolios….and use them as anchors and matching clients to each one,” he said. They then make specific adjustments for the client.

Taurus’s Nalwa noted that cultural factors are often critical in engaging with clients. “Wealth management is sometimes a business where soft skills matter more than technical skills. Bankers are in the business of going out to sell trust. In two to four years technology will be a big differentiator,” he continued.

“The ethnic framework of a team of [bankers] and their clients needs to be similar,” he said, referring to problems that can arise if a relationship manager is unaware of cultural sensitivities, such as when a person marries someone outside his or her background and there are subsequent succession and wealth planning issues to consider.

For example, with NRI and Chinese clients, RMs will typically come from similar groups, Nalwa said.

He said he is unsure if banks’ appreciation of such points is followed up by how they train staff.

“A big issue is for the smaller KYC teams,” he said. “Clearly, business goes to those who are faster. Some additional resources with technology needs to be put in by the banks.”

SmartKYC’s Piper said: “We have got to ask: do we really understand the investor and is it easy for him or her to go through the onboarding process? It is also about reaching out to the right customer."

He also referred to “orchestrating steps in the mid- and back-office…there is still a lot of manual work that is being done. Some complex [onboarding] cases can take three days,” Piper continued.

Another topic Piper discussed was the use of third-party data services such as Google, LinkedIn and other networks in making checks on clients. There can be problems with a lack of public data in certain jurisdictions and sectors, however. For example, how does one check on a business owner in Indonesia if the RM doesn’t speak the language? He said an issue can be a lack of language skills among RMs in certain jurisdictions such as Singapore.

A big topic, he said, is integration of information sources, so that an RM can tap into sources quickly and effectively.

Kimmis Pun, of the Financial Planning Association of Singapore, described the approach firms should take towards new and prospective clients: a firm must have “the right mindset and it should not just be how to make money”.

Pun added: “Onboarding is a critical point of contact….if you get the right kind of targeted customer into the institution then that is important. The firm must have the right mindset to do proper KYC and develop processes and platforms that are tailor-made to fulfil the needs of a customer. Who is going to deliver these services? Support from product specialists is one of the more critical processes."

She also talked about the need to match RMs and clients by such measures as age, experience and cultural fit.

On the use of feedback data, she said: “We can use it for business development….and making it more tailor-made in measuring client expectations.”