Expert: Alessandro Tonchia, Head of Strategy at InvestCloud Europe and Asia Facilitator: Gilly Green, Managing Partner at FoxRed Insight
Overview:
Participants explored the importance of mastering digital and data fundamentals in tandem. The benefits include being able to leverage technology to retail and grow clients, whilst enhancing operational efficiency to capture true scale opportunities. Collecting reliable and consistent data that is relevant and specific, easy to interpret, and that powers the adviser is a challenge across the industry. Many firms are still wrestling with what data they really need and the data collection methodology not being consistent enough.
Indeed, client engagement and satisfaction rely on the wealth manager making a positive impact from an informed position. In turn, that informed position depends on the wealth manager having as much information as possible about the client.
Discussion:
Onboarding is where this all starts to take place and the area where technology can have the most impact for several reasons. Firstly, onboarding has historically been manual, time-consuming, and repetitive, where clients had to fill in seemingly endless forms and provide the same data multiple times. However, the market is now seeing a change in this regard, with some best practices emerging due to leveraging digital technologies to provide more accessible communications and automation.
“Looking at onboarding as a single digital journey that goes from lead to an established and hopefully satisfied client is very high on the priority list.”
In many cases, information gathering actually needs to start at the prospecting stage. Having a single digital journey is important so that at the time of onboarding, the adviser already has a lot of information and insight that can be used within the ongoing client lifecycle.
Something that has also brought the collection of data and digital communications to the fore is Consumer Duty.
Indeed, technology-based solutions, information, and processes mean that the adviser can consistently ask the right questions and effectively document the replies to ensure that clients understand the proposition, thus providing the best outcome, as mandated.
The good news is that much information is also available within a firm or directly from the prospect and externally.
AI tools can also keep information fresh. Indeed, there are AI tools that look at client behaviour and make recommendations and insights based on that. It then pushes the right content to the right people at the right time, deepening the relationship and engagement.
“You can triangulate the data sources and be comfortable with what you have achieved without having to get all the different underlying documentation to get to the same point. It can make somebody’s journey a lot more seamless and less complicated.”
But how far can this go? GDPR certainly puts a hold on what data can and cannot be used for.
It was also acknowledged that some clients might find information mining intrusive. Others might welcome it as a means to get a better service tailored to individual needs, though a waiver and some basic etiquette must be implemented.
“Some people just don’t like the idea of an automated fact find, and we need to respect that. But when we look at who our client in the future is and the way that they will want to do business, we need to prepare for that.”
Indeed, the way wealth managers position how data is captured and used, and whether they try to validate it, is important. Participants said the ethos behind doing this and the extent to which analytics are put on top are crucial.
This is more so with the ongoing experience, particularly when things are not really changing year-on-year but still need to be checked and kept up to date.
To that end, it was thought that recording conversations and extracting unstructured and structured information from there could be an interesting route to explore. It was something that participants thought was evolving and improving rapidly.
Ultimately, all participants favoured using technological tools available to collect and analyse data, and improve the client experience. However, they all were keen to point out that in doing so, the personal touch should not be lost and is still the most important thing in the client relationship during the prospecting, onboarding, and ongoing client lifecycle management.
Key takeaways:
- Using advanced tooling at the prospecting stage gives an excellent first impression and an idea of what to expect once onboarded
- Gathering as much data as possible early on improves service throughout the client’s lifecycle. Wealth managers should ideally triangulate all data sources to arrive at the most informed position possible
- Care should be taken to ensure clients are comfortable with wealth managers seeking data from third parties such as social media. Verifying such data is also key
- All participants felt strongly that the personal touch is still the most important thing in the client relationship, be that in the prospecting, onboarding, and ongoing client lifecycle management stages
