WEALTH MANAGEMENT W
But learning from retail does not mean
ignoring wealth management’s distinctive success factors – expertise, accuracy, personalisation and client relationship. It’s just that technology reshapes them, making them more data-based, scalable and inclusive. In future, private bankers will have to differentiate themselves by not only their technical knowledge and personal skills, but also how they leverage technology. Just as in the retail world, wealthy customers
are migrating to digital products and services. Over the past year, Covid-19 has accelerated this shift. What’s more, customers still prefer traditional wealth managers over newcomers, whose revenue models are not so clear and which have suffered from recent negative news. That means digitalisation remains a huge opportunity for growth for incumbents to offer innovative options, while remaining the most trustworthy providers of financial services.
Lessons from digitalising our retail bank The scaling up of Societe Generale’s retail bank happened in three different phases. This journey to maturity has lessons for digital innovation in wealth management. So, what does that mean? Firstly, it means understanding that digital
transformation is not just a tech transformation, but also a business transformation that revolutionises the customer experience. Applied to wealth managers, this involves making a deep cultural shift, accompanied by a clear vision, as well as the broad alignment of objectives and rigorous execution.
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Secondly, it’s important to accept that the benefits of digitalisation go beyond cost and operational efficiency. Technology is quickly changing the products and services that wealthier customers expect. They want to access services online or via their mobiles. Even customers in their 60s might conceivably be interested in novelties like tokenised art, hyper-personalised content, goal-based robo-advisers or almost autonomous investment super-apps. There’s a completely new world emerging that has to be mastered. Thirdly, digital products and services are not just short-term revenue sources. They should be thought of as magnetic tools for building a new kind of customer connection. Collecting data about your customers – with appropriate consent – allows you to provide the products your customer will value most.
Our wealth management journey When starting our digital journey at Societe Generale’s wealth management division, we reimagined the DNA of our customer relationships, expertise and trust. Cash may be king in a bank but, in a digital world, data is queen. For that reason, we started by re- engineering the data and digital architecture. The first step was to get our data in order.
That meant either putting it on a single system or in a data lake. Then, we needed to hire data scientists. The next step was to build a single digital platform for offering wealth management services. Doing so allowed services from across the bank to be offered through a simple, consistent and intuitive portal. After laying these foundations, the interesting part began: fostering innovation and disruption at the heart of the business. There are lots of opportunities. Fundamentally, as data gives you increased knowledge of your clients, it allows
“We are evolving from bankers to quasi-life coaches. We aim to be a place where wealthy customers go for a vast range of services, with our insights into their needs enhanced by data”
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