Wealth managers believe that delivering highly personalized services is essential to achieve a competitive differentiation but a third of are unable to personalized service to the degree they wish, reveals the new report ‘The Next-Generation Wealth Managers: Advancing Services and Personalization with Technology’ from Forbes Insights and Temenos, the banking software company.

Nearly two thirds of wealth managers (64%) are segmenting their clients and creating detailed and distinct profiles that enable personalization in line with the expectations of HNWIs. Yet, a third (32%) are still lagging behind.

Technologies such as machine learning, and process automation have transformed the wealth management experience for both advisors at private banks and the HNWIs they serve. Now almost seven in 10 wealth managers surveyed, say that a virtual platform is as essential way to enhance the client experience compared to only 25% in 2016.

The report highlights three pathways to success that will define the next generation wealth manager:

•  Customer experience enhanced by digital client services and personalization
•  Insight gained through artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics
•  New markets defined by the mass affluent and alternative investments as well as operational efficiencies

Pierre Bouquieaux, Product Director Wealth, at Temenos said: “Both HNWIs and mass-affluent investors want to enhance their relationships with wealth managers through more personalized services. Technology from the client perspective, should facilitate more active portfolio management, unlock new insights through predictive analytics and reveal opportunities that may exists in alternative investments.” The report shows that over the past three years’ HNWIs and mass affluent are calling for better results from more active portfolio management (44%) and greater predictive analytics and forecasting (36%). It also shows that technologies such as goal-based investing will be vital in the future.

Pierre continued: “Delivering personalized customer experiences will become the key differentiator for wealth managers. Temenos WealthSuite with its open API architecture enables wealth management firms and private banks to integrate and distribute third party offerings in addition to their products to offer greater personalization and product innovation. We have also extended our Robo-Advisor module with Goal-Based Investing to capture customers’ key life goals and offer highly personalized products and services.”
 
In response to market trends Temenos has now expanded its market-leading front office WealthSuite with a Goal-Based Investing module. This game-changing module allows retail banks and wealth managers to address the investment needs of the growing mass affluent market segment by offering client-centric and highly personalized products and services. The banks can benefit from offering compellingexperiences and digital execution to their customers faster, cheaper and more efficiently.

Quoted in the report, Eddy Tai, global head of operations and technology at Bank of Singapore, commented: “We believe that in the future, the banking model will be different. Systems will be different and connected to many partner systems and platforms, forming an extended ecosystem. In this new dimension, you need open API. You need to be more scalable through the cloud.”

Temenos WealthSuite provides packaged omni-channel user agents as well as a full set of consumable API’s. Temenos' WealthSuite provides 24/7 real-time capability to enable banks to deliver a compelling service to customers, while empowering advisors by automating time-consuming compliance and back-office functions. WealthSuite is used by blue chip banks globally such as Julius Baer, Itau Unibanco and Standard Chartered.