Why the Future of Wealth Management is Digital

Salesforce.com has peered into the future of financial services and proclaimed that the future of advice is digital.

A Salesforce survey completed in the fourth quarter of 2015 said “Almost all wealth managers view digital capabilities as key for future competitiveness, supplementing face-to-face relationships, and boosting overall efficiency.”

Key Takeaways

Improving digital capabilities is the #1 growth strategy for wealth managers over the next two years.

There is a chasm between wealth managers’ current digital capabilities and their ambitions.

Innovative technology-based solutions can counteract reduced margins.

75% reported that their suite of digital applications needed to improve.

71% expect to collect data through social media over two years, up from just 29% today.

A Broad Digital Spectrum

The digital capabilities that many advisory firms and wealth managers are concerned with include:

Robo-advising

Digital payments

Blockchain technology

Online account opening

Mobile and tablet capabilities

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Perhaps the biggest digital divide is in how financial advisors perceive and monitor their websites as a potential sales tool. According to the study, only 13% of advisory firms monitored their websites, and 17% actively neither reviewed their competitors’ sites or their own.

However, the good news is that seven in ten firms expected to monitor their website’s persona (and competitors), although it may be as long as two years in the making.