Liz Field
Chief Executive, PIMFA
Wealth managers are increasingly recognising that technology can, and should, be used more widely within their organisations and also be a valuable tool for client interactions.
As the trade association for wealth management, investment services and the financial advice and planning industry PIMFA launched WealthTech last year. Its purpose is to promote better relationships between fintechs and wealth managers — to help wealth managers adopt technology to help them streamline processes, adopt artificial intelligence and onboard customers more seamlessly.
Addressing financial industry challenges
This year, PIMFA WealthTech has largely focused on resolving specific industry pain points through a series of ‘Tech Sprints.’ The first of which, in conjunction with our strategic partners Morningstar, focused on the newly introduced ‘Consumer Duty’ and, specifically, the obligation on firms to communicate information in a way the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) views is clear, fair and not misleading.
Since then, we have launched two further Tech Sprints. One improves the client onboarding experience, with partners WealthOS, focusing on how automation could allow wealth managers to increase work accuracy, reduce the time involved in onboarding new clients and potentially reduce costs by up to 50%.
The second Tech Sprint, with leading financial technology company NayaOne, was recently awarded the Digital Sandbox tender by the FCA. It was designed to meet a challenge focused on improving industry-wide client analytics and profiling.
Technological change is being embraced
by the wealth management industry
and its clients in new ways.
Helping wealth managers and their clients
The Tech Sprints conducted this year have been based on consulting senior leaders in the wealth management industry. There are further planned projects for 2024. In all cases, we are being guided by both what the fintech community can deliver and what the wealth management industry believes will be of most benefit to their businesses and customers.
Over the last two years, we learned that clients want a more personalised, faster, convenient and intuitive relationship with their wealth manager. Communication with wealth managers is changing. It’s more immediate, analytical and, in many cases, more demanding.
Meanwhile, wealth managers are seeing the benefits of AI and machine learning in helping them deal with back-office functions that have, in the past, proven both laborious and costly. They are also starting to explore more client-facing solutions.
One thing that has become clear to both sides is that technological change is being embraced by the wealth management industry and its clients in new ways. The coming years will see even greater adoption of technology within financial services, and we look forward to seeing the innovations that this will bring.