The Busy European Wealth Management Market...
The European wealth management market continues to evolve: firms evaluating the best ways to service their customers and technology vendors investing in upgrading their systems and reaching out to customers across multiple channels. It had been a few years since we had seen so much activity in the European wealth management market.
In December of 2011, Oliver Wyman commissioned a survey of over 1,200 consumers in the US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, India and China. The survey includes several demographic background questions, and 22 questions gauging current investor sentiment towards financial markets, financial institutions, and the state of their investments. One of results of this survey, demonstrates that an increasing number of investors trust themselves most in managing retirement accounts and other investments. As a result, wealth managers are facing increasing pressure to justify their value proposition. Financial institutions playing in the space have had to develop strategies to manage the growth in assets as well as the uncertainty of stock markets. This has involved significant investment in the way firms communicate with their clients. Today, firms have little choice other than investing in technology to remain competitive and be the trusted advisor for the investor.
The European technology market is a fairly busy one. In the past couple of years, solution providers targeting the wealth management market have joined forces to create a stronger offering to be able to address all customer segments, from mass affluent to ultra high net worth.Vendors have taken the offerings that were once customized by client and created standardized products. We expect to see a flurry of activity in the European wealth management market, as firms look for better ways to service clients. To this end, there will be lots of opportunity for third party technology providers to offer their best technology to private banks and retail banks servicing the wealth management market.
Celent has just completed a report which highlights the top business and technology trends in the European wealth management market, and will follow with research on the main technology players in the space... We look forward to hear your successful technology stories...It will certainly be an interesting year.