Responding to megatrends for future success

As part of Accenture and Orbium’s continued commitment to help drive valuable discussions within the wealth management industry, we have created our annual Wealth Management Digest—a curated selection of articles written by our practice over the last year.

This year’s publication draws on insights from the Accenture–Orbium Wealth Management C-Level Survey, and we have aligned the content to the four areas participants believe could define future success in the wealth management industry:

Differentiated client experience: Client servicing models should evolve to meet the needs of a new generation of clients and address the risk of intergenerational outflows. Hyper-personalization would be delivered through technology that allows advisors to serve multiple segments more profitably. This demands new technology and the evolution of human/machine collaboration between advisors and clients to deliver the next generation of advisor models.

Value generation would significantly shift to the front office through such hybrid advice models. This would allow for frictionless advice delivery enabled by technology. Traditional channels are also expected to be supplemented by many more options to serve specific clients. Products and solutions will shift towards advice and a wider range of themes such as ESG, impact investing and the rise of private and non-bankable assets.

Intelligent operations and technology: To address the existing high cost of delivery, siloed processes, legacy core platforms, fragmented data and security should evolve. Change would require more flexible operational processes and a wider adoption of intelligent technology solutions. This could be achieved by standardizing, automating and enhancing front-to-back and front-to-front processes. Siloed and complex IT stacks would also need to be deconstructed and rebuilt in new ways allowing for the growth of new models incorporating emerging technologies. Working with platforms and ecosystems to broaden the capabilities of a wealth management firm will also become more important.

Responsible leadership and strategy: Without coherent leadership and strategy, the changes above will likely remain disparate and uncoordinated, leading to an ineffective response to key megatrends. Leaders should focus on differentiation and innovation while maintaining their core mission of safeguarding the assets of their clients through delivering profitable client value.

They should also adopt the right mix of financial and non-financial metrics to measure performance and demonstrate to stakeholders that the business is being transformed in the right way. Wealth managers would also need to develop the ability to work in multi-firm ecosystems and partnerships. These are critical to move at a controlled pace from survival mode towards creating and delivering innovative and differentiated offerings so the business can thrive.

Empowered talent and change: The fourth dimension of our framework is the critical path to transformation. One of the key aspects of doing business in 2025 successfully will likely be the ability to adapt to an accelerating speed of change in market dynamics, client demands and internal organization. This would require platform, operations and ecosystem flexibility and developing talent capability to collaborate and innovate across the firm. Collaboration models could strengthen new ways of working, for example through peer-to-peer networks.

Feel free to download your PDF copy of our Wealth Management Digest 2020 by following the link below. We believe that it is timely, insightful and invaluable reading to anyone in the sector.

We hope you agree and are looking forward to your thoughts and feedback.

Download: Responding to Megatrends for Future Success – Wealth Management Digest 2020

Happy reading!