With wealth management client profiles rapidly evolving to include millennial and Gen Z, HNWIs, women, non-traditional families and more, firms must train advisors and staff to meet more diverse, segment-specific client expectations and behaviours.
Hiring and digitally empowering a diverse advisor workforce while re-skilling staff to engage with a variety of client segments is the way forward. Nevertheless, 63 per cent of advisors surveyed said they are not satisfied with their wealth management firm’s efforts to provide tools and training to meet changing client needs.
To meet evolving expectations, firms will also need to employ bigtech strategies with hyper-personalisation, lifestyle ecosystem offerings and intuitive embedded interfaces to retain relevance among a diverse client base.
With the current stock market surge, HNWIs are also seeking to diversify their portfolios with alternative investments. Interestingly, 90 per cent of surveyed HNWIs in Asia Pacific said they have invested in cryptocurrencies and 89 per cent in other digital assets such as website domain names or apps.
Special purpose acquisition companies are becoming more popular, while non-fungible tokens are slowly gaining asset-class credibility. In terms of fees, 39 per cent are interested in zero-fee trading but their wealth management firm is yet to oblige.
Market opportunity
The quarter-century edition of the World Wealth Report captured modern-day industry changes and megatrends but the future is already taking shape in the meantime.
New, tech-driven wealth is finding its way to non-typical investments avenues as we see in the Asia Pacific region. Millennial entrepreneurs are reinvesting money gained from exits back to the real economy through new start-ups or creating their own investment funds in collaboration with other young HNWIs.
For wealth management firms, investing in the adequate tools and educational resources in new asset class offerings and investments creates a potentially significant market opportunity.
Elias Ghanem is VP Global Head of Market Intelligence, Financial Services Capgemini and Li Cheng is Senior Director, Financial Services Capgemini A&NZ
