Next Generation Technology:
Driving New Client Acquisition

How can technology drive sales effectiveness in wealth management?

This article outlines what New Client Acquisition will look like for leading wealth managers. It compares firms’ digital priorities and use of digital tools. And it explores potential options as they move to accelerate growth, both through new channels and by application of technology to current acquisition methods.

It’s not a story of revolution.

Rather, it’s about ‘evolution at pace’

says Albert Iselin,

Executive Director, DACH – Finantix

How can banks increase new sales effectiveness?

Yes, some wealth management growth can be supported by focusing on existing clients, increasing AUM value or selling new or more profitable services. But there’s no doubt that new clients play a key role in healthy growth.

The industry has shown considerable maturity applying technology to support or automate wealth management processes, portfolio management in particular. Can technology be equally game changing in identifying, profiling and approaching leads? Can it support the whole process of converting prospects into clients? Many industries have avidly adopted digital technology, turning the art of client acquisition into a true data driven science. Can this be done in wealth management?

Getting the Right Balance

Wealth managers today face a balancing act. Looking after existing clients with best possible service is key to growing assets under management. They also have to find new clients. How can they do this more effectively?

Automation is Already Proven

Technology has shown that it can make a major contribution to automating key wealth management processes. Portfolio management is an excellent example. The challenge now is to apply digitisation to finding prospects and turning them into clients. It’s a challenge that cannot be ignored. Intense competition is driving banks to actively source prospects for themselves and then transform them into new business.

Automate - Dominate

The function of digital technology is not to eliminate people from a people business, especially for HNW clients. Its true role is to accelerate key processes. This way, human input gets the time it needs to make the personal difference. The move to implementing digitisation is not revolutionary. It is evolution, at pace. Continuity comes from traditional values. These include quality of relationships and service offered to both existing and new clients. Urgency comes from the need to acquire the new clients faster and more efficiently than ever.

People Will Always be Front and Centre (But people are only human)

People will continue to buy from people. Yet, today, RMs say they spend up to 30% of their time on administration instead of client servicing. Finding new leads from thousands of scattered sources is a beyond-super-human task. Making the most positive impact on potential prospects demands a high-octane pitch. And that can stretch people’s bandwidth past their limits.

Four Client Acquisition Tasks

Lead generation is Job One for technology. Then banks need to engage fast and positively with profiles that look right for their business. So, making contact that makes first impressions count is Job Two. They then need to confirm suitability ahead of compliance issues: Job Three. Finally, Job Four is to pre-sell with personalised offers and achieve frictionless onboarding.

Are Today’s Banks Embracing
Tomorrow’s Technology?

When we interviewed senior marketing and business development executives, they clearly indicated that digital technologies are on their new client acquisition agenda. Nearly nine out of ten said they’re growing digital lead generation in the next two years, and just over half are making the digital route top priority.

Where Next?

Technology has a key role to play in new client acquisition.

Opportunities to build a world-beating sales operation, based on world class client service quality, are there for every private bank to leverage. But this is not about overnight revolution. Identifying and implementing the most effective technologies is evolutionary.

Wealth management is too sophisticated for total automation. However, one fact is becoming ever clearer: effective competition for new clients and their business will not work effectively without a technology-enabled growth strategy.

Successful banks of the future will take the next steps to evolution now. They will scope and apply methodologies and solutions that support ongoing transition. Then they will, over time, embrace fully technology enabled, efficient and highly effective client acquisition.

Albert Iselin is the Executive Director of Finantix for the DACH region

albert.iselin@finantix.com