At a time when technology is driving the competitive edge in businesses to increase efficiency and create customer-centric solutions, two major players are seeking to boost their digital transformation this year to enhance decision making in the front office and deliver a better digital experience.
‘Hyperpersonalised advisory’ was the focus of panellists who took part in the What’s next in Client Engagement Tools and Strategies webinar hosted by Asian Private Banker on Tuesday. Sponsored by FactSet, the webinar examined how banks are applying digital solutions to deliver future-forward client engagement capabilities.
Levelling up
Sonjoy Phukan, global COO of Bank of Singapore, is keen on bringing data into play to gain insights into client behaviours for personalisation and to empower the front office with tools for better decision making. Web 3.0 is a key theme for the bank, which is progressively finding new ways to deliver tailored information to clients based on a segmental and geographical perspective.
Sonjoy Phukan, BOS
“I would like to test more knowledge actions on our client app and innovate in the areas of manufacturing and distribution of content, onboarding, and dig a little deeper into regulation tech solutions,” Phukan said.
The Singapore lender launched its Group Wealth Platform (GWP) at the start of the pandemic, and since then it has been building the platform with data and personalised content. Client adoption rate of GWP increased to 85% within the first six months. “We’re now building on that foundation,” Phukan said.
He is expecting the number of clients who use the bank’s online equities trading offering to double in the next six months. The following stage of development is to introduce online trading and service tools to EAMs, as that is an important segment for the bank.
“We also need more dynamic ways of getting feedback internally and externally. Faster employee and client feedback will help our transformation, [which] is at the early stages — but we now need to start measuring,” Phukan said.
Next big launch
Deutsche Bank is prioritising the development of an electronic trading platform, plus the launch of the Condor digital portfolio management platform, shared Cherris Wong, North Asia COO of Deutsche Bank.
Cherris Wong, Deutsche Bank
The German lender presently uses Symphony — which integrates WhatsApp and WeChat into communication channels with clients — and video conferencing for client meetings. “We have an online platform that clients can go into and check their current positions and receive the latest CIO views,” Wong said.
“We are focusing on client engagement and investing in the whole automation process end-to-end, such as data analytics, onboarding, and portfolio management. We also want to help the front office increase productivity.”
Wong refers to Condor as a ‘very big tool’ which will be designed to provide trade idea pitching, monitor portfolio performance, stress test scenarios analysis, among other things. “We expect to roll out the platform in 3Q22 or 4Q22,” she said.
Next best conversation
Yash Wardhan, FactSet
On a wider scale, FactSet is seeing most banks trying to streamline their internal platforms to provide customers with more hyperpersonalised advisory. They are even enabling relationship managers (RMs) and advisors in the form of ‘next best conversation’.
“Next best conversation is basically anything which affects client portfolio, such as rebalancing due to any major event or news in the market,” said Yash Wardhan, regional director for APAC wealth solutions.
Innovation is similarly driving prospecting activities and new client acquisitions, pointed out Gregory King, senior director for wealth management and digital solutions strategy and product development.
Gregory King, FactSet
“Over the last handful of years, firms have been throwing money at the client experience,” King said. “We’re seeing interest in practice management workflow and CRM strategy. Financial planning tools to connect the advisor are equally becoming very popular.”
“I think the development of Netflix and Amazon do so well today and everybody wants that,” he offered. “[It is] the agile framework of making incremental improvements to digital services and iterating these on a frequent basis.”
