Welcome to the first video in a new series of interviews with Antony Bream, MD – UK and Americas at Wealth Dynamix by our friends at Wealth Mosaic.
In this edition Antony provides his views on
- The main trends, challenges and opportunities for the wealth management sector today
- How is technology is helping wealth management firms to manage these trends, challenges and opportunities
What do you see as the main trends, challenges and opportunities for the wealth management sector today?
I think trend wise we’re seeing a lot of focus on cost, a lot of focus on the customer, a lot of focus on the CRM. So how do I get better visibility of my customers? How do I get better insights to my customers? How do I give them better service, but how do I do that in a way that’s cost effective?
A lot of money’s been spent on back office, middle office, front office technology, but are clients in that sector getting the best of that investment?
So trend wise I think the big challenge for people is really how do we get access to multiple data sources from a back office, a CRM, from a sales prospecting system? How do I feed that into the people who want to see that data and then how do I get them to react in the context of that data for their client?
Really, if you can get that data out in the context of the role that’s looking at that data – whether it‘s compliance, operations, sales, support, service management – that can really give a big boost to a firm’s ability to improve investment returns and improve customer service.
How do you see technology helping wealth managers in terms of meeting these trends, challenges and opportunities?
So I think at the moment again, I’m seeing a simplification of the text stack. People have looked at their back offices, invested heavily. They’ve been subject to regulation from the compliance bodies to make that data fit for purpose and to make that data used in the right way – to protect the end client. And so when you look at the whole back to middle to front office tech stack, there’s a need to simplify that. There’s a need to almost look at how do I de-risk what I have here? How do I de-cost it?
So firms are looking at outsourcing options now for their back office. Now, if you asked me would that be possible ten years ago, I’d probably say no because that really is the crown jewels. That’s the data source, the master data source of their client, their client record, their accounting book. But even now that’s being looked at as an outsource, so that’s de-risking the business and de-costing that part of their tech stack.
Middle office is always going to be around risk and compliance. That’s always quite critical, but front office is really where the magic starts to happen. That’s where you can really get these insights and this visibility across your whole client lifecycle. So technology really can help play a major part in that role now.
