As the digital landscape continues to evolve, so too does the way in which investment managers connect with their customers.
Content and communication must be relevant and adaptable to engage with different generations and cater to their unique needs and preferences. By embracing technology, investment advisers can offer more personalised, efficient and engaging services, ultimately fostering stronger client relationships and achieving better financial outcomes.
Iress’ CEO of Global Trading and Market Data Jason Hoang recently spoke at SIAA 2024 about how technology is transforming the investment management sector, and some unique ways successful advisers were approaching this.
Bridging the intergenerational client gap
The Australian Productivity Commission forecasts some $3.5 trillion will be transferred across generations over the next two decades. This presents a huge opportunity for investment advisers to service this growing audience at scale through technology. The Gen Z-ers of today are a far step away from your traditional investor, so education and engagement are becoming more important than ever.
Education and engagement also need to move beyond servicing the individual. Successful investment managers are evolving their offerings to engage with clients and their family members at crucial life stages. There are AI tools that can nudge each family member at the right life stages: moving out of school to university, entering the workforce, getting married and building a family. They are also using technology to educate the family by introducing young adults and adolescents to the world of trading and managing their wealth.
Technology will enable digitally-led engagement, and provide new ways to reach this wave of next-gen investors, helping to build awareness and understanding of the importance of wealth management.
Delivering meaningful and timely engagements
The industry is adapting to serve a rapidly-growing, tech-literate and high-demanding audience.
Speed and convenience are key to maintaining effective and engaging relationships with this younger generation. In Asia, successful firms realise this and are embracing new models to adapt to when and where their clients prefer to communicate. Younger cohorts have embraced mobile as their primary communication channel, and successful broking firms are deploying secure overlays to communicate via WeChat, WhatsApp, Ling and Zalo to connect with clients and allow for real-time trade execution - all within the one messaging platform.
Choosing the right channel for client interaction and communication is important, but the content delivered through these channels is just as crucial. Investment managers must be mindful of their clients’ wants and needs, to ensure they are delivering personalised and tailored content that is relevant to their interests and portfolios. Technology and data can be leveraged to match market activity against client portfolios, which can enable automated, real-time content delivery to keep clients informed and help them self-manage when the need arises.
Technology is the consistent underlying enabler in the client engagement process. Investment managers of the future will need to change and adapt their business models and make choices to define their clients, the advice they give and how they harness technology to engage and deliver advice in order to remain successful.
