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Written By: Rami Cassis, CEO, ieDigital, Connect and ABAKA.
For the financial services sector, when it comes to marketing and attracting new clients, a scattergun approach is likely to do more harm than good.
If a bank or building society decided to commit the cardinal sin of lumping all their customers into one category, including all ages, backgrounds, ambitions, and lifestyles, and send them all the same marketing email offering the opportunity to sign up to the same product, the chances are that the response rate will be low. Moreover, the conversion rate will be even lower.
This is because the product will simply not be suitable for everyone. Indeed, there is a chance that this scattergun approach will cost them valuable business in today’s age of personalisation and the need to treat customers as individuals. This is especially true of Millennials, who favour high levels of customer service, with more than half (53%) saying they would switch to a company’s competitor after just one negative customer service experience.
Wealth managers need to be especially careful. After all, a good wealth manager will pride themself on offering a personalised service based on bespoke advice relevant to the very specific goals of a client. They cannot risk alienating clients using the scattergun approach - it would likely lead to business suicide.
Those wealth managers who have access to a vast set of client data are missing a very valuable opportunity if they fail to maximise the insights that can be drawn from these statistics. This is where an AI-based analytical approach can provide some of the most personalised client insights available today – insights which can push conversion rates sky high.
Indeed, in its 2023 Global Asset and Wealth Management Survey, PwC states that one of the things that wealth managers need to concentrate on during the coming years is getting closer to its customers.
Let’s look at how AI is being increasingly adopted by wealth manager’s today as a tool for enabling them to forge this close relationship.
Why personalisation should be at the top of the agenda for wealth managers.
Imagine the scenario.
You are a single person aged 65 with no children, living on your own in a house you own outright with no mortgage. You work full-time and enjoy your job – in fact, you are happy to continue working for the foreseeable future.
However, just lately, the wealth management division of your bank – with whom you have banked for most of your working life – has started sending completely irrelevant marketing material. This has ranged from the best savings accounts to open for your children, to how you should be filling your days now you have retired, to how to ensure you manage to keep up your mortgage payments.
Will this approach, with products being offered which are completely irrelevant, make you feel like a valued customer? The chances are that it absolutely will not – and might even make you question how your bank could have got it so wrong.
This is something that a wealth manager today cannot risk. In its 2023 survey, PwC asserts that by 2027, 16% of existing asset and wealth management organisations will have been swallowed up or have fallen by the wayside—twice the historical rate of turnover.
Therefore, today’s wealth managers need to work harder than ever to ensure they do not alienate clients. However, the good news is that AI could provide the answer.
AI-driven analytics.
Today’s digitally driven age provides somewhat of a juxtaposition when it comes to providing an opportunity for wealth managers to approach new customers, or service existing ones.
On the one hand, the mass adoption of online banking means that branch visits are becoming increasingly uncommon. The bank managers and staff of old who knew many customers by name are becoming increasingly rare too.
However, on the other hand, the digital footprint left by today’s customers means there is a raft of data that can be analysed to deliver hyper-personalised sales and marketing campaigns at scale.
By plugging in a sophisticated, GDPR-compliant AI tool, the wealth management division of a bank, credit union or building society can turn the few and basic touchpoints it has on its clients’ lives, such as age, gender, geographical location, and nationality, into a rich source of intelligence. AI can analyse detailed behaviours such as the purchases their clients are making, what time they are accessing emails and even the tools they are using, such as a laptop or a smartphone.
The level of granularity is such that AI tools today can pinpoint who is likely to be an animal lover by the frequency they are buying petfood or visiting a pet superstore. Those who have gym memberships or pay football club subscriptions are likely to be fitness or sports fanatics, and people who regularly spend money on gaming and computer accessories are likely to enjoy living in augmented reality.
The availability of such rich insights opens the possibility for wealth managers to make a very specific sales pitch based around the characteristics of an existing, or potential client. A specific retirement savings plan might be the same – it might be a straightforward investment or savings product. However, a targeted approach will specifically make it appeal to multiple types of people.
For thrill seekers, a wealth manager might emphasise the importance of saving for an active later life filled with white-knuckle adrenaline-filled pastimes. However, for the more reserved, a gentler approach may resonate, highlighting the need to plan to enjoy gentler activities such as gardening and enjoying a relaxed pace of life.
Although the product is the same, the route taken to approach different people will be much more tailored thanks to AI, which is likely to result in better outcomes.
Likewise, AI can tell wealth managers when to send out messages, dependent on the habits of different groups. Some might prefer an email early in the morning, others might be more receptive late at night.
The possibilities are endless. AI takes out the labour-intensive process of trawling through customers’ data and can analyse reams of data, covering thousands of customers, incredibly swiftly. All done within a GDPR-compliant framework, the result is a valuable dataset of information that a wealth manager can use to deliver on-demand hyper-personalised customer experiences and insights. These increase engagement and retention and drives product upselling and cross-selling opportunities.
Conclusion
Wealth managers need to work harder than ever to ensure they are providing a hyper-personalised service. A failure to do so means they risk losing valuable customers.
As a result, more wealth managers are turning to AI to provide the rich datasets of information that will allow them to resonate directly with the touchpoints of their customers.
Ultimately, AI-empowered, behavioural persona-based segmentation delivers advanced customer insights and intelligent nudges. By having a richer understanding of their existing and target customers, advisers can provide hyper-personalised customer experiences and build a truly customer-centric ecosystem across their products and services.
The wealth manager will be able to accurately advise, the financial services provider will sell more products and the client will feel valued and personalised.
Everyone is a winner.
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