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How Tech Drives Wealth Management Change

Tom Burroughes

28 January 2019

It is hard to avoid seeing how technology is changing the face of wealth management. There is a buzz about how artificial intelligence, robotics, mobile devices, Big Data and distributed ledger tech such as blockchain are forcing change. Even allowing for PR spin, the significance of these forces cannot be doubted. 

The term “fintech” embraces a wide field, ranging from the technologies that institutions use to change their mode of operations, such as collecting more data about their clients, or giving customers tools to view portfolios on a tablet or mobile phone 'on the go'. Or the term can also refer to new business models which rival banks and investment houses, such as the employment of robo-advisors and online-only banks. (See examples of research on such topics by this news service here and here.)

This publication has been talking to industry figures about what they see as the biggest effects technology has on the sector.

“The mobile phone is still the biggest ultimate driver for how wealth professionals are affected by technology simply because it has empowered consumers to be much more demanding in their interactions,” Daniel Semal, director of information technology architecture at BNY Mellon’s Pershing, said.

“This doesn’t necessarily concern the quality of an app but the overall, individual connection with any service provider – think Amazon, Apple, Spotify, Netflix. This is especially true for any premium service, where consumers are becoming less willing to be treated as yet another number and demanding an obvious effort to be treated as individuals with very specific preferences,” he said. 

“This is a key message for the industry right now – there is plenty of competition for customers and whilst the underlying financial performance of the service is important, the desire for a high quality, seemingly customised, customer experience is in demand. Technology plays a large part in shaping the customer experience, both with respect to creating efficient processes behind the scenes and facilitating an easy, personalised interaction with the wealth professional, but it should never be considered the be all and end all,” Semal said.

To spend, or not to spend?
Keeping abreast with all this is tough enough but a particular challenge for wealth managers has been figuring out how much of their IT budget they want to spend for future business growth, and how much they must spend to comply with regulatory forces such as the European Union’s MiFID II directive, the EU’s General Data Protection Directive, new anti-money laundering rules in various jurisdictions, and so on.  According to a 2017 , the research firm, concluded that projects addressing deep, disruptive and strategic change do not get enough funding, even though managers know that they matter for the future.

This year might come as a relief after a decade of compliance-driven work has dominated budgetary priorities.

“A lot of wealth management firms are looking forward to being able to focus back on investing in product/service enhancement, but the specifics will be where each wealth manager is looking to differentiate themselves or make-up lost ground from the last couple of years,” Semal said. 

It is possible that firms chose the incremental route rather than a “big bang” approach because budgets have been pressured. A question is how much is traded off between must-have spending and want-to-have spending. (Some will claim that good compliance is a value-add, but if that is true then firms would presumably do it anyway.) In any event, if the sheer pace of regulatory spending decelerates this year, it will be interesting to see if there is a genuine shift towards capital spending that actually grows the bottom line.

Connections, integrations
One of the most important ways tech affects wealth management is giving information to clients more quickly and in a digestible form. For example, at UK-based , which builds wealth platforms, found that 48 per cent of the investors it polled use digital offerings as a key selection factor when choosing a manager. The firm goes on to warn that there are “few signs of a digital breakthrough from traditional wealth managers”.

Democracy
Associated with this platform development is the idea that technology “democratises” access by investors to asset classes, such as private equity, previously the preserve of large institutions and ultra-wealthy persons. (Even in the case of UHNW individuals, they can struggle to get a decent seat at the table.) Recent years have seen the rise of various investment platforms and networks not just for mass-market funds but specialist areas in alternatives, such as , CAIS, and Artivest in the US.  

“Since the early 2000s wealth management technology has been democratised through web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings such as Salesforce, Addepar, Black Diamond, client portals, and other tools. In 2019, wealth firms should have little need to house, operate and incur the expense of any IT infrastructure such as physical servers,” Joseph Larizza, managing partner at said last year, there is almost a case for treating bank and technology stocks as the same, even though there are obvious differences. 

(This feature is part of this publication’s schedule of features about what is driving this industry. To view what this news service has in the pipeline, see here.)