Important wealth management trends affecting the advisor business
30 April 2015
Isabella Fonseca
We get asked many times what are some of the main trends in the wealth management market, in particular those that disrupt the advisor business. While we can come up with a number of them, here are some of the major ones to consider:
- Digitization: Firms need to manage physical and digital channels and integration of disparate channels
- Increased investment in advisor tools to increase operational efficiency: Improvement of wealth management platforms and advisor dashboards, collaboration tools, as well as self-directed tools for investors
- Simplicity is key to maintaining customer relationships: user experience, content in everyday tools used by advisors, etc.
- Integration – What does it mean for advisors to have an integrated experience? What are firms doing today to address this?
- Customer segmentation – different strategies employed to retain/cross-sell/up-sell the various customer segments.
- Challenges encompassing technology adoption These trends are seen across the board in the wealth management industry, although each firm has a different perspective and is engaging them at a different level, in particular because the pain points will be distinct depending on the type of firm and the customer segments targeted. Celent is currently doing a study to identify the differences in these main themes across multiple wealth management firms. If you are a firm with an advisor business and is interested in participating, here is the link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SFS8W8J Data will be used on an aggregate basis. Participating firms will receive a copy of the study when completed.