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Powering Deeper Client Understanding

Christopher Sparke
Christopher Sparke
Global Head of Advisory Solutions, Refinitiv.

Wealth managers are motivated by a set of simple principals: to help their clients outperform the market or to help their clients exceed the specific wealth goals that they set. However, steering clients toward the most intelligent financial decision or assisting in wealth goals is an increasingly difficult pursuit. With a backdrop of reduced management fees, increasing compliance and regulation and an ever increasing competitive advisory market, retaining clients and advisors and growing new business is increasingly challenging.  While the data explosion over the last decade presented wealth managers with the promise of infinite insight to outperform the market, the reality is that most have simply become mired in its excesses.

In fact, a recent Oliver Wyman study points to the fact that most wealth managers seek not “more data,” but rather, “improved data” – a datapoint that underscores the growing frustration wealth managers experience in reaction to the expectations Big Data has laid at their feet.  Taking advantage of Big Data requires the right level of technology planning, investing in Enterprise Data Management and implementing clear and long term cloud strategies.

The current state – the Wealth Manager workflow

The most successful wealth managers must have a competitive edge, taking in a varied landscape of information – often from outside the sphere of a targeted industry – and apply it all in a smart, customer-focused way. To do it, the wealth manager must pore over market trend reports, industry statistics and market data to find the insight that can lead to opportunity. Importantly, the successful Advisor has to connect and marry up all this information to the data they hold on their clients.  Without tools and data management to assist with this process, it is near impossible for Advisors to prioritize clients and take advantage of the market and client information available to them. And to add to the challenge today, most Advisors are using between 7 and 9 applications to do their job, (e.g. Financial planning tools, Robo tools, CRM etc) hence integrating and connecting the workflow tools is critical to enable better client engagement.

The quantity and quality of data available to wealth managers, and how efficiently they are able to contextualize that information, directly affects how well clients are served. The deluge of information from front office, back office and other external sources is too large for human analysis alone.

The Intelligent Advisor Platform

At Refinitiv, we understand that wealth managers need a solution to the data overload dilema. A platform that can successfully integrate and organize a wealth manager’s clients and priorities via an analytics capability to better serve clients, predicting earlier how to manage investments and supporting actions to help with their goals is vital for both improved client engagement and providing a smarter and more bespoke service. One that can intelligently integrate and aggregate  client data and referential content into the wealth manager’s workflow, providing real-time analysis at a hyper-focused level for enterprise customers. By integrating this content, Advisors can immediately see which clients are impacted by market events and are able to prioritize action immediately.

From data governance to unstructured data management and insight generation, Advisors at any level cannot be truly effective without this level of automation connecting client data, referential content and the analytics that help with taking client focused action. The task is too large and the stakes too high. A partner who can marry front- and back-office data with other relevant external sources – and help shape real intelligence that will impact clients – is invaluable.

In action

Imagine this for a moment: international trade negotiators sit down to discuss aluminum prices and the possibility of imposing tariffs on a country’s imports. How quickly a wealth manager can make sense of that information and determine the implications on their clients portfolios containing say, Coca-Cola or Anheuser-Busch InBev, can mean the difference of several percentage points on an enterprise investor’s portfolio returns.

Or imagine, a massive trove of rare materials is discovered off the coast of Japan. A savvy wealth advisor might recommend going long on chipmakers like Intel or Qualcomm, with battery and other high-tech product producers poised to benefit from an anticipated influx of raw materials. Imagine being able to leverage this opportunity via an asset allocation tool supporting your client financial plans.  Utilizing market information to improve client goal targets being achieved – true client engagement.

Surfacing this type of insight can help the Advisor better engage the client and ultimately improve selection and allocation decisions.  To achieve this, wealth advisors need tools to deliver the contextually relevant information in real time.

Refinitiv’s Wealth Management platform delivers this actionable insight directly into the wealth manager’s workflow.

By bringing portfolio data, CRM data, and contextual, predictive news together, Refinitiv is able equip the wealth manager with the tools they need to service clients on a more personal level. The Practice Management views surface which clients should be contacted, what is impacting them and how they should be engaged from rebalancing financial plans, to suggesting more suitable products, to change allocation decisions due to changing market risk and the impact to the client portfolio.

Automation sets you free

Automating insight has many advantages in terms of how it empowers the wealth manager to make better investment advice. But, of potentially even more consequence, this unprecedented level of automated data aggregation, frees wealth managers to spend more time on building relationships with their clients rather than doing research.

The Intelligent Advisor is the advisor of the future, bringing all the data and applications you need into one integrated solution, making portfolio and relationship management easier than ever.

Find out more about how Refinitiv helps Advisors.