The financial services industry has made significant progress in adopting modern, consumer-facing technologies, which greatly enhance clients' ability to initiate and stay informed about their investments and financial plans.
Most notably, over the last decade, the robo-advisor experience has shown that investors will adopt digital providers to manage their money simply because it is a better, faster, easier, lower-cost, and more modern approach. Aiken to Amazon eliminating the friction from retail purchases, the digitization of the client experience in wealth management is now a primary focus.
Client Experience in a Digital World
However, in our ever-changing world, clients are becoming anxious about their long-term financial goals and objectives. According to a recent SS&C whitepaper, Digitizing the Client Experience: Keeping Up with a Changing World, to ensure their businesses are sustainable, financial advisors are rethinking their service models, how they communicate with clients, and how they attract and retain them.
As a result, a renewed focus on enhancing the digital client experience has evolved from "bells and whistles" to "table stakes.”
“The good news is that with those same advancements in technology, there are more and better tools designed explicitly for wealth management that place the client experience at the heart of the business and shine a light on the difference that a professional advisor brings.”
Digital Applications are the Future
For firms to digitize the client experience, the paper recommends considering the end-to-end journey from prospecting to onboarding through ongoing service and relationship management. At various touchpoints along this path, firms must identify opportunities to leverage digital technology to streamline and automate processes and workflows.
Often it comes down to having a robust, digital client portal. According to the paper,
“At a minimum, a modern client portal must be interactive and deliver information on demand. It needs to be designed from the client’s perspective, emphasizing ease of information consumption. It should be intuitive, easy to use, and friction-free.”
Additionally, by integrating corresponding applications, such as results from the client's financial plan, firms can show how clients are tracking to achieve their goals. When combined with a digital content repository stocked with current research reports and market commentary, the client portal becomes a central location for clients to stay up to date on the performance of their investments, their progress towards their goals, and quick access to the latest information.
To learn more, download the complete whitepaper, Digitizing the Client Experience: Keeping Up with a Changing World.
