Investors across the board want more personalisation and deeper insights to improve their wealth profile. A survey of C-suite and senior managers reveals how fast and furious are those expectations.

A mix of fear and opportunity is driving digital uptake in wealth management and a new poll of senior managers and HNW investors shows the issue is shooting up the list of must-haves.

In its third year, Forbes Insights and global software provider Temenos surveyed more than 300 executives and 100 wealthy investors in March 2019 to gauge demand for digital services and how they are shaping the industry.

In the report titled The Next-Generation Wealth Manager, nearly half (44 per cent) of the executives said that high net worth and mass affluent investors are now demanding better results from more active portfolio management; and a third (36 per cent) said they want services to provide greater predictive analytics and forecasting. The managers identified technologies that that can deliver goal-based investing as critical to the industry's future. Just a third of executives said they were not currently able to provide a customised investment experience.

The poll suggests the urgency around technology as a way for firms to differentiate and create a more personalised experience has surged. The number of senior managers who now believe a virtual platform is essential to the client experience has more than doubled since 2016. More than eight in 10 executives believe AI is important for forecasting, and a similar percentage believe it has a big role to play in portfolio returns. The poll found that private bank advisors and HNW investors were among the most likely to see machine learning and process automation as having the greatest potential to transform the wealth management experience.

Eddy Tai, global head of operations and technology at Bank of Singapore, stresssed the role analytics play in investment profiling. "It helps us see beyond what a client tells us on paper or in person, to what products they might really want. We can see the person in the behaviour. Analytics helps us deepen our profile and read satisfaction levels, and it can help us predict if a client will leave us.”

It is no surprise than some firms choose Asia to roll out new tech offerings. This poll confirmed that managers in Asia-Pacific have higher expectations around technololgy, and in the case of AI, nearly half (47 per cent) of executives said they will be able to read markets better because of it, compared with 30 per cent in Europe and 24 per cent in Latin America. Executives were equally enamoured with blockchain believing the digital ledger technolgoy that provides an immutable record of transactions and ownership, would prove cost effective in beefing up security and meeting compliance rules, and could benefit client services through more appealing transparency.

The report also asked academics for their views. James Sefton, a professor of finance at Imperial College London, said services are what will distinguish successful wealth managers. “I still see wealth management as being a very personal relationship type business. Services are going to change, and that’s where it becomes interesting: there are huge operational efficiency, cost and speed gains to be had in the process of onboarding new clients, doing the due diligence, or KYC,”  Sefton said.

Even though advanced data analytics has been around for a while and its use deducing complex global markets and investments - beyond the capacity of humans - has "been largely confined to hedge funds and niche players",  that is changing.The report found that two thirds (67 per cent) of executives see client segmenting and personalising service as highly important. Wealth managers focused on acquiring mass affluent clients said that customer-focused analytics (36 per cent) and technology (43 per cent) were among the top ways of attracting the segment.

“Both HNWIs and mass-affluent investors want to enhance their relationships with wealth managers through more personalised services. Technology from the client perspective should facilitate more active portfolio management, unlock new insights through predictive analytics and reveal opportunities that may exist in alternative investments," Pierre Bouquieaux, wealth product director at Temenos said.